In which poor judgment is catching?

[magibrain]

...okay, so, in episode 3, a girl gets fired because she happened to be exploited as part of a con. In episode four, Peter decides that it's be perfectly acceptable to con a new employee at a place whose boss seems to be... extremely unforgiving. Because expediency is king, I guess?

In episode 4, Neal shows up at the Burkes' house drugged out of his head on an experimental mind-altering substance that Mozzie handed him. (Peter does not think that decision was wise.) In episode 5, Peter seems to have no problems downing some kind of experimental alternative pharmaceutical that Mozzie hands to him.

I... these are not narrative or practical decisions I would have made. Though I eagerly await next week to see if there's a pattern.

In other news, I keep typoing "Peter" as "Pater", which seems apt.

Comments

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Thank you for putting your finger on the pattern! I had been bothered by those two things separately, but by some others besides, and I hadn't seen it. I was also upset that though Peter didn't think Neal was wise to take the drugs, he was perfectly willing to question Neal—which I thought was wrong. Neal could have said anything and even confused himself about what had really happened.

[magibrain]

Ironically, just after this episode my life got strange and hectic in a variety of ways, so I haven't yet been able to see if the pattern continues. But yeah; I feel like the show has an increasing trend toward Highly Questionable Moral Decisions, which I feel like I'd enjoy a lot more if the show seemed to realize that this was something that bore interrogation. (I am all for questionably moral activities in fiction! Just, I need there to be some narrative awareness that these things are questionable.)

But then, White Collar seems designed to frustrate me by giving me delicious layers of moral complexity and then ignoring those and cooking up something fun and lighthearted. *frustrated grabhands*

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I've been very frustrated with it lately: as you say, questionably moral activities are fine if the writers are aware that they're questionable. I haven't been enjoying WC very much lately because I feel as if we're just supposed to cheer for whatever the Boys do.