Recap – White Collar 2.08: “Company Man”

This week’s White Collar involves fun terms like “murder” and “corporate espionage.” The chief R&D guy of a tech company dropped dead in the midst of a defense contract bidding war. It’s a suspected homicide, given that the prototype he had on him was also stolen, and Peter’s plan is to go undercover as an accountant during the company’s corporate audit to see what’s going on behind closed doors. After all, he does have an accounting degree. This means tangling with suspicious CEO Marcus Hayes, played by Griffin Dunne (whose last guest appearance was playing the anti-Nate Ford, Starke, in Leverage‘s “The Two Live Crew Job”). This job comes with perks, as he gets a spacious office and a hotel suite with its own baby grand piano.

Meanwhile, having discovered that Neal stole the black box from Sara last week, Peter dispatches Diana to work with Neal and Mozzie on investigating into Kate’s death. Needless to say, Mozzie and Diana do not get along, with him referring to her as “Lady Suit” and “Nancy Drew,” and her taking a potshot at his height. Once Neal is done refereeing between them, he brings Peter some useful information. Jones has uncovered failed password attempts on the dead guy’s computer, meaning someone was trying to get into his data who shouldn’t have been. Peter sends Neal in as a junior marketing exec, where he runs into a face I was hoping not to see again – Nicole Steinwedell, whose farfetched character contributed to the downfall of The Unit last season – but charms everyone as he usually does and works with Peter on a plan to bait the office mole.

Neal goes to dinner with his fellow junior marketing types, and asks them what happened to the dead guy. He plants the idea in their minds that they might all be being looked into by the auditor. It’s enough to set them on edge. After hours, he goes back to the company and finds Steinwedell’s character Jessica poking around Peter’s new office. Why am I not surprised? She claims she’s just protecting her privacy, but he convinces her that he’s on her side. Then he goes to visit Peter with Jessica’s file in hand, and the suspicion that Jessica may be spying for one of the competitors, being that she started at the company only a few months after they began their bid for the defense contract. Not to mention she has a PO box in a place that the company doesn’t do any business.

Mozzie and Diana are back in Neal’s apartment, with the former driving the latter nuts. Mozzie’s done a full background check on Fowler, to find there’s no hits on anything he had. Diana says while he allegedly resigned from the Bureau, that he was really fired by OPR. June (yay, June!) walks in to talk to Diana, which is just enough time for Mozzie to poke in her briefcase and see that she has sheet music for a Mozart sonata composed the year that the music box was made. He sees a correlation.

The next day, Neal searches Jessica’s office. She finds an international travel itinerary for Kent amongst her paperwork. Obviously, she’s been checking into his activity just like they have. She’s also checking into Neal, because she begins to follow him when he steps out of the office, and she’s got a gun. When she pulls it on him, he tells her that he works for the FBI, and she says she’s also investigating who killed the R&D guy…because she was sleeping with him. She tells Peter and Neal that she was the one into the dead guy’s email because he told her that he was being followed, and that Kent is taking random international trips while also destroying documents. This means somebody has to get into Kent’s office, which is locked up tighter than the theater on the Satellite of Love.

Peter goes to have dinner with Kent, wired up so that he can get Kent to say the phrase that will get them past the voice-activated security in his office. This is where we find out that Peter speaks some Latin, albeit awkwardly. As someone who does speak a little of it, I can tell you how difficult that probably was for Tim DeKay to learn. Peter also gets Kent to reveal he’s got a big plan, while getting a job offer (Neal: “Think of all the tiny cups you could own!”). However, he accomplishes what he came for.

Neal swipes a keycard at a meeting and heads for Kent’s office with the recording. Once inside, he plants a handy device on the man’s shredder that will make copies of anything that it shreds. Jessica is not impressed, being that her boyfriend died horribly. This might have been a convenient narrative excuse for the two of them to bond over lost love, but thankfully before that happens, Peter retrieves information from the scanner. Kent had the prototype the whole time, and it never worked to begin with. There’s also contact with an unnamed foreign intelligence agency. Kent knew he wouldn’t win the contract, so he was going to sell the prototype abroad, essentially committing treason. The R&D guy was murdered to cover that up. Peter wants to use Jessica as bait, but he doesn’t know what she really wants, justice or if she’s just out to get revenge. He admonishes Neal not to keep secrets, and says if they find Fowler, they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it, but there’s some tension between them. It doesn’t help that Mozzie has uncovered that Peter knows Diana has the music box, and decides to tell that to Neal just as they’re getting ready to set up the operation.

While he’s on the phone with Mozzie, Neal notices Jessica has the recorder he used earlier, and gets her to admit she was in Kent’s office and poisoned him. Unfortunately, Peter was up there having a drink with Kent, and both of them are down for the count. Neal hotwires the elevator to get himself upstairs, while Peter uses what might be his last moments to get a confession out of Kent for murder. By the time Neal gets there, Peter is on the floor, and the look on Matt Bomer’s face as the paramedics come to his aid is heartwrenching. However, Peter has the presence of mind even through the poison to arrest Kent for murder. Jessica goes down for her own attempted murder, and it’s case closed.

The next day, Neal and Peter meet in his office, where Peter says he might have enjoyed the perks of the high life but he never would have met Elizabeth, or by extension, his team or even Neal. It’s cute. Neal confronts Peter about having the music box, and Peter agrees to show it to him, warning him that he can’t choose revenge over justice, either. He also points out that the missing piece of the music box that Neal has is a key. Neal uses the key, but before we can see for what, it’s fade to black. Not surprisingly, as next week is the White Collar summer finale, and that’s definitely one ticked-off Neal with a gun in the face of Garrett Fowler.

I can’t say this is one of my favorite episodes, but it’s certainly not a failed one. I’m not a fan of Nicole Steinwedell’s work, so having her be the principal guest star automatically knocks this one down a notch or two in my personal book; however, I found her more bearable here than I did on The Unit. The plot was fairly standard – corporate espionage is nothing new, and having Griffin Dunne be the bad guy was almost an expected twist – but it calls to mind something I’ve discussed when it comes to other shows. Television is great when it’s surprising, but let’s face it, there’s a lot of television and eventually, you’re going to see it all. Rather than relying on surprising the audience, a show is at its best if it relies on strong writing and engaging characters. White Collar has never had an episode where it didn’t have engaging characters. The writing here is solid, a good way to pass an hour – and it also should be noted that it sidestepped the melodramatic idea of having Neal bond with Jessica just because she’d also lost someone she loved. Instead, she was used more to illustrate a dilemma in Neal’s own character, and that’s something for which writer Jim Campolongo should be commended. Furthermore, he sets up one heck of a tease for next week’s summer finale. Somehow, I think White Collar is going to blow Burn Notice out of the water in that department.