Kidnapped, tied to a chair, and shot in the leg, things aren’t looking very good for Clinton Jones.
That is, until the guys who seem to want him dead are interrupted by Neal Caffrey bursting through the doors. Neal Caffrey, who for some reason chooses to cover for him, tell off the men who shot him, shoo them away, and call for help and medical support.
For just a moment, Jones thinks he might see what Peter Burke sees in this kid.
“In some alternate universe, you’d be wearing power ties, doing power lunches, flying corporate jets. Doubt we’d have ever met.” “Well, maybe, under different circumstances.” “Well, that’s true. You might have robbed the company.” — 2.08
I have more things to say, surprise surprise. Anyways time to talk about a show istg five people have seen
So White Collar is…. A show
Don’t get me wrong, I honestly really love the show, I love the characters, I love a lot of the plots, and I think it’s a very fun and interesting show. My one main complaint however, is how inconsistent the relationship between Peter and Neal is.
At first, their relationship is incredibly clear, they have a sort of rivalry that’s laced with respect for the others intelligence. While understanding that they’re both intelligent and competent, Neal doesn’t respect the government, and Peter doesn’t respect a criminal.
Naturally though, this changes over the series, to the point they begin to become good friends. They often keep things from each other, yes, but there’s a deep, intrinsic trust that, in a way, pulls them together. They don’t always like each other’s methods, but at the end of the day, they know they’ll get the job done.
Earlier on, this development feels very naturally done and implemented, it’s an obvious and good character progression to have them become friends.
However, they start to run into the problem that many shows do: making the two of them actually just friends would erase half of the conflict they can do between the characters.
Because their main character conflicts come from Peter being a strict, moral, good guy, and Neal being a fast and loose, often reckless, “bad guy”, making the two of them just be good friends means they couldn’t have that conflict anymore.
But this creates a conflict in the writing instead of the characters. It’s something that shows up more in the connected, storylined episodes than the more one off ones, but it still happens a lot. Some episodes and storylines portray that intrinsic trust that you’d imagine is naturally formed between two people who work together literally every day, and others need any amount of conflict and so they pit Neal and Peter against each other in a way that goes against the characterization that’s already been built up.
This problem has stuck out to me especially in the later seasons, in the earlier ones it’s easier to imagine that they still don’t trust each other sometimes, but going on season five and they’ve been working together for multiple years, the conflict doesn’t work unless they stick to it, which they obviously never do, as undermining their friendship too much would ruin the chemistry.
Literally why did so many shows from this era has this exact same problem?? Like they want to develop their characters and relationships, but can’t stray from the status quo, and it makes it feel so weird.
Chapters:
1/?
Fandom:
White Collar (TV 2009)
Rating:
General Audiences
Warnings:
No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships:
Peter Burke & Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke & Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke & Peter Burke & Neal Caffrey
Characters:
Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke (White Collar)
Additional Tags:
Banter, Attempt at Humor, Christmas, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Shopping, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, It’s one in the morning, I’m so tired
Summary:
Neal had a plan.
As the holidays approached, he had crafted a plan to spend his first since he got out of prison at the Burkes’ home. He was going to experience the full extent of a real family Christmas.
His plan was solid and it was a well thought plan.
It was definitely going to work.
It… derailed spectacularly, but still he managed to get what he wanted.
Chapters:
2/?
Fandom:
White Collar (TV 2009)
Rating:
Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings:
No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships:
Neal Caffrey/Sara Ellis, Peter Burke & Neal Caffrey
Characters:
Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Sara Ellis, Diana Berrigan, Clinton Jones
Additional Tags:
Post-Canon
Summary:
The most significant heist since the death of alleged forger and art thief Neal Caffrey lures Sara Ellis and Agent Diana Berrigan back to their old haunt: the White Collar Crime division of the NYC FBI. They’re not the only ghosts in town.
neal caffrey soaring to unreachable levels of romantic drama by lingering in that airplane hangar to admit to peter the reason he was the only one who didn’t get a goodbye is because he’s the only one who could change neal’s mind about leaving with a single sparkling tear rolling down his face
