White Collar: Unfinished business by Claudia Charles

This was a solid episode of White Collar. I enjoyed the opening sequence between Peter and Neal with Neal waxing poetic about going to this restaurant where they employ molecular gastronomy. I have to confess here that the only reason I am aware of what molecular gastronomy is from my years of being a Top Chef viewer. So I found it to be totally cool that I understood what Neal was talking about.

The introduction of Sara Ellis, a self-proclaimed White Collar Bounty Hunter, played by One Tree Hill’s Hillarie Burton, was snarky from the beginning. Obviously the history between the two was rather contentious and this is played out to varying degrees of annoyance and then to some satisfaction throughout the hour. I enjoyed the fact she is one of the few people who is truly suspicious of everything about Neal.

Neal’s ongoing investigation into Kate’s death really progressed this week. Matt Bomer effectively conveyed how much he really cared about Kate. We saw this throughout the episode and it resulted in Neal needing to cozy up to Sara in order to gain access to her apartment to retrieve the voice data recorder from the FAA. Watching Neal having to finesse himself around Sara, a woman who is quite astute and sees through many of Neal’s charms was fascinating. The fact she was vulnerable from being displaced and declared “dead” played into her not seeing through Neal’s ruse in shifting towards being very nice to her.

Loved Neal’s look as Mr. Black. His slicked back hair made him look more menacing but in a very sexy way. A sign that things were not going their way was that the limo jammed Neal’s communication signal. Definitely a sign of the level of sophistication of the big bad for the episode. So Neal knows a thing or two about guns. I was a little surprised by that because I seem to remember that he has not been in favor of their usage in previous episodes.

The introduction of the latest big bad took about 30 minutes. In some ways, the person needing a take down this week was just incidental to the introduction of Sara Ellis. This week’s villain was played by John Pyper-Ferguson. The mystery of the week was basically identity theft taken to a higher level.

The scene between Peter, Sara and Neal was a lot of fun and demonstrated that each of them had been doing some bonding. Nice twist at the end with the actual Mr. Black having been released from custody in Canada and was now going to complete his mission.

Random Thoughts

The actor playing Roy, the FAA investigator, Robert Clohessy, is very recognizable from his myriad of past roles including being on one of my favorite series, Oz. It’s a surprisingly small role for him. But no matter. It seems like he’s going to be part of HBO’s upcoming much-anticipated series Boardwalk Empire.

John Pyper-Ferguson recently played a very significant role in the Syfy series Caprica. He's Eric Stoltz’s business rival who is turning up the pressure on the rivalry.