White Collar 1.07
Ocean's 12 is a fucking mean plot to play over an eight episode arc.
You know how in Ocean's 12, for most of the movie the group is pulling a scam that the audience is not in on, that they've already stolen the macguffin and they're playing the loss for the asshat who set them up? You know how there's the scene in the train station where half the party is lost in transit and you don't find out until the end that the mystery waiting around is because they're pulling off parts of the con?
So we had to wait like, an hour, and hour and a half to find that out. Not eight episodes.
Tonight I went back to the pilot of White Collar to watch the scene directly after Neal gets arrested in Kate's empty apartment, the scene where Diana tells Peter that Neal was right and the fiber was for the Canadian hundred. Following immediately from there, Peter's visit to Neal in prison. I remembered the scene where Diana confirmed being a walk and talk in some place of transit; I was honestly expecting it to be the airport, given that they already had the airport set for the episode. It was in a subway station, but what happened there is still... ambiguous. There was an elision of time, a week between Neal and Peter's scenes, and that week unaddressed; and there was Diana's point of exposition for something Peter should have been there for. These things could be standard television tropes--time passes, who cares; As You Know, Bob--but they could be, where was Peter, for how long, that he wasn't there to get the confirmation himself?
My working theory is that after catching Neal, Peter pulled Patriot Act data on Kate (and this is why that disturbing datum about his courtship of Elizabeth featured and then was re-emphasized re the anniversary in the pilot; it was a fucking clue) and followed her to find out what was going on, and caught up with her in San Diego. I believe that that was where his involvement started, I do not believe that he was responsible for Kate fleeing in the first place. I don't know why he didn't tell Neal about it. (Maybe Kate slipped him before he found out anything worth knowing; maybe she told him something he decided Neal should not know, or that as an FBI agent he could not officially know and couldn't figure out how to pass to Neal without officially knowing it, but the "don't search for Kate" when he knows Neal will has all been "not the briar patch!")
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niqaeli and I have been worrywarting away at the arc plot on White Collar for weeks now, afraid it was not going to live up to its promise, that it was going to be too straight, not clever enough. By too straight I mean here that clues that we felt should not be taken at face value would be, for example, that Kate's captor was FBI, when the source of that information was a liar to start with and had been burned by Neal before she told him, so why the fuck would that be true, what would be her motivation for giving trufax there? I think now that White Collar has a different problem, it's not that it's going to be too straight, it's that it's going to be too clever.
I IMDB'd Jeff Eastin to see what else he'd done, because I wanted to know if I had any reason to trust him to handle how this story goes. We're too media savvy, us, we recognize tropes too well and have a hard time ignoring plot holes and generally expect to get fucked over by writers who haven't thought ahead and plotted out arc. (I cut my teeth on Chris Carter, fucking bastard; J. Michael Straczynski was like, "wow, you can do that?" for me; Russell T. Davies' first season of Who was a revelation to me, though continued viewership of his material has provided me with far more information than I ever really wanted about the inside of his id.)
Here is what I learned from Jeff Eastin's IMDB: He hasn't done anything else I've heard of. He has run two shows before (Hawaii, canceled after 8 episodes; Shasta McNasty, canceled after a full 22 episode season). He's written two films and worked in one other show's writer's room without receiving credit for specific episodes. His student film work shows amusing fandorkery: a five-minute Silver Surfer.
USA hires writers with short resumes but interesting ideas to run shows. Psych's showrunner has an even shorter resume (one actual writing credit and a lot of uncredited script doctoring, pre-Psych; I'm still floored USA handed Steve Franks his baby there). Jeff Eastin isn't quite that green--I suspect that where he is, he knows enough to want to turn all the tropes he thinks are stupid on their heads. I think he gave us two unreliable narrators (I have been wtfing all along at fandom taking Neal at face value when he is a con man; apparently I should also have been paying attention to Peter being a grey, grey hat). I think he seeded clues that are totally obvious to him because he wrote the damn thing and just a touch too subtle for the audience, because where's the bread crumb trail on Peter?
So my feeling on how much I trust Jeff Eastin is--I think he actually knows what all the characters are up to, I think he planned that arc (which is giving him a hell of a lot of credit, I am rarely willing to assume American episodic television writers planned ahead). But I also think he's playing with the tropes and I am not entirely sure that the method of his reveal won't make me tear my hair out. I also think that he kept his arc so close to the vest he didn't tell his writer's room about all of it, which is why in episodes two and three written by other people there's so little arc build, and why Peter's characterization in terms of trust of Neal and general greyness is all over the map. I also think DeKay didn't know about what Peter was up to that week until he saw the script for the episode.
By standard tropes, Kate's captor has to be someone we've already met. (Not Fowler, he joined the game too late.) I don't buy Peter, I think Peter caught up with Kate out of--curiosity or what the fuck ever, but I don't think he scared her into running in the first place. If Chekhov's Gun is is play, if Eastin's playing by the rules, then honestly I think the best bet for Kate's captor is Moz, and that's why Kate wouldn't tell Neal when Neal showed up to the meet with Moz, and Moz has been able to run Neal in circles and control what he knows.
But I'm not sure those rules are in play. I'm not sure Eastin isn't going to try to out-clever us all and pull a villain out of a hat--with quite a detailed backstory in his own head, that he never managed to convey to us, because he was being so very subtle. That's the thing I'm afraid of. That's where I don't trust Eastin.
I think Eastin's a writer who knows just enough to be dangerous.
You know how in Ocean's 12, for most of the movie the group is pulling a scam that the audience is not in on, that they've already stolen the macguffin and they're playing the loss for the asshat who set them up? You know how there's the scene in the train station where half the party is lost in transit and you don't find out until the end that the mystery waiting around is because they're pulling off parts of the con?
So we had to wait like, an hour, and hour and a half to find that out. Not eight episodes.
Tonight I went back to the pilot of White Collar to watch the scene directly after Neal gets arrested in Kate's empty apartment, the scene where Diana tells Peter that Neal was right and the fiber was for the Canadian hundred. Following immediately from there, Peter's visit to Neal in prison. I remembered the scene where Diana confirmed being a walk and talk in some place of transit; I was honestly expecting it to be the airport, given that they already had the airport set for the episode. It was in a subway station, but what happened there is still... ambiguous. There was an elision of time, a week between Neal and Peter's scenes, and that week unaddressed; and there was Diana's point of exposition for something Peter should have been there for. These things could be standard television tropes--time passes, who cares; As You Know, Bob--but they could be, where was Peter, for how long, that he wasn't there to get the confirmation himself?
My working theory is that after catching Neal, Peter pulled Patriot Act data on Kate (and this is why that disturbing datum about his courtship of Elizabeth featured and then was re-emphasized re the anniversary in the pilot; it was a fucking clue) and followed her to find out what was going on, and caught up with her in San Diego. I believe that that was where his involvement started, I do not believe that he was responsible for Kate fleeing in the first place. I don't know why he didn't tell Neal about it. (Maybe Kate slipped him before he found out anything worth knowing; maybe she told him something he decided Neal should not know, or that as an FBI agent he could not officially know and couldn't figure out how to pass to Neal without officially knowing it, but the "don't search for Kate" when he knows Neal will has all been "not the briar patch!")
niqaeli and I have been worrywarting away at the arc plot on White Collar for weeks now, afraid it was not going to live up to its promise, that it was going to be too straight, not clever enough. By too straight I mean here that clues that we felt should not be taken at face value would be, for example, that Kate's captor was FBI, when the source of that information was a liar to start with and had been burned by Neal before she told him, so why the fuck would that be true, what would be her motivation for giving trufax there? I think now that White Collar has a different problem, it's not that it's going to be too straight, it's that it's going to be too clever. I IMDB'd Jeff Eastin to see what else he'd done, because I wanted to know if I had any reason to trust him to handle how this story goes. We're too media savvy, us, we recognize tropes too well and have a hard time ignoring plot holes and generally expect to get fucked over by writers who haven't thought ahead and plotted out arc. (I cut my teeth on Chris Carter, fucking bastard; J. Michael Straczynski was like, "wow, you can do that?" for me; Russell T. Davies' first season of Who was a revelation to me, though continued viewership of his material has provided me with far more information than I ever really wanted about the inside of his id.)
Here is what I learned from Jeff Eastin's IMDB: He hasn't done anything else I've heard of. He has run two shows before (Hawaii, canceled after 8 episodes; Shasta McNasty, canceled after a full 22 episode season). He's written two films and worked in one other show's writer's room without receiving credit for specific episodes. His student film work shows amusing fandorkery: a five-minute Silver Surfer.
USA hires writers with short resumes but interesting ideas to run shows. Psych's showrunner has an even shorter resume (one actual writing credit and a lot of uncredited script doctoring, pre-Psych; I'm still floored USA handed Steve Franks his baby there). Jeff Eastin isn't quite that green--I suspect that where he is, he knows enough to want to turn all the tropes he thinks are stupid on their heads. I think he gave us two unreliable narrators (I have been wtfing all along at fandom taking Neal at face value when he is a con man; apparently I should also have been paying attention to Peter being a grey, grey hat). I think he seeded clues that are totally obvious to him because he wrote the damn thing and just a touch too subtle for the audience, because where's the bread crumb trail on Peter?
So my feeling on how much I trust Jeff Eastin is--I think he actually knows what all the characters are up to, I think he planned that arc (which is giving him a hell of a lot of credit, I am rarely willing to assume American episodic television writers planned ahead). But I also think he's playing with the tropes and I am not entirely sure that the method of his reveal won't make me tear my hair out. I also think that he kept his arc so close to the vest he didn't tell his writer's room about all of it, which is why in episodes two and three written by other people there's so little arc build, and why Peter's characterization in terms of trust of Neal and general greyness is all over the map. I also think DeKay didn't know about what Peter was up to that week until he saw the script for the episode.
By standard tropes, Kate's captor has to be someone we've already met. (Not Fowler, he joined the game too late.) I don't buy Peter, I think Peter caught up with Kate out of--curiosity or what the fuck ever, but I don't think he scared her into running in the first place. If Chekhov's Gun is is play, if Eastin's playing by the rules, then honestly I think the best bet for Kate's captor is Moz, and that's why Kate wouldn't tell Neal when Neal showed up to the meet with Moz, and Moz has been able to run Neal in circles and control what he knows.
But I'm not sure those rules are in play. I'm not sure Eastin isn't going to try to out-clever us all and pull a villain out of a hat--with quite a detailed backstory in his own head, that he never managed to convey to us, because he was being so very subtle. That's the thing I'm afraid of. That's where I don't trust Eastin.
I think Eastin's a writer who knows just enough to be dangerous.