"Everything Harry tells you is a lie. Remember that. Everything Harry tells you is a lie."

[magibrain]

So, What Happens In Burma has this exchange:

Peter: In the last year, it was held in a secured vault at a state mining facility, under army guard, in the middle of a jungle.
Neal: Not exactly a prime location for a college kid to just walk in and grab it.
Peter: No. The mine is in the Mogok Valley.
Neal: You can get there by a helicopter or a seven-hour jeep ride over some nasty terrain.
Jones: You just know these things?
Neal: Yeah, that's why they keep me around.
Peter: Mm.
Neal: You'd need some muscle, a cargo plane, and a few grand in bribe money just to get started.
Peter: You would?
Neal: And who knows what else? Because I've never considered stealing gems in Burma.

(Emphasis added.)

In Forging Bonds, when Mozzie walks in with the information on Kate's whereabouts, Neal is doing some red-ink work on a map. The conversation there:

Neal: Hey. Rubies in Burma. I'm gonna need a bush plane to get–

–and then he sees the look on Mozzie's face and asks him if his pigeon died.

That sure looked like he was planning a heist. And even if he wasn't planning on going through with it (though "I'm gonna need" seems a lot more committed than "I would need"), the fact that he had apparently gone to the trouble of plotting out what looked like modes of ingress suggests that "considering" is at least the minimum of what he was doing.

Which is amusing, considering Neal's insistence that he never lies to Peter. And really, "I've never considered stealing gems in Burma" doesn't leave a lot of room for ambiguity.

So, I kinda have to wonder which of the following is the correct explanation for that:

1) Neal totally forgot about that incident, despite the fact that he was recounting it in a flashback in the previous episode.

2) Neal was lying about never lying. (Either because he's deliberately trying to mislead Peter or because he's not consciously aware that he's lying/doesn't consciously choose to lie, sometimes, when he lies.)

3) Neal didn't lie to Peter prior to bringing up that particular rule in Need To Know, but after that, he just let Peter assume that this was the rule he'd be operating under in the future, and ditched the rule. (Though, doesn't an episode in S5 contradict this? I can't remember if it was specifically stated.)

4) Neal was making a general statement of his lack-of-consideration to the whole meeting room, and does not consider responding to one of Peter's statements with a lie to be lying to Peter so long as he's not directly addressing Peter.

5) The writers forget about the no-lying rule while writing.

6) Forging Bonds dances on canon's corpse and should not be regarded as an authoritative source.

I'm a fan of #6, personally. Then, adopting #6 does tank two of my favorite pet theories: one, that Diana is a Time Lord, and two, that Neal got on a Greyhound from St. Louis to NYC, and the Greyhound had a series of increasingly improbable mishaps and it took them five years to get there.*


*Context is as follows:

magibrain: I was trying to write out this short precanon thing and then discovered that I couldn't because nothing made sense. Like, one of the things I tried to do was figuring out how old Neal was when/when it was that he came to New York.

magibrain: But. Okay.

storyinmypocket: Split the difference and include a note re: the show's plot holes?

magibrain: 1. In Wanted, Neal tells Maya that he came to New York because he had to leave the place he was from, which was St. Louis.

2. He also tells Maya that his first friend there was Mozzie.

3. In Forging bonds, he tells Peter that he met Mozzie when he had just arrived in the city.

4. He tells Peter that Mozzie approached him to pull the con on Adler – a con with a clock of five months. To start pulling that con, he had to cash in some of the bonds, which put him on Peter's radar.

5. Peter chased Neal for three years, and then Neal was in prison for most of four, and then, if we're generous with the season-equals-year calculation, by the end of S3, he's been working with Peter for three more years. That puts us up to Judgment Day.

6. In Judgment Day, Ellen and Neal have a conversation about how Neal ran on his 18th birthday, and that was the last time Ellen saw him. Ellen says it was "almost a decade and a half ago".

magibrain: … 3+4+3 ≠ 15. Or even 14 or 13.

magibrain: All I wanted to know is if Neal would still have a gut "…aren't there US marshals who are supposed to stop this sort of thing from happening?" reaction to Mozzie randomly showing up in his apartment. That's all I wanted to know.

magibrain: And then I went and reviewed canon and had a Mordecai shipper meltdown.

Comments

[sholio]

Hmm. I did notice the Forging Bonds and What Happens in Burma lines on some rewatch or other, and I assumed they were supposed to be deliberate callbacks to each other -- little nods to people paying attention, because why else would Neal have that information? Anyway, my take on that is ...

2) Neal was lying about never lying. (Either because he's deliberately trying to mislead Peter or because he's not consciously aware that he's lying/doesn't consciously choose to lie, sometimes, when he lies.)

Yes. Well. I think Neal is sincere about his "don't lie to Peter" rule, in his own way, but he has large categories of exceptions. One of which, obviously, is lies of omission. Which he does all the time. But there's another kind of lie that he seems to consider a loophole, which is lying while Peter already knows he's lying.

There's something along these lines in one of the first-season episodes -- I think it's Front Man. Neal vanishes after they rescue the kidnapping victim, then turns up later in Peter's office to get the anklet put on, and makes the excuse "I got all the way home before I remembered." Ha. Yeah. Which is very obviously a lie. But Peter clearly knows that. The What Happens in Burma scene is similar, and I think there are a few other scenes along those lines -- I distinctly remember one from season two (don't remember the episode) that goes something like this:

Peter: Don't tell me you didn't [thing Neal did].
Neal: I didn't [thing he did].

... where they both know he's not sincere. I think there are a couple of other scenes along those lines elsewhere, though I can't remember specifics.

It's also possible I'm just rationalizing and the writers periodically forget about Neal's not-lying rule. XD (Very possible. Very very possible.) But the thing is, I think it's plausible to view it as a particular twisting of the "rules" that makes sense from Neal's point of view -- it's okay to lie to Peter as long as he's not actually trying to deceive Peter, and then it's on Peter to decipher it. If that makes any sense. At least from Neal's point of view, it's a particular application of the cat and mouse thing, and a lie only counts as a lie if he's intentionally trying to mislead (as opposed to lying playfully and providing a sort of plausible deniability for Peter's benefit, which is basically what he's doing in both of the above examples).

If that makes sense. But yeah, canon is not the most consistent of things, so it's also entirely possible that it's just the writers tossing off lines without thinking about the implications.

(Actually there's yet another alternative, which is that Neal just forgets he's not supposed to be lying to Peter sometimes. He can't police every single line that comes out of his mouth, so sometimes a lie drops out without meaning to; it's his fallback in most situations, after all. Which I guess is basically one of the variations of your #2.)

[magibrain]

[But the thing is, I think it's plausible to view it as a particular twisting of the "rules" that makes sense from Neal's point of view -- it's okay to lie to Peter as long as he's not actually trying to deceive Peter, and then it's on Peter to decipher it. If that makes any sense.]

So, Neal's rule is basically "You can lie to Peter, or you can deceive Peter, but not both"? ...sadly, this makes perfect sense, given Neal and his somewhat liberal interpretation of "sense". Though it also kinda contributes to my feeling that the not-lying thing is just Neal drawing arbitrary lines in the sand to make himself feel better, even though they have no practical effect. <_<

...and that is true, with those examples; I know I've run into other unambiguous cases, but the ones I could remember were in the first couple episodes ("I swept the leg"), so I attributed them to the writers not having written in that aspect of Neal's character yet. (Like how he forgets about the chambered round in the gun in Book of Hours, and responds to that with "Crap. Never been a gun guy."



[But yeah, canon is not the most consistent of things, so it's also entirely possible that it's just the writers tossing off lines without thinking about the implications.]

Hah! Yeah. This sort of thing is where a lot of my "I reject canon and substitute my own" comes from, at least in White Collar: I don't get the feeling that canon puts a lot of thought into consistency. (Especially not when it comes to Forging Bonds because seriously everything about that episode is wrong.)

I tend to go with the explanation "the writers were wrong" in a lot of things, because I have a relatively low level of confidence in the writers on the topic. (Which varies from show to show. When I was watching Space: Above and Beyond one of the things that really blew me away was that, within the first five episodes, they were able to pull off a major "Oh shit" moment consisting entirely of... a character acting out of character. No one calls it out with an "Oh, X was acting really weird!," there's no obvious "OH NO MIND CONTROL" (or the episode equivalent), it's just... X says something clearly wrong for X's established character, and the writers were confident enough in their characters and their audience to assume that the audience would get the message that Things Were Wrong. ...I don't have that same confidence with White Collar.)

[sholio]

So, Neal's rule is basically "You can lie to Peter, or you can deceive Peter, but not both"? ...sadly, this makes perfect sense, given Neal and his somewhat liberal interpretation of "sense". Though it also kinda contributes to my feeling that the not-lying thing is just Neal drawing arbitrary lines in the sand to make himself feel better, even though they have no practical effect.

.... yes, I think this is entirely accurate. XD At the same time, Peter seems to be on board with it in most cases, which I think is what makes it feel somewhat less like Neal being a manipulative asshole (although he can be) and more like another application of their particular kind of weirdness. They seem to have a complicated but weirdly formalized set of rules for interaction, which are not limited to Neal's rationalizations about lying -- there are also things like Neal being perfectly okay with Peter arresting him if he's actually done what he's being arrested for (but not if he hasn't, as in "Free Fall"), or Peter and Neal's exchange in 2x05 about Sara:

Neal: She testified against me at my trial!
Peter: *I* testified against you at your trial.
Neal: It's different.

So, yeah. I think there probably are instances of Neal lying in the show that are just the writers being careless or inconsistent (quite possibly all of them) but it's also entirely possible to explain most of the instances of Neal lying as a sort of deliberate shell game that Peter is intended to see through, and therefore not lying in Neal's mind. And Peter actually recognizes and accepts this -- but only from Neal and no one else. It's not that he doesn't know the difference between truth and lies, it's just that this is part of the formalized-dance-step relationship that he has with Neal. (ETA: I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well, but I think the issue I'm trying to get at is that it's a sort of mutually consensual thing, and it only becomes "lying" to Neal when he crosses over the lines that they both agree are there.)

... my own rationalization/fanwanky headcanon about Forging Bonds is that Neal is editing/manipulating events for Peter's benefit, along with a healthy dose of selective memory. So it's more like a compressed, filtered version of events than what "actually" happened. I am aware this is nothing like what the writers had in mind, though; it's simply a terribly written episode. XD

[magibrain]

[At the same time, Peter seems to be on board with it in most cases, which I think is what makes it feel somewhat less like Neal being a manipulative asshole (although he can be) and more like another application of their particular kind of weirdness.]

Which is a glorious weirdness, and one I quite adore in most cases! ...I think part of this has to do with my still trying to clean up the Ness snippet, which comes out of a space of me being intensely annoyed at everything Neal did (and everything the writers twisted plausibility into pretzels to let him get away with) in season 3. XD ...and my ongoing annoyance at Forging Bonds.

But they do seem to have their own, formalized rules of the bizarre, ongoing game that they're playing, which is a great deal of fun, when it works as advertised. (And I have to admit, Neal's weird submission to the legal reality of consequence makes me happy, in my ill-defined power-dynamics happy place. Just because it is complicated and considered and idiosyncratic and... yes.)


[... my own rationalization/fanwanky headcanon about Forging Bonds is that Neal is editing/manipulating events for Peter's benefit, along with a healthy dose of selective memory. So it's more like a compressed, filtered version of events than what "actually" happened.]

...so you're saying that you don't want to see the voyages of the interstateship Greyhound, its five-year mission: to explore strange new tourist traps and reality-warping rest stops, to seek out new plot holes and new plot snarls, and to boldly go where no canon explanation has gone before?

:P

[princessofgeeks]

I really like the theory that Diana is a Time Lord.

[magibrain]

She'd make a pretty awesome one. And Diana deserves a TARDIS.

And if she showed up as an agent in Forging Bonds and was a probie in the Pilot, that means that she went back in time to ensure that Neal got caught, and that amuses me more than it should.

[sholio]

Hee, yes, I don't have the power dynamics narrative kink, but I do have a huge kink for character relationships that are bizarre and incomprehensible to outsiders, but work just fine for the people in them. And Peter and Neal hit that kink really hard for me. :D

... Neal spending most of his formative young-adult years on a Greyhound bus trying to get to New York might explain a lot about Neal's personality, actually. XD

[magibrain]

...okay, but wait, in Bad Judgement Neal finds the bouquet Kate left at her father's grave, and there's an origami flower in there. Peter asks if there's anything there, Neal says "No," and then two seconds later Mozzie is asking "does that mean what I think it means?" and Neal says "I think so" after Peter's walked away. Like, he didn't even go for a "Just flowers" dodge or anything, and that scene did not seem plated as a "Neal knows that Peter knows he's lying," and it doesn't go with the idiot-ball season one trick of "Neal gets a really obvious clue; NEAL SPENDS HALF AN EPISODE ANGSTING ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT IT'S REALLY A CLUE BECAUSE OUR DRAMATIC ARC NEEDS INFLATION" either. That's just a "No there's nothing here get off of my back (spoilers there is unambiguously something here)" moment.

•headDESK• This is why I never do canon reviews on shows unless I absolutely can't help it. I have this mental model of the show where everything coheres and makes a certain degree of sense, and then canon is like LOL NO WUT and I end up going "RAAR" at everything.



...that said, am I the only one who wants to see a rewrite of Season 1 where Fowler decides to start double-agenting against The Man Pulling The Strings so that he, Kate, Neal, and Peter are all working together to take down Adler without ever knowing who Adler is, while having to convincingly play the parts of mutual antagonists so Adler doesn't call a hit on all of them? Because that's the goofy spy buddy movie I never knew I wanted.

(Also, rewatching S1 with dragon!Peter in mind is hilarious, by the way. Because you can pretty much imagine his internal mononogue going "Evidence? Evidence! Evideeeeeence. Evidencevidencevidencevidencevidence. EVIDENCE." in every other scene.)

[sholio]

.... that ... is a REALLY EXCELLENT POINT. XD I had forgotten about that scene; I don't think there's any fanwanky explanation that works for that one ... well, except "Neal is a pathological liar who sometimes believes his own lies" -- which is also consistent with his characterization. Clearly it's been too long since I rewatched the older episodes ...

Actually, one thing I liked about Neal in season one -- one of the things that originally sold me on the show -- is that the show was a lot less circumspect/self-justifying/whatever about his fundamental dichotomy (that he's a basically decent and well-meaning person who does some really unpleasant things). He's unrepentant about breaking the law, like participating in Alex's theft of the mark's wallet or forging credit cards, but in a sort of a petty-criminal way rather than a WHEE BASE-JUMPING ON WALL STREET kind of way. He has that little speech about wanting to give Kate a better life but instead she got a guy who was locked up for four years; he has that episode where he has to meet people he conned. I felt like the show was more honest about the damaging effect of Neal's chronic lying and conning on his relationships with the other people in his life, as well as the difficulties that he had not stopping. It seemed like later on, we were still seeing a Neal who couldn't stop lying and stealing things, but the show wanted to sell us on a redemptive version of him that we weren't quite seeing on screen. (I really love Neal, I do, but I had to do a lot of mental rearranging of my viewpoint on him sometime around season four.)

.... and, ha, yes, watching with dragon!Peter in mind must be kind of awesome and hilarious. (Regarding your other comment ... STUBBY CLAWS OMFG. XD I want this fiiiiic.)

[magibrain]

[but in a sort of a petty-criminal way rather than a WHEE BASE-JUMPING ON WALL STREET kind of way]

Arrrgh that FUCKING SCENE. •froths at mouth• That was one of the capping NEAL I WANT TO MURDER YOU moments of S3, for me. I had a really horrible visceral reaction to so much of S3 because it felt like the upshot of it was "Look! Neal is trying to stab everyone in the back! Isn't he so clever? CHEER FOR NEAL'S HAPPY FUN MANIPULATIONS AND BETRAYALS OF TRUST! 8D", and I was like NO FUCK YOU THIS ISN'T FUNNY. And the base jump just kinda perfectly exemplified the SHINY PRETTY CLEVER CONMAN 8D feeling of it, as well as the we will TWIST LOGIC INTO PRETZELS so Neal always wins! feeling of it.

(Like, re: original topic and Neal not lying to Peter, we're asked to believe that Peter somehow interrogated Neal for three hours after the warehouse theft and never once asked "do you know where the treasure is" or "do you have any information on the whereabouts of the treasure" or anything like that? Peter is not that stupid. But if the choice is between preserving the Neal Wins Until Keller plot, preserving Neal's weird technical morality, or handing Peter the idiot, ball, WHOOPS IDIOT BALL.)


[is that the show was a lot less circumspect/self-justifying/whatever about his fundamental dichotomy]

Arrrrrgh, yess, and it was better for looking that in the face and dealing with it. And yet... I find that as I'm rewatching episodes, there's a lot of stuff-wot-annoys-me that's condensed into the first season. (The utter absurdity of Peter's supervillain act, the entire dudebro episode, Neal's weird frat humor (he seriously asks Peter if FBI stands for "Female Body inspector" after Peter has to flirt with whosername in Vital Signs), etc. There are all these moments that I really love – Peter's entire team showing up after hours to help him in Bad Judgment, for example – but I feel like every episode, I'm wincing at something and going WHITE COLLAR WHY.

•sighs• Well, as we all know by now, my getting-into-fandom sweet spot is right at the crook of overwhelming show love and enduring show annoyance, so at least I'm getting a ton of fic out of it. But... but white collar why.


[It seemed like later on, we were still seeing a Neal who couldn't stop lying and stealing things, but the show wanted to sell us on a redemptive version of him that we weren't quite seeing on screen.]

GOD YES. And it's one of the big problems I have with the end-of-season cliffhanger; the show wants to cash in these big redemptive checks they haven't earned in the narrative. (Like, Peter honestly believes Neal can go straight? Literally four episodes ago he was berating himself for ever thinking that. And the way that they played up the whole betrayal/anger thing when Neal doesn't get his sentence set aside, well, I started a post a while ago which I never finished, but a salient bit:

Neal is serving out time for a crime that he committed. There's nothing in the pilot to suggest that he didn't know what he was getting into when he broke out of prison. And working for the FBI, assisting in their case-solving, is part of the terms of his work release. The fact that he does well at the terms of his work release – or, well at this particular term; he's pretty abysmal at a lot of the other ones, like don't commit crimes – doesn't mean that the FBI is obligated to truncate his sentence.

Saying "No" in this context doesn't read to me as "We are evil and wish to exploit you evilly!", it reads as "We have chosen not to approve this one special consideration." And considering all the other special considerations they've given him – the work release deal in the first place, exceptions on his radius so he can take jaunts down to Brooklyn, not prosecuting him for violating the terms of his work release and fleeing the country – I'm not feeling the injustice here.

It was presented to him as a sure thing, but it was presented that way by people who were not making the decision. The only people who promised were people who had no authority to promise that. So if Neal is being jerked around, it's not by the powers that be.

And in any case, Neal is serving out a four-year sentence. It has been five seasons since the series started. Unless they're living in some type of bizarre time loop which only affects the calendar date – and the season; after S1, New York seemed to lodge itself permanently in not-Winter – then Neal probably doesn't have that much longer to go on his sentence anyway. Which just makes me even less invested in the tragedy of Neal not getting to go free now right now.

Like, I know that S5 wants me to feel that Something Terrible has happened here, but I... don't. Really at all.

Neal might be able to go straight with a lot of work, but we're not seeing the work. Neal might be able to get to a point where he's not exactly a law-abiding citizen but he still actually considers the consequences of his actions and who they might harm, but while we've seen more of that work, they seem really, really intent on making all of it into a series of broken aesops. And that is just... bluhhhh WHITE COLLAR WHY


[(I really love Neal, I do, but I had to do a lot of mental rearranging of my viewpoint on him sometime around season four.)]

•nods• I think at this point I'm just going to take my headcanon Neal and run with him because I feel that canon is lying to me. <_<

...okay, "lying" may be overstating the issue, but you know what I mean.

[magibrain]

WOW, THAT WAS A GIANT CHUNK OF ANGRY. Um, here, have some slightly wibbly adorable:

Mozzie tells him, with characteristic bluntness, that "the Suit wants to distract you with further federal brainwashing. I've been asked to keep you focused on your case." Which, uncharacteristically, Mozzie seems on board with.

Peter's apparently left instructions at the office for all new evidence for their active cases to be left at Neal's desk before getting tucked away. At first Neal thinks it's just Peter trying to drown him in work so he won't spiral off into the dark place, whatever that's supposed to mean; having Peter and Mozzie in collusion is more than a little disturbing.

Then he catches Peter glancing his way, almost furtively, right when a new box is delivered.

Peter's look is oddly earnest, oddly hopeful, and quickly hidden when he sees Neal looking his direction. Less like he's looking to see if Neal's cataloguing the evidence right and more like he's fishing for a smile.

This is like... if Peter were a cat, these would be small dead animals. All this evidence. Peter is sharing his hoard with Neal in hopes of cheering him up.

He really couldn't have just collected items of extravagance the way a dragon was supposed to behave, could he.

[sholio]

Yeah, I think the thing at this point is .... I do not for a minute think that Neal will go straight after the anklet is off. Why would I? The show has spent the last five seasons making the very compelling case that he won't. He might actually intend to at the moment; I think he is actually sincere when he tells Peter that (he believes) he can. (The fact that Peter believes him and is willing to go to bat for him AFTER EVERYTHING, and after spending most of the season apparently getting the more realistic view of Neal that I've wanted him to have since early season four, is, uh, a major problem that I have with the finale, BUT WHATEVER.) However, after Neal's more or less constant backsliding while Peter is right there tracking his movements and telling him not to steal things, why on earth would the show actually expect us to think that Neal's not going right back to a life of crime as soon as he gets his freedom back? Even if he actually intends to go straight at this point (and I think he's genuine about it), the show's given us ample examples of situations that are VERY LIKELY to come up that would make him backslide instantly: someone from his past shows up; he gets in trouble; he needs money (and for Neal, "needs money" doesn't equal "can't pay the rent", it's more like "can only afford generic-brand caviar").

Neal might be able to go straight with a lot of work, but we're not seeing the work. Neal might be able to get to a point where he's not exactly a law-abiding citizen but he still actually considers the consequences of his actions and who they might harm, but while we've seen more of that work, they seem really, really intent on making all of it into a series of broken aesops.

RIGHT. YES. EXACTLY. I mean, I don't think Neal is actually incapable of it. It's just that he's proven conclusively, time and again, that he doesn't want to do the things he's going to have to do in order to go straight. He doesn't feel bad about what he's done. He doesn't want to make reparations. He doesn't have a plan for when he gets off the anklet. Ironically it's Mozzie who is the voice of reason here, pointing out the practical problems with Neal going straight (and in season three also, pointing out that he's not just going to be able to walk into a six-figure job as a convicted felon). Of course, Mozzie's doing it for largely selfish reasons, because he wants to keep his partner in crime, but Neal's reaction is just "pshh" *changes the subject*. ... like figuring out how he's going to make a living after he's no longer a ward of the prison system is completely unnecessary when planning his future, oh god, Neal. /o\

One thing that frustrates me, actually, is that Peter has never sat down and offered to help him make a plan for his future once he's off the anklet. Although, after the way seasons four and five went, I am of the opinion that the less Peter gets involved with Neal's post-anklet life, the more likely he is to stay out of prison ... but still, Neal is obviously deficient in the "future planning and consequences" department, and he looks up to Peter a lot. If Peter sat him down and started pulling out college brochures and pulling up USA Jobs on the laptop … well, Neal would probably complain and roll his eyes and steal Peter's watch, which might be exactly why Peter hasn't (I mean, besides "the writers never thought of it, and anyway, making practical plans for your future isn't nearly as much fun as cracking safes in a Manhattan high rise"). And it's possible that the more Peter tried to get involved -- read: "meddled" -- the more Neal would rebel against it, a la his arrested-development teenager mode.

Still, it's frustrating and kind of sad that he hasn't at least tried, because it's one area in which he's an expert (Peter is basically the epitome of having your life together) and it's an area in which Neal desperately needs guidance.

On the other hand, Neal's sending off seriously mixed signals about whether he wants help in that area or actually wants to change at all. I think I was on board the "redeemable Caffrey" wagon up until he failed to show any sign that the entire treasure debacle, El almost getting killed, etc. made any impression on him. It threw my whole plan for where the show was going, honestly, because it really looked like the mid-season events of season three were going to be a catalyst for Neal taking a serious look at his life and not doing the things he'd been doing that got him (and his loved ones) into that situation.

And then season four rolled around, and nnnnooooope. When Neal's backed up against the wall, the first thing he does is … steal things, and not only that, but scam Peter in a situation where Peter just got his job back, WHICH HE LOST BECAUSE OF HELPING NEAL, and has made it pretty clear that he's on thin ice because of all of that. So, not only is Neal's first reaction in times of trouble still to lie and steal his way out of it, but he's entirely willing to risk Peter's career on top of it, after Peter's just gone to bat for him in a number of ways.

(And also gone halfway around the world on the biggest stalker trip of all time -- I do love Peter, but in "Wanted/Most Wanted" I took a break from being pissed at Neal to be pissed at Peter for a while, because seriously, Peter, you are AWFUL and Neal would have had every reason to run and never have anything to do with you again.)

Neal's also entirely capable of stealing things just for revenge; I honestly can't see a single reason in 4x10 why he wants to steal the bug-tracker thing from the FBI convention (since their plan goes off perfectly fine without it) except as a giant "fuck you" to Peter.

… so basically, yeah, by the time we hit season five, I mostly just wanted Peter to do -- well, exactly what he did do, at least up until the season five finale: acknowledge that Neal is showing no particular progress toward "redemption", and pull back a bit. One of the reasons why season five delighted me is because that seemed to be happening. (Consequently, I don't know WHAT the hell is happening in the finale. Peter's gone right back to thinking Neal can change? On the basis of absolutely zero evidence? You could make a pretty logical case, I guess, that Peter's just done getting involved in Neal's messes and has decided to let Neal take the consequences on his own head for a change, but that wasn't the general tone of those scenes …)

And yet at the same time, like I've said elsewhere, I don't think that Neal being "redeemed" on Peter's terms would be a healthy situation for either one of them. Otherwise it's just Peter imposing, top-down, his idea of what a happy life looks like, which isn't Neal's idea of it, and is just going to lead to Neal being miserable as he tries to contort himself into a 9-to-5 lifestyle, and Peter being miserable because Neal is constantly letting him down.

That kind of change is going to have to come from Neal in order for it to take. And at this point I feel like the show has made a 5-season case that Neal doesn't want to go straight, at least not enough that he's willing to work for it and make the necessary sacrifices to achieve it.

[sholio]

And one thing I wanted to add, belatedly, is that I don't inherently have a problem with criminal!Neal or with Neal scamming Peter -- as long as they're both on board with it, or at least both acknowledge that it's a possibility. Like you said in a different comment, a big part of their relationship involves poking each other with sticks. I think what frustrated me most in season four, particularly, is that it felt like things had gotten awfully one-sided, with Peter always being the one to make concessions and apologies, always managing to restore his optimistic view of Neal after every time that Neal screwed him or someone else over. Neal is a sweet person and a fascinatingly layered character, but I feel that everyone around him has to keep a bit of distance and never quite believe or trust him, at least until whatever point that he figures out how to stop using people. And Peter lost that distance for awhile.

[sholio]

d'awwwwww. <3 <3 <3 I love the comparison to cats bringing small dead animals to their people. Wibbly adorable, yes indeed.

[magibrain]

"I BROUGHT YOU EVIDENCE. PLEASE BE HAPPY?"

[magibrain]

Yyeah. ...I suppose one interesting thing about season one was that they were both consistently screwing each other over, episode after episode, which... I dunno, I also wasn't that happy with? Like, I'd prefer a situation in which the overall trend of screwing each other over decreased for both of them. And they actually figured out a way to come to terms with how very different they were and made things somehow work out on some axis in a way that wasn't just a merry-go-round of naive belief and betrayal and disappointment. Which... I suppose we're gonna need fanfic to provide, 'cause the show ain't gonna.

[magibrain]

[ (The fact that Peter believes him and is willing to go to bat for him AFTER EVERYTHING, and after spending most of the season apparently getting the more realistic view of Neal that I've wanted him to have since early season four, is, uh, a major problem that I have with the finale, BUT WHATEVER.) However, after Neal's more or less constant backsliding while Peter is right there tracking his movements and telling him not to steal things, why on earth would the show actually expect us to think that Neal's not going right back to a life of crime as soon as he gets his freedom back?]

...you know, it's interesting, but I feel like I'm kinda having an Inverse Stargate: Atlantis Problem with White Collar. In that I fell out of SGA because I felt like they'd broken this assumed contract with me as a viewer; I signed on for a story about this intrepid bunch of folds out on a kind of frontier, isolated from Earth's support, surrounded by all this wonderful technology they couldn't (or could barely) make use of, in a galaxy where all technology had been ruthlessly stamped down by the Wraith so that the only way people could even get into the industrial age was by operating in this immense state of paranoia. And then two seasons later, I felt like absolutely nothing of the show I signed on for was left.

Whereas in White Collar, it feels like the writers know we signed on for A Con Man And A Special Agent Have Hijinks And Fight Crime, and they will not do anything to deviate from that formula. So by S5, we don't have room for Neal learning from his consequences and adjusting his behavior, because he has to be A Con Man for the audience.

(I tend to separate out my character-focused annoyance into "I blame the character" and "I blame the writers". White Collar has a lot of I Blame The Writers. For my most overused example, that damn supervillain-Peter scene with the ring.)

So the upshot of that is that I feel like Neal could have gracefully arced from his role as A Con Man into a role as A Man Extremely Skilled In Confidence Tricks Who Isn't Sure How To Succeed Without Them And Exists In A Tension Between Wanting To Try And Backsliding When He Fails, but that doesn't fit in the Con Man And A Special Agent Have Hijinks And Fight Crime format. So in this case the writers have kept their contract with the viewers, but to the detriment of the show because the arcs have been artificially flattened.

I guess what I'm saying is, I want SGA and White Collar to be more like SG1. Because SG1's world and premise changed, but through the first seven seasons at least, it wasn't jarring because there was a sense that they'd earned it. Like, yeah, by S8 they were flying around the galaxy in a badass starship and stuff, but through most of the first season their entire access to alien technology was basically the Stargate and Teal'c's staff weapon. It's not even until the S1 finale that they get zats. Sure, by S8 they're running around with naquahdah reactors, but we've seen them having trouble getting access to the refined naqahdah they need, and there's a chain of development that stretches back to the season one episode with Cassie, and we see that the first couple times Sam tries to build even a prototype she ends up doing things like accidentally EMPing the SGC. Sure, by S8 they have fleets of badass space fighter jets, but they had to fight hard to get the death gliders that started that chain of development, and their first prototype X-series fighter malfunctioned so badly it went shooting off into space and couldn't be recovered.

There's a lot that SG1 did badly, but they knew how to grow the show from one thing into another thing. ...until they were tragically cancelled just before the S7 finale and some odd spinoff happened for another three seasons and change. •cough•

...I feel like I should split the sub topics here into different comment threads because we're both getting longwinded. XD

[magibrain]

[I mean, I don't think Neal is actually incapable of it. It's just that he's proven conclusively, time and again, that he doesn't want to do the things he's going to have to do in order to go straight. He doesn't feel bad about what he's done. He doesn't want to make reparations. He doesn't have a plan for when he gets off the anklet.]

He doesn't want to deal with Peter's disappointed face, except when for some reason he's angry and lashing out at Peter and doing things specifically to hurt him! •headDESK•

I can't remember which fic I stuck it in, but I had a bit where Neal doesn't actually look at a life of crime as some kind of moral imperative or inescapable truth of life, whereas Mozzie does. (I feel like with Mozzie, there's probably a(n un)healthy does of both "Fuck the man!" and "living a proper life with a home and a family is just one big lie, and I know that because it didn't work out for me, and if I admit that it is possible I have to actually look at what it means that it didn't work out for me, so I choose to believe it's utterly impossible so I don't have to confront that" going on there.) But between Neal having the skills to get by illegally and having some trust issues when it comes to things working out the way they should and having a complex where he doesn't want to disappoint Mozzie and more than he wants to disappoint Peter...

My roommate is convinced that Neal has antisocial personality disorder. I feel like this is one of those areas where I'm no sure if this is a character thing or a writer thing, which is annoying. And–



[On the other hand, Neal's sending off seriously mixed signals about whether he wants help in that area or actually wants to change at all. I think I was on board the "redeemable Caffrey" wagon up until he failed to show any sign that the entire treasure debacle, El almost getting killed, etc. made any impression on him.]

Yyeah. Well, he made the right mouth-noises for an episode or two! Which I feel like were genuine, even if he was also angling for the commutation thing (and, show, WHY was that subplot even necessary? Why this weird fixation on trying to pass Neal off as a star employee? He so very isn't), because Neal does seem to be able to understand that he's done something wrong when it's right in his face.

But the show goes out of its way to prevent consequences from getting right in Neal's face. He's artificially shielded from them and then half the time rewarded for his wrong decisions (see also: commutation), and Peter hangs a lampshade on it in one of the late-S3 episodes, but t just. keeps. happening.

I desperately want to see a version of the show in which that wasn't the case, where Neal gets his "what the hell, hero" moments called out, where he actually has to start admitting that there's a pattern here and he's complicit in it. I think a redemptive arc in that could be much more compelling, nuanced, tangled and credible than the bizarre "Neal is a clever criminal! But he's the good guy so we should all be in favor of him going free despite that!" thing we get in canon.



[Neal's also entirely capable of stealing things just for revenge; I honestly can't see a single reason in 4x10 why he wants to steal the bug-tracker thing from the FBI convention (since their plan goes off perfectly fine without it) except as a giant "fuck you" to Peter.]

Yeah. Neal's... got some issues having to do with how to properly handle hurt and anger. And seems to enjoy doing things to humiliate Peter when he's annoyed at him. (The first panel in Vested Interest, gossiping with the Japanese ambassadors in Home Invasion). And he has no sense of moderation, and could compete at an Olympic level at jumping to the wrong conclusions and flying into a fit of burning all his bridges. (Hard Sell, he sees a picture with Peter with the ring, and is pretty much immediately "Nope, outta here!" and then spends the entire episode needling Peter and then decides the best time to go "No, not following your lead any more!" is right when Peter is trying to save the life of another undercover asset, I mean what the hell, Neal. Or, you know, Point Blank; jumps to the conclusion that it's obviously all Fowler, tries to kill Fowler, and oops, guess what, he was wrong! It was Adler all along! Neal is the worst at this. Can someone please call him on it.)



[So, not only is Neal's first reaction in times of trouble still to lie and steal his way out of it, but he's entirely willing to risk Peter's career on top of it, after Peter's just gone to bat for him in a number of ways.]

Yeah. And it's a recurring theme that a lot of the crap Neal pulls – and sometimes a lot of the delayed fallout from his previous criminal life, see also: all of Fowler's crap in S1 – ends up falling down on Peter and Elizabeth, and the show just... kinda... goes "Well, yeah, but OH, WHAT'S OVER TEHRE?" And scurries off that topic once it's done being used for immediate dramatic effect.

And it just – argh. I feel like all the stuff in this comment is a problem with the narrative structure of the show itself, and not inescapably a problem with the characters, which just makes it all THAT MUCH MORE FRUSTRATING, especially when it comes to trying to work out how to deal with it in derivative works. And, it, just – arrrgh.

...possibly I should go eat something and watch something lighthearted and fun.