Work Text:
Originally posted to tumblr in 2 parts: http://luvtheheaven.tumblr.com/post/106086396167/why-i-was-quite-disappointed-by-the-white-collar
and part 2: http://luvtheheaven.tumblr.com/post/106089860362/part-2-of-my-reaction-to-the-white-collar-series
Feel free to reblog!
So I was just re-watching the only full-length White Collar fanvideo I've ever made: Peter & Neal - ["Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows] and a few of the voiceovers I'd chosen to include back in 2012 when I made the vid reminded me, painfully, of exactly why the White Collar finale disappointed me.
Seriously, it hurts to now re-watch that vid of mine.
I start off my whole vid with the quote from episode 3x08 "As You Were", Peter saying that he thinks Neal deserves some happiness. Remember this whole scene?
NEAL: Hey, Peter, how's the stakeout?
PETER: Jones is on a coffee run. Listen, that call you made before you left the office tonight.
NEAL: Yeah?
PETER: Was it Sara?
NEAL: She hasn't been taking my calls.
PETER: Aw, man. That's got to be weighing on you.
NEAL: You have no idea.
PETER: Listen, you and I have been through some stuff, and we've had to keep things from each other. But if you want to talk, and I -- you know, I mean, really talk... I'm here for you.
NEAL: Is this the loneliness of the van talking?
PETER: [chuckles] Maybe, maybe. But, uh, I -- you know, I think you deserve some happiness. And I, uh -- whatever I can do to help you with that... Let me know.
NEAL: Thanks, Peter. That means a lot.
PETER: Yeah. No problem. See you tomorrow, Neal.
NEAL: See you tomorrow.
And do you guys remember the context of that scene? 
This is an episode where the FBI has saved Neal from almost being killed with a crossbow, from being very close to death/being shot. Neal is going to take advantage of Peter doing an all-nighter stake-out in the van to break into Peter's house and steal some important info from Peter's safe, and you can see how guilty Neal feels about it, it's all over his face, but he calls Mozzie and they proceed to work together to do it anyway. The call he made before he left the office 'tonight' was Mozzie and was about breaking into Peter's house. Neal's in the middle of breaking in when this phone call from Peter happens and Neal breathes a sigh of relief to find out Peter suspects he was calling Sara. Neal hangs up the phone and is clearly feeling SO guilty in his cat burglar black outfit and black gloves, sitting on Peter's bed, betraying Peter's trust like this. He's thinking about it for a few moments, and then Mozzie calls and he hesitates before answering. Then he finally does, and he LIES to Mozzie. He looks right at the manifest he came to get as he tells Mozzie the manifest wasn't in the safe. Neal doesn't want to be this kind of conman criminal betraying everyone. This was episode 38 of the show, and the series finale, 6x06 "Au Revoir", was episode 81. This was about halfway into the show's run, and the show was already making it VERY CLEAR that Neal didn't want to be this kind of criminal anymore. The kind who betrays his upstanding law-abiding citizen friends.
At 1:07 or so into my video, I match the lyric "Believe in me, help me believe in anything, 'cause I want to be someone who believes" from Neal's point of view with Peter, in the season 2 finale, seeing the good in Neal just like the series finale reiterated - Peter's always seen the good in Neal. Neal's 'dying' words to Peter are basically a thank you for seeing the good in him. But the interview with the series creator included this:
TVLINE | You’ve said in the past that a lot of the series has been about Neal struggling with these two different sides of himself and secretly wanting Peter’s life. Are we to assume from this ending that he realized, “I am who I am”?
Yep. Exactly. That after six years, after this long struggle, Neal can decide, “Who am I? Am I the con man? Am I the thief that my father was, my real father? Or am I Peter Burke?” who in his heart became his de facto father. He’s always struggled with that, with that desire. I said before in a couple of interviews that, for me, Neal wants to be good, but he was born bad. This was finally the decision that Neal Caffrey is what he is at his heart and that’s an art thief. That’s just a much more fun ending than deciding that he is good and that he gets the white picket fence.
Which really upsets me. Neal wasn't "born bad", wtf?? Has Jeff Eastin even been present for this show of his? The entire series shows how much of a good person Neal is, how much he cares and feels guilty about the bad things he does, how much he enjoys helping take down bad criminals and using his skills for good.
This fanvideo made (also in 2012) by MagicalUnicorn22: Peter&Neal; trust and faith really drives home how SUCH a recurring motif/theme throughout the show was leading up to a finale where Peter fully trusted Neal back!! That's all Neal wanted. This fanvideo by TheNeverworld does it too: Neal & Peter | Faith. Neal's always trusted Peter, but it was building to that point when Peter trusted Neal. I mean, remember this video by VilyaXxX0llwyna: Neal/Peter → Grenade. That vid was somewhat manips and slashy, but a lot of it was based on the true-to-the-show fact that Peter wouldn't "do the same" for Neal... the show was building from that point to a point where Neal and Peter were truly equals and treated each other equally. They had a lot of love for each other early on, but Peter was having trouble trusting Neal and the end would be them being equals who fully trusted each other, Peter never suspecting Neal of breaking the law again because Peter now trusts Neal that much.
The series finale should have included that. The series finale should NOT have included Neal conning Peter, lying to Peter in such a profound way... the series finale, in order to be truly satisfying, needed to have an explicit statement of Peter saying he trusts Neal completely, and the viewers basically feeling like we had PROOF of him being CORRECT to put that much trust in him.
TVLINE | So Neal’s next target is the Louvre?
The next target is the Louvre, yeah.
This goes against everything the show was slowly but surely building towards! This fanvideo by RadostinaCharmed: Neal Caffrey || Nothing more than a criminal? which was made 1 year ago (December 2013) really captures so much about this "is Neal really doomed to always be a criminal" line of thinking... and I just feel like they had been building, the whole show, up to this point where Neal would NOT be a criminal anymore. Where he'd feel like he was DONE with that criminal chapter of his life. My video made the series finale painful especially because of the voiceover I included at 3:08 into it... and also the one at 3:43. I mean seriously. 3x16 "Judgement Day", was such a good season finale, and included so many powerful lines.
JUDGE: You came into this legal system as a criminal. The question before this board today is -- have you changed?
NEAL: I believe I have.
or
JUDGE: State your name and relationship to Neal Caffrey for the record, please.
PETER: Special Agent Peter Burke. I've been Neal Caffrey's handler at the Federal Bureau of Investigation since his release into our custody.
JUDGE: You caught him?
PETER: Twice. And you should know, the last time I caught him, he was sitting alone in an empty apartment. He had nothing. No one. And now? He has a life. A real life here. One that keeps him grounded and decent.
As you've heard, there are many people who care about Neal, people who see him as more than just a criminal. He's frustrating, I'll admit.
He drives me crazy on his best days. I don't always have to know where Neal is or what he's up to. But I do know that he has a good heart and a set of principles that weren't there six years ago when he was just another case file that got dropped on my desk.JUDGE: Do you think Mr. Caffrey is reformed?
PETER: As long as he's on that anklet, we'll never know. We can sit here until kingdom come and debate over who is Neal Caffrey. But as long as we keep him tethered, as long as we treat him like a criminal, he'll always think that he is one. Whether Neal is a citizen, a C.I., or a thief is a decision that needs to be put in his hands.
JUDGE: Should Neal Caffrey's sentence be commuted?
PETER: Yes. I'm saying Neal should be free.
Neal deserved some happiness... and instead he had to say goodbye to everyone he loved and be super lonely and sad in Paris? And break the people who loved him's (mainly Mozzie & Peter's) hearts too in the process. Neal deserved true, legal freedom, and instead he had to change his identity/fake his death/hide/evade law enforcement. What Peter had said in that scene was all SO poignant and true and yet they choose to end the series with him helping Mozzie obtain illegal money and then faking his death?? It makes no sense to me.
Neal had said in 3x11 "Checkmate" so much about how his life was in New York, and how he wouldn't want to leave it. This is when Peter is hysterically upset about Elizabeth being kidnapped and Neal is trying to help him rescue her.
NEAL: He already moved it.
PETER: Who's "he"? He? Mozzie? Of course it was Mozzie! You call him!
NEAL: I tried. Look, he's not talking to me. We had a falling out.
PETER: What, you couldn't agree on what island to buy?
NEAL: I didn't think he'd move it this fast.
PETER: Where'd he take it?
NEAL: I don't know. I don't. It's Elizabeth. No lies. I don't know.
PETER: DAMN IT, NEAL!!! Mozzie could be anywhere in the world. We have less than 12 hours to find him.
NEAL: Peter. We're gonna get her back.
PETER: And we start by finding Mozzie.
Transition to Neal's apartment:
PETER: Any luck in finding Mozzie?
MOZZIE: No. He's gone completely to ground. He's canceled his emails, his cellphones. You find anything?
PETER: Nope. His safe houses are abandoned.
NEAL: Monday through Sunday?
PETER: Empty.
NEAL: He probably left the city.
Peter sits down.
PETER: What were you two arguing about?
NEAL: Mozzie wanted to leave New York. I didn't.
PETER: Why not?
NEAL: You. Elizabeth. Sara. The view out that window. Stepping off the elevator Monday morning. All of it. I have a life here.
PETER: What about Mozzie?
NEAL: Well, he didn't like to admit it, but, yeah, this is his home.
PETER: I ran every alias you gave me. He hasn't boarded a plane or a boat.
NEAL: That means he's thinking it over.
I mean how can they write lines like that into the show and then have a heartbreaking series finale where Neal feels forced to abandon his entire life? Why couldn't they just have made it a happy ending?
TVLINE | When and how did you settle on this particular ending?
I had a different ending [in which] Peter finally released Neal. This was going to be the moment when Neal has to decide what he’s going to do. And so he walked up to the Flatiron building in New York, and he’s tossing a coin. In one version, the coin lands heads, and he goes to the right and he gets in a limo with Mozzie and they go off to be the greatest criminals ever. And then we’re back with Neal, and he’s standing at that same intersection, tosses the coin and it comes up tails and he goes left and he goes to the FBI. We realize it’s a few years later and Neal’s taken over Peter’s job as head of the White Collar Crime division and he’s now an FBI agent and very happy. And then we come back to Neal, and he’s in that same spot. He tosses the coin and just before it lands, we go to black. We never know which choice he finally made. That was the ending that I had settled on from the moment I sold the series. I pitched that ending along with the series to USA six years ago, and it’s one I had planned to stick to.
We all could have been satisfied knowing Neal likely chose to stick with HAPPINESS over "the thrill". The cool thing about that 3 coin toss ending, the ending being just a fade to black and we never know which way he's going to actually go, Neal leaving it up to a coin toss ending thing is that it is so open ended, because just like real life, you never actually know, for sure, what life has in store for you. That would've been so much more satisfying, in my opinion. The coin toss still is kind of a little lame, as I'd like to think Neal could've had more personal conviction to make the decision on his own, based on all of the pros and cons (lol, no pun intended) of each choice... but still, I would've preferred that over what we got.
If you'd like to reblog Part 1, it is here.
I just... it was also REALLY predictable for me, I knew Neal was faking his death, even when we saw his dead body and Mozzie was believing it, I was like "he's... he can't be dead, he's faking it, I know he is, I'm not sure how but it has to be a big reveal at the end, there's literally no way he's dead."
I felt like the blood when Neal got shot was way too bright red and looked more fake than it usually does when I see gunshot wounds on TV shows, and Neal didn't seem like he was dying to me. Especially going into the ambulance, being so sure he wasn't gonna make it? He wasn't acting close enough to death or something, it was all too rushed, and it just didn't feel right to me. Neal was still talking comfortably, he wasn't barely croaking out those words, and he already was receiving medical intervention at that point. He should have been able to be saved, it's TV world.
The entire 6 episode season 6 was written (and filmed/edited/etc) with the fact that it was "The End" in mind, so why would they give Neal such an ironclad surefire way to get his legal freedom if they weren't going to actually give it to him? Why give us the Neal/Amy episode this season (fedorablecaffrey made an epic fanvideo about it Neal & Amy | Staring At It [6x03] ) and remind us just how much Neal wants a sweet girl to grow happily ever after with who doesn't care about his history as a con-man, and then not give Neal a happy ending for his love life?
Honestly, them giving Peter & Elizabeth a baby bothered me. (And gosh, doing the super cliche thing and naming the baby Neal... if the Parenthood ends up killing off Zeek and Amber ends up naming her child after him I'm gonna strangle somebody. Every show ever seems to do this thing and it's sort of sweet but I also kind of feel like it's getting old, and it's awkward to call your son the name of another person you knew who died. Like Arrow doing it with Diggle's baby and Sara? That was a stretch. Let's just not, okay.)
El being all "I'm pregnant" in 6x01 was clearly the writers trying to set up a nice happy ending for Peter but Peter didn't ever WANT a baby, that wasn't part of his story. It wasn't part of his and El's marriage story, the idea that they always wanted a baby but were infertile. They were ONE sweet example on TV of a childfree happily married couple who didn't need kids to be happy, who didn't talk about being infertile and making the best of it, nothing like that. And in this final season they just ruined that, and it just bothered me a little.
I actually really enjoyed the finale as a whole, it had a lot of great callbacks to previous seasons/the pilot, a lot of great celebrations of all of the characters and relationships that had made the show memorable and great over the years... they worked really hard on it and it was NOT one of the worst finales I've ever seen - no, it probably was one of the best. Series finales are hard to pull off well. They managed to squeeze SO MUCH into that finale, so many moments to make me smile, so much emotion, overall it was a nice send-off for the series.
BUT I still desperately wish the show had ended differently. I wish they had maybe faked his death and conned the Pink Panthers and Matthew Keller but Neal still legally got his freedom and happily ever after and kept his LIFE in NYC and got the hints of a new romantic relationship for himself and just ALL of it. I wish they hadn't built up so much of the series to be leading to Neal not being a criminal, not anymore, to only backtrack and have him end the show alone and still committing crimes.