WHITE COLLAR: Unfinished Business

Ho-hum. Insurance, blah, blah, blah. You weren’t alone if those were your first thoughts when this episode started; Neal wasn’t excited, either. But it didn’t take long for an insurance scam to turn into something a lot more interesting!

Case of the Week
We quickly learn that Sara Ellis, the insurance investigator Peter and Neal are working with, is the same woman who testified against Neal at his trial. And apparently she’s still upset that he wasn’t convicted of stealing “her” painting, thanks to that jury of his peers.

Mozzie:  Who’s Sara Ellis?
Neal:  You weren’t at my trial. She was.

Their banter was quick and constant throughout the episode, but I just couldn’t quite buy her hostility toward Neal. She was too smiley, I think, which is ironic considering her complaint about his smile meaning that he wants something.

[Hmm . . . if we operate on that theory, I wonder what, exactly, she wants from Neal?]

Neal:  So you’re basically a high-class repo man.
Sara:  I prefer white collar bounty hunter.
Neal:  You should put that on your business cards.

Peter demands that Neal cooperate with Sara on their investigation into stolen bank bonds. Neal reluctantly agrees – even when Sara goads him with a tape recorder and claims that she will prove he stole her painting.

In yet another situation where Neal gets to take off his tracking device, he impersonates Mr. Black, a guy working for Edgar Halbridge, the suspected bond thief.

It turns out Mr. Black has been hired to kill none other than Sara Ellis, which means Neal – as Black – finds himself in Sara’s bedroom, pointing a gun at her. Sara then pulls a gun on Neal, and they’re both saved by a phone call from Peter, who verifies that Neal is not actually going to kill anyone.

Neal:  She put her gun in my face.
Mozzie:  And cocked it?
Neal:  Yeah.
Mozzie:  You’ve come back from worse.

Neal:  She has a gun.
Mozzie:  Is it still pointing at you?
Neal:  No, I think I convinced her I’m not trying to kill her anymore.
Mozzie:  Well, you are a charmer.

The team decides to fake Sara’s death and move her into the FBI office until they can determine why Halbridge has hired someone to kill an insurance investigator, of all things.

I think it was a stretch for Sara to insist on living at the Bureau instead of a safe house, but it provided opportunity for some fun interactions between the various characters. Peter and Neal’s back-and-forth about playing nice cracked me up. Their rhythm was great, and I rewound and watched it a couple times.

Peter:   Right now we’re on the same team, so play nice.
Neal:  She —
Peter:  No.
Neal:  I’m —
Peter:  Don’t.
Neal:  Fine.
Peter:  Good.

Neal and Sara had a little picnic on the roof, where they seemed to declare a tentative truce. Then Peter and Sara had a heart-to-heart after Elizabeth nudged Peter into playing therapist with the investigator. Both conversations started out light but moved into more serious territory, with Sara kind of freaking out that nobody seemed to care much about her “death.”

Sara:  Neal came by. We had a nice little chat.
Peter:  Is he in one piece?
Sara:  Yes, I left him whole.
Peter:  Good, I prefer him that way.

Eventually the team realized that the hit had been placed on Sara five months earlier, when she was investigating one particular building Halbridge owns. After visits from Mr. Black (a.k.a. Neal) and Peter, Halbridge started to move. A dead body was dug up at his building, an identity theft was discovered and he was arrested – with bonds in hand – by the whole team.

The actual Mr. Black snuck back into play, though, and almost took out Sara and Neal at her apartment. Peter and team burst in to save the day, but Sara and Neal (mostly Sara) had the situation under control.

And why was Neal in her apartment, anyway? Oh yes, Kate.

Music Box Mystery
Mozzie and Neal managed to sneak into the hangar storing the plane that blew up while Kate was on it. Neal’s face and even his body language as he first took it all in was just devastating.

He recovered in time to convince the FAA guard to send him a copy of the plane’s black box – courtesy of Sara Ellis. They mailed her a copy, but when she was supposedly dead, her mail piled up on her office desk while she bunked at the FB I office. To get the recording, Neal offered her a ride home after Halbridge was arrested, knowing she’d want to stop at her office to pick up her mail. (“She’s a workaholic and everybody likes mail.”)

Somehow, though, in all the excitement of foiling Mr. Black and flirting with Sara, Neal couldn’t quite manage to lift the envelope. I’m not sure I buy that, considering he took Halbridge’s guard’s gun earlier in the episode and Peter’s fancy pen in the last episode. If there’s someone who can lift an item, it’s Neal.

And yet, he left evidence of Kate’s murder in Sara Ellis’s apartment. Interesting . . .

All right, White Collar fans, what did you think about this episode? Do you think we’ve seen the last of Sara Ellis? Are you missing the new friendship between Mozzie and Peter yet? And how badly did you want to hug Neal when he saw that blown-up airplane?

Mary is a soon-to-be PR freelancer, a wife and a mom to a toddler who she describes as “VERY two.” And while you might think her busy life would get in the way of an ambitious TV schedule, she’s way more organized [AHEM, addicted, AHEM] than that. Also, a clean house is overrated. Mary blogs about an imperfect life at Giving Up on Perfect, writing about family, faith, books, food, celebrity look-alikes and chick flicks. You know, the important stuff.