‘In the Red’was yet another fine, entertaining episode that kept the second season’s strong start going.
A few things though: First of all, the tape. I’ve said this before and I’ll probably continue to say it again, but this series would be better off without the ongoing arcs. It’s not going to happen, if only because that’s not how USA rolls, but more than any other series, White Collar works best when its characters are just sitting around chatting. Burn Notice might have better cases and procedural elements, but I could watch Bomer, DeKay, Atklins and Thomason banter in a well-lit room for 42 minutes each week with ease. But more than that, the story here with Kate, Fowler or any other shady people in the shadows is simply not interesting. What are the implications for Neal Caffrey if he finds out who killed Kate? Will that knowledge not allow him to be a FBI liaison? How will it really re-shade his past? I’m fairly confident the answer to those last two questions is ‘not really’and ‘not at all.’So outside of the network directive that makes audiences feel like they’resomething around the corner, this is all so useless and false.
And really, it feels like the White Collar team recognizes this and that’s why the Kate story has been pushed further back than it was last season. This might not be the exact case, but I remember thinking last season that the series spotlighted its ‘mythology’more than its USA peers, but this year, anything dealing with Kate has been more relegated to the first and last three minutes just like every other series on the network. This is also one of the major reasons the first six episodes have been exceptional. This week’s case was yet another traditional-leaning one, which is probably another reason for the improved quality. I’ve talked about this before as well, but the writers have also realized that white-collar crime isn’t quite exciting, so they’re implementing stories that combine it with more ‘classic’crime. It might water down the product in some ways, but the series has been more exciting to watch and that’s all that really matters. B+
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I've got to mildly disagree with you, Cory. The show's emphasis on white-collar crime (and non-traditional methods) is part of what makes it unique. Personally, I don't want to see another show dealing with the same types of crimes as every other one. (And it IS the title of the show, so it'd be somewhat self-defeating to move away from that.)
Jeff Eastin has said he got a lot from Burn Notice (did you catch the BN reference in this ep?) so it doesn't surprise me that this show and BN are sometimes alike. I think that's where the structure comes from, not necessarily an all-network deal.