White Collar – Recap & Review – On Guard

photo: usa

White Collar
On Guard

Original Air Date: Jun 7, 2011

Anne – Associate Editor
anne@thetwocentscorp.com

It’s Collar time again! When we left off in the winter, Vincent Adler was killed, Neal was involved with Sarah Ellis and someone had stolen the entire U-Boat of Nazi treasure for Neal. Who do you guys think it was? Alex? Mozzie? Vincent? Or Neal himself? We find out pretty quickly in this episode. Do you think Neal will run with the loot? Confess and turn it over to Peter? I know that I want him to do what’s right, but I love Neal and it might be fun to see him on the run. But if that happens, Peter will never trust him again.

We open on Neal and Mozzie packing up a plane and trying to escape just as Peter and the FBI show up determined to stop before Neal gets away. Cut to four days earlier.

It’s the night of the explosion. Peter has Neal hooked up to a polygraph with Jones and is asking him all sorts of questions about what happened at the warehouse. He passes the polygraph, but Peter remains suspicious because of the burnt piece of the Chrysler Building painting he found at the warehouse. Neal goes to see Sarah and between kisses, he warns her that Peter might poke around and to tell him the truth about them if he asks. She was his alibi, because he didn’t actually steal the treasure. This is the only time we see Sarah in the whole episode.

Neal goes home and finds Mozzie waiting for him with champagne. Yep, he stole the treasure and is sure there’s no way the suits can trace anything back to Neal. He wants them to run to an island, preferably Hawaiian, it seems. They toast to their best and final score. I’m actually very disappointed at this point. I refer back to my first paragraph. I want Neal to stick around. We know that ultimately, even if he runs, he’ll come back. The show wouldn’t be the same if he didn’t. But the tension this adds to the storyline is worth the pathos of wondering what Neal is going to do. Peter still thinks that he’s guilty. The bromance is in danger and that friendship is the real basis of this show. Without that base, it just doesn’t work, in my opinion.

Peter brings Neal in on a case that involves one of his past aliases, Gary Rydell. Gary, a world-class smuggler, had received an email from a known art dealer and criminal, David Lawrence. He had stolen $60 million from the Federal Reserve and had disappeared. They assume that he wants Gary to help smuggle the money out of the country. Sure enough, that is indeed what he wants. The money and himself safely out of the country. After they fence and David slices off a piece of Neal’s perfectly pleasant tie (what a waste of fashion!), “Gary” agrees to help him for a 20% take. They’ll move it by water. Peter keeps Neal’s severed tie as a souvenir. It’s no lollipop, but it’ll do.

Neal finds out that Mozzie switched the Nazi art out with his art and panics that Peter found something and is on to him. He’s so smart! At that exact moment, Peter is showing the painting fragment to Elizabeth and she tells Peter that there are plenty of paintings of the Chrysler Building out there and that he should have it tested to learn it’s age. Peter doesn’t want to get the bureau involved, so she offers to have an old employer test it. Later, Neal stops by to talk to Elizabeth about Peter’s distrust in him and notices her hiding the art book that she had shown Peter. He snaps a picture of the cover and gets a copy of the book. He realizes what may be going on and Mozzie decides it’s time to keep an eye on Mrs. Suit. He sees her handing the fragment to her old boss and they decide to swap it out for another painting fragment. Mozzie scrapes paint off some of the real art so that they can make the new fragment authentic. Somewhere Neal finds another piece of canvas from the 30s. They use June’s granddaughter as a distraction and the swap goes off without a hitch.

Later, Neal notices that he’s being followed by Jones and very craftily ditches him. I have to say, I really am impressed with how intelligent Neal is. He pulls these cons off so handily and only makes mistakes when he’s overly emotional. For instance, last season with Fowler. Now that the Kate situation is over and he can concentrate, he’s sly as a fox again. Or so he thinks. More on that later. He meets Moz back at the apartment and they commiserate with how much they will miss New York and the people they are leaving behind. Neal leaves his place for what he thinks is the last time and leaves his Neal Caffrey ID on the table. “Goodbye Neal Caffrey”. Insert frown emoticon here.

“Gary” meets David back at the fencing club and learns that the money was hidden there all along. It was in the air vents. David had blocked those vents off. He rerouted the air back and literally “made it rain”. There was money everywhere. Unfortunately, David looks out the window and sees Jones, who had started trailing Neal again, hovering on the roof of the building next door. His men capture him and Neal realizes that there’s a major snag in his plan. David muses that the FBI must know about the boat now, so Neal calls Mozzie and tells him that they’ll have to use the getaway plane. Mozzie, who was in the middle of packing up their loot, was not happy to hear this. He was even more nonplussed when Neal told him to call Peter and tell him to meet them at the air strip. There’s suits a’comin’.

At the plane, Neal slips Jones a tool to pick his handcuffs. They start-up the plane just as the FBI shows up. We’re back to where we were at the beginning of the episode. The boxes in the back of the plane look an awful lot like the Nazi crates, so we aren’t sure at first if they were planning on escaping too. But when Mozzie swerves the plane to knock David and his goons off their feet, a box flies out and it’s full of money. Jones gets free at that same moment and Moz stops the plane. David Lawrence is taken into custody and all is well again. Peter handles Neal his anklet back, so we know he’s staying put for now.

Back at home, Elizabeth shows Peter the test results. The painting was definitely from the 30s. Peter goes to make amends with Neal and finds the new Chrysler Building painting that Neal had just painted again. I was expecting the paint to be wet or something, but all was copasetic. Neal came in and told Peter that he could have the painting if he loved it so much. Peter called a truce and the bromance seems to be back on track. Then Peter gets a text and heads back to the office. Diana shows him the complete manifest from the U-Boat and they realize that they can possibly track a lot of the items that were on board if whoever stole it tries to sell it. Uh oh. Of course, at that exact moment, Neal and Mozzie realize that they will need to sell something for money to come up with a new escape plan. Only problem is…what to sell first?

I absolutely loved this episode. I thought that it was quick-moving and had great action. The tension between Peter and Neal made it kind of exciting and as much as I know it’s wrong, I always find myself rooting for Neal. I did notice a lot of purple in the episode. Neal wore a lot of purple. His tie that was severed was purple. He wore a purple scarf. There were purple flowers and a purple cell phone. That’s just what I noticed. I tend to look for patterns in things. I know that purple is a regal color. It’s also often means mourning. Could it be that there was a theme of mourning Peter and Neal’s possible “breakup”? The severed tie was a very interesting symbol if that’s the case. Or I could just be reaching. Either way, I thought it was interesting.

What did you all think of it? Was it exciting to you? Are you Team Peter or Team Neal? Or are you like me and you are Team Peal? Team Neter? I don’t know. You know what I mean. Please leave you own TwoCents in the comments below and meet me back here next week for another new episode. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter (@TTCAnne). Thank you so much for reading!

Next episode: Where There’s A Will