White Collar Season 3 Episode 8

White Collar Season 3, As You Were

This week was a doozie of an episode, giving a nice pay off for those of us who watch this show from week to week. And the case of the week highlighted a well-deserved character, Jones, and gave a few moments of true excitement. But a surprisingly large chunk of this episode was devoted to the main arc for the season and that was the right choice.   

First for the progression that happened in tonight’s episode regarding the main story for this season. We get an immediate response from Sara, since she discovered Neal’s secret. She left him, since Sara isn’t that morally questionable. Neal learns that Peter still has the original ship’s manifest and needs to see it so he and Mozzie can know what is on the list. This leads Neal to finding a new safe key that Peter has and makes a copy of the key using his gum (very MacGyvery when he needs to be). Then Neal, the master of sensing a key moments of opportunity, breaks into Peter’s house. Just as Neal cracks and finds the manifest, Peter calls. Peter lends his shoulder out for Neal, since Peter thinks that Neal deserves to be happy. This pulls on Neal’s heart, epically since he is questioning if he should keep up with this entire U-Boat treasure or not. Neal has a huge moment of character development by lying to Mozzie about not having the manifest. Neal has chosen Peter for the time being and wants to have some hint of stability in his life by doing the right thing.

Then there is the case of the week, that almost took a back seat this week, but it revolved around Jones, who needs more character development. Jones was almost married, never knew that before. He was in the Navy, never knew that. Anyway a naval classmate of Jones’ has gone missing, and he needs to find him. This quickly turns into a White Collar case because the private security firm that the friend works for is involved in murders, smuggling and other illegal activities. Neal and Peter discover that all of this is to cover up the tax evasion that the firm is committing by smuggling bullets filled with a rare metal to avoid tariffs. Neal then goes into the firm undercover dressed as a naval admiral to determine where the kidnapped friend is being held.  Things go downhill and Neal is chased through the building by the deranged CEO armed with a crossbow. Jones and crew stop him from killing Neal (always a good thing) and the case is wrapped up.

This week was a rare gem for White Collar, putting the main story so forward and having a nice case of the week story to fill in the loose spots. So much happened this week, it was almost too much, but wound up being the right amount of story to push this arc forward. There are only two more episodes for the summer season, and Neal has made a huge change so far but there is time for him to slip back into his old ways. I hope that Neal can change for a while.

Rating: Watch

Original Air Date: 7/26/11

On USA, 9/8c