White Collar Season 3: What the Hell Just Happened?

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After White Collar Season 2 ended with a cliffhanger–that can only be described as peculiar, but more on that later– on March 8 this year, I had no idea they’d be rolling out their next Season Premiere in as soon as three months.

Let’s rewind to that Season 2 Season Finale. Mozzie (Willie Garson) finishes making that fractal antenna, while Vincent Adler and Neal (Caffery, played by Matt Bomer) find the lost U-Boat, rigged with explosives and full of Nazi plunder. Vincent has Neal and Peter (Tim DeKay) defuse the bomb, before grabbing the treasure and leaving the two of them, along with Sara Ellis and Alex, out to die in the dock. They escape, and later corner Vincent as he tries to smuggle the art and the plunder out of a warehouse. Before they can recover the treasure, however, the warehouse explodes.

So far so good. I was taken aback by what happens next.

So now, everyone believes that priceless art and Nazi treasure is lost forever, until Peter finds a scrap of burnt canvas, part of a painting Neal was working on. Peter is convinced Neal did this. Neal, being completely innocent, falls out with Peter over the accusation and storms back home to find a note with an address. He goes to the address and finds himself surrounded with the Treasure.

Peculiar? I thought so.

So I sat down to think, and the only logical conclusion I could come to was that Alex stole the treasure, replaced it with dummy stuff and blew up the warehouse with the explosives from the U-Boat.

So imagine my surprise when I sit down to watch the Season Premiere and find out that Mozzie did it. And holy cow! Neal is now going to retire on the treasure. I mean, what happened to –”With Kate gone, there’s nothing to live my current life for, so I might as well be a good boy and help the FBI?”

So, this season is about how they’re going to smuggle the treasure out of the USA into a country with no extradition treaty with America. Whichever way this goes, it’s going to be a sticky ending for Neal. Check this out:

1. Let’s say, this goes down perfectly and Neal is able to escape the FBI and live on this treasure for the rest of his life. Would we really want our protagonist to be the bad guy after two years of spreading good?
2. The next possibility is that Neal is playing along with Mozzie, and is going to sell him out to the FBI at the last moment. Would he really do that? Would we want that to happen to Mozzie, who, if you remember, took a bullet for the FBI in Season 2?
3. The next possibilty is that both of them get caught trying to pull it off. Game over, then and there. They’re not coming back.
4. And finally, if it’s a combined con – I mean, are the FBI, Neal and Mozzie all playing along together to set up a confrontation with a bigger enemy about whom we don’t know yet? That, I think will be taking things too far. A plot reversal now is going to make everything that’s happened yet seem silly.

What doesn’t figure is why Mozzie, an uncatchable con artist, makes the basic mistake of using Neal’s paintings as dummies in the warehouse. They’re bound to get caught. What also doesn’t quite fit into the scheme of things is why Mozzie is so keen on getting the treasure out so quickly. A C-grade con artist knows the more time you spend sleeping on the treasure, the lesser the heat on it.

If they manage to pull everything off with both Mozzie and Neal coming clean at the end of Season 3, then I’d be very interested to know how they do it. As far as I can say, as of now, this storyline of White Collar seems to be destined for disaster.

Comments, people?

PS: Now that Sara Ellis is a permanent character, can we get Natalie Morales back too, as Special Agent Lauren Cruz? I’d have her over Diana (Marsha Thomason) any day.