White Collar 1.07

[jmtorres]

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!")

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.

Comments

[grey_bard]

As long as he doesn't take major characters *too* far out of character and doesn't pull a Battlestar Galactica ("Wait for it! Wait for it! Wait for it!" Years of anticipation pass "... That's all?") he'll still be several steps beyond a lot of showrunners.

Which is by no means a sure thing.

[jmtorres]

Yeah, balancing build-up and a surprise worthy of it is... challenging.

[niqaeli]

There is a weakness in writing mystery/heisty plotarc in television that lies not inherent to the medium, per se, but rather in the nature of its production.

When you write a mystery novel, you have the chance to in either outline or in draft to beat on the plot, to make sure that you've left a breadcrumb trail of clues that is deft enough not to telegraph events (even to your savvy and intelligent readers) while still leaving the setup there so that you surprise your audience without shocking them (often, much can be done without specific Clues but with thematic rendering/characterisation of a character -- but that setup had better be there so you're dropping an ice cube down their shirt, not dropping them into a freezing lake). And in a film, you usually have a script that's been beaten on a lot before you ever cast actors. And depending on your budget, if you need to refilm shit, you can do that too. In television...

Well, in television, the timeframe is such that if you want to pull that shit off, I am going to say that you have to have your plotarc not just outlined in your head but written when you pitch the show. At a minimum, you absolutely have to have all of your structure in place before you start production. Because if you don't have it done upfront, you had better be a goddamned prescient genius who doesn't need to rework anything ever: you'll never have the chance to rework things, the pace on filming and post-production is just too damned fast.

Except no one's that much of a prescient genius.

I think he did work out his plot. In his head and only in his head, and he played it so goddamned close to his chest it was embedded under his fucking skin. And he doesn't think he's been that overly-subtle because he hasn't figured out that no writer can ever make that call on their own.

And that leaves me a lot less likely to trust him in general, tbh, because he knows enough to be dangerous and not enough to know what the hell he's doing. He's, god. He's got some strength and promise as a writer but he doesn't appear yet to have figured out the backend of structuring/writing plot. Which... yeah. I mean that shit's seriously hard. But the fact that I understand where and what he's struggling with doesn't make me trust him.

I wish I could be less media-savvy, sometimes. I can't turn it off and I can only sometimes make myself not care. And I pretty much can't make myself not care when the writing's sharp and promising, in some places.

[copracat]

I think it follows that if Neal and Mozzie can find Kate, Peter can find Kate. He caught Neal twice and he twigged to Mozzie almost immediately.

[jmtorres]

Sure, yes, I think he found her, during the week between catching Neal and visiting him in prison--I just don't think he spooked her in the first place, I don't think he's masterminding shit.

[cedara]

Peter can't be "Mentor", can he? I mean, that's too obvious. Fowler bugging Peter's phone, him in New York on surveillance....

If Elizabeth is "Mentor" then I'll laugh.

[jmtorres]

niq and I have long felt Elizabeth was crooked, or should have been, but been afraid the show would be too straight to try that.

[dragonfly]

Moz would be brilliant. Excellent meta here. I plan to link to it unless you object.

[jmtorres]

No objections!

[dragonfly]

Wait, I just realized a timeline problem with when Peter could have gone to San Diego.

There is a week between when Peter catches the escapee and when he interviews him in prison, yes. But there are *three months* between the interview in prison and when Peter decides to have him released into his custody. When Moz gives Neal the picture, he says it was taken in San Diego "a few days ago" or something like that. So Peter would have had to have been in San Diego with Kate just a few days before getting Neal released. Which isn't a problem, plot-wise, really, but doesn't work with your theory that he did it in the week between capture and interview.

[jmtorres]

Hahaha, a whole three months elided. Right. God, Eastin could have buried a fucking lot in three missing months.

OTOH, I have now started looking at everything Moz tells Neal in terms of "what could he have left out, how could he have manipulated this, could this be fabricated?" So I am generally disinclined to trust Moz's dates, either (even with three months in play I don't think Peter caught up with Kate just a few days before getting Neal out).

[dragonfly]

even with three months in play I don't think Peter caught up with Kate just a few days before getting Neal out

Well, not that I'm trusting Moz or anyone at this point, but why not? If the scene with Elizabeth where he's musing about releasing Neal (and says "He'd be out today"} is to be believed, he hadn't decided until around then to take Neal's offer. He could have been searching for Kate for months, and didn't decide to release Neal until after he'd found her. Possibly quite soon after he'd found her.

The thing I don't quite get -- assuming the bad!Peter model -- is why nab Kate for leverage over Neal when he is capable of getting his hands on Neal himself? It seems like he's already in a good position with Neal to manipulate him. Kidnapping (or whatever it is) would be risky.

Unless, of course, they're in it together. *sigh*

[jmtorres]

I did actually come up with a motive for Peter and promptly hoped Eastin had not also come up with it because I think it's a more interesting motive than anything I can come up with as Moz's motive. If Peter's the mastermind, then he was pressuring Kate for the cache because it pissed him off that after all Neal's schemes, the only thing he nailed him on was the security bonds, and he wanted evidence to get him for everything else. I don't think he magically tricked Neal into suggesting the work-release, I think he took that as an opportunity to work on Neal from the other side, and honestly the idea that Peter worked a long con on Neal for weeks and weeks while secretly being so bitter bothers me some. I still think Moz is the better set-up, but I find opportunistically-working mastermind Peter possible.

[dragonfly]

because it pissed him off that after all Neal's schemes, the only thing he nailed him on was the security bonds,

Ugh. It would explain why Kate's so vague about what exactly the man with the ring wants. Peter might not know what Neal has. Hmmm.

[gloriamundi]

Love your meta! This is really making me think (and not about what I should be thinking about, which is Yuletide ...)

Am especially unsettled by the notion of Moz being in on it all, but y'know, it makes sense: he's the one dispensing info. (Don't think he's the Man with Ring though. I don't think that's his hand, from his height ...)

I think there is something in Neal's Magical Mystery Stash that Peter -- or the FBI -- or the Man with the Nasty Ring -- wants badly.

And I could make a case for the One Ring being passed from handler to handler, so it's not always Peter. But I can't decide how surprised Kate is in that final scene. Obviously she knows Peter, but is she expecting to see him?

Also, that ring looks like somebody won it at the fairground.

[leavingslowly]

Could it be as simple as Peter having known where Kate was, but wanting to keep Neal away from her for Neal's own good? Perhaps Kate isn't as in love with Neal as he is with her, and she wants to get her hands on his hidden stash (which, coincidentaly, OPM also seems to want). She doesn't actually seem to be held captive based on what we've seen of her - what if she's lying and trying to con Neal? Fowler is the one who set Neal up, but it seems he did it to get to Peter. Why would he want to do that? Maybe he wanted Peter to lead him to Kate so that they could use her to get whatever Neal has.

What I really can't figure out is why Peter was wearing the ring. Did Neal find the picture of Peter finding Kate? Is it an FBI ring that all agents have? It is a red herring? Wtf is it?!