Justified Season Finale Recap

Raylan Givens will kill all your henchmen. This is a fact that viewers fully understand but everyone in the fictional universe of Justified consistently seem to forget. Being from out-of-town, Detroit namely, is not an excuse to be ignorant of the fact that your mid-level goons are not going to be enough to carry out the foolishly ambitious task of holding Raylan’s family hostage in an attempt to extort the man. The very premise is ridiculous. Nonetheless, it seemed provocative enough to warrant opening the final episode of one of Justified‘s most satisfying seasons to date. Not as daringly exciting as a bomb strapped to an expecting mother’s rocking chair (you know you thought it), but putting the future of the Givens bloodline in danger towards the end of an arc that explored so much of the Givens history and mythos, brought a lot about who Raylan Givens truly is into perspective.

He is one bad-ass motherfucker. With all the talk about Raylan’s propensity to put bullets in people, sometimes we forget how very effective he is at doing so. When Raylan first makes eye contact with the firearm at the waist of Lex, the dimwitted Augustine thug who basically begged to be shot first, the writing appeared on the wall. In fact, one could argue that as soon as we first see tears on Winona’s face for reasons other than Raylan being a complicated lover, someone was going to die.

So as this season has painstakingly reminded us of Raylan’s relation to Arlo, Arlo’s relation to the long history of criminal activity in Harlan, and Harlan county’s relation to the very ideals people hold dear from loyalty to honor to wealth to love, the finale chooses to refocus its storytelling lens on relationships in general. More specifically we find Raylan, if not reconfiguring, recommitting to having relationships and working to protect. Likewise, we find Boyd and Ava fighting for their relationship’s survival in the wake of Ellen May squealing about their past indiscretions. There’s something truly sentimental about this being what constitutes a final battle — fighting purely for the opportunity to love and be loved. It would apparently require more than a firefight.

In the car en route to Nicky Augustine’s final stand, Boyd and Raylan have the sort of heart to heart that viewers come to expect from the two when their paths are inevitably entwined. They talk a little about what it means to be in love and what it means to wake up in morning and seeing yourself as “not the bad guy.” Raylan challenges Boyd’s affections for Ava primarily as an asshole and a frienemy, but, at least to a small extent, he seems generally interested in the question of love, like a drunken fiancé at an engagement party, unsure and needing both an out and a justification, all at once. Boyd has the certainty that Raylan undoubtedly envies. But for Raylan, in a world where he’s the hero and Boyd the villain, another relationship tirelessly fought for by both men, certainty comes in the form good guy posturing.

So the showdown between Augustine and Givens, leaves a lot to be desired. Raylan’s already resolved somewhere in the car with Boyd that he’ll sit tight on his side of the divide, on his murky moral (not-so) high ground, and let the bad guys be bad guys. Ava on the other side of town finds herself in trouble meant for Boyd, seemingly preventing the two of them from living out their happily ever after.

There’s something dissatisfying about what the finale presented viewers with this week. There’s some underlying cynicism masked in the old adage about good always trumping evil, because it doesn’t actually feel good. It forces us to think back to Shelby/Drew, Hunter Mosley, Randall, Colt, et al. Murky characters, played magnificently by some talented folk, who imbued the stories of this season with well-balanced malign. But it satisfied, at least momentarily, whether our bloodlust or soft-side. Even when Jody, the murderous, abusive crook, came back for his ex-wife (and/or her money) and went on a bit of a rampage, two dead bailbondspeople at least, there was a feeling that good or bad wasn’t as much at stake as the feeling of getting what you want from life — vengeance, loyalty, money, satisfaction. The lesson here, it seems, of the season 4 finale of Justified is either that you can never really be satisfied or it’s foolish to even want to be.

The Internet Has TV News for You

• Everyone. Is. Going. Nuts. Over. Game of Thrones.
• Potential Once Upon a Time spinoff, Once: Wonderland, has cast its Alice, English-born Aussie Sophie Lowe. Lewis Carroll is unamused. (via Hollywood Reporter)
• The Killing is apparently still happening. AMC has promised a two-hour premiere on June 2nd for all those who haven’t yet figured out that Maggie Simpson shot Rosie Larsen. Duh. (via Vulture)
• Justified received its well-deserved fifth season renewal along with the news of FX’s new sister network, FXX, a comedy-centered outfit launching in September, buoyed by new seasons of It’s Always Sunny and The League. Reportedly, FXXX is still in the works, featuring a 24-hour stream of Keri Russell sex scenes in a variety of hairstyles. (via Warming Glow)
• Doctor Who summed up pretty well in visualizations and spreadsheets and visualizations from The Guardian. Plus news of returning favorites David Tennant and Bill Piper for the 50th Anniversary special. But, really? Spreadsheets? (via TVbytheNumbers)
• And who is the greatest TV couple of all time? Aside from me and Claire Huxtable Olivia Pope. (via Entertainment Weekly)

The Truth of The Lying Game

So I just binge-watched the first thirty episodes of ABC Family’s The Lying Game and must now crown myself as the master of their fictional universe (limited only to the TV series because, c’mon, who really reads anymore?). I know all the secrets. I get all the twists. I’ve grasped all the backstory. And I’ve climbed and explored each and every branch of the tangled family trees from Phoenix to Scottsdale, Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Allow me to breakdown some of the show’s various intricacies to you novice TLG-viewers, die hard fan, and casual viewers both intentional and accidental — I get it, you lost your remote at some point during Pretty Little Liars. No shame. Just jump in.

First things first. Laurel is wonderful. In a tournament bracket of best TLG-ers (Mercer Madness?), she would be a top seed if not for it making so much more sense to have her as an underdog and watch her sass and flirt and snark her way into the championship game. While it’s clear, often too clear, that the Mercer clan fails to appreciate Laurel and the full extent of her unabashedly adorable ways, she is indispensable to maintaining the dramatic tension of a sort of ludicrous plot-line, as well as keeping the seriousness in check when necessary. She dispenses the best hugs. Calls people out when it’s most needed. And is unrelentingly a teenage girl no matter what, even while the world around her strains to be grown-up. But even the showrunners took some time to understand Laurel’s value.

Remember Char? Sutton and Mads’s friend? The blonde one with Mommy issues who dated that shady dude? Of course you don’t. Our Laurel would eventually steal her crush (Justin), her shine (Mommy and Daddy issues, even shadier boyfriend), and her function in the story. Before you know it, it’s Sutton(s), Mads, and Laurel out having adventures, having sleepovers, picking up guy, and, in turn, fighting over said guys. Laurel does it all while playing a fucking fiddle. Adorbz. Like I said, Laurel = MVP.

Next up. Charisma Carpenter, as the maybe mother of Sutton and Emma, is unsettling . . . in a good way. She’s creepy and manipulative and presumably plays the game as well as anyone possibly could, being that she isn’t dead or in prison by episode thirty (season two, episode ten). But what is the game? Is she crazy, a murderer, or a crazy murderer? Is she even Sutton and Emma’s biological mother? The striking resemblance between her and her offspring would be much more convincing if there wasn’t the slim chance that Alexandra Chando (Emma and Sutton) isn’t a real person and The Parent Trap camera magic is being all over the place. Someone check if Alexandra is an anagram of Charisma, please. Either way, at this point in the series, Rebecca clearly has a lot more up her sleeve. In fact, we have only just gotten to see that she’s wearing some pretty big-ass sleeves.

And then there are the fathers. Being a dad and not a jerk is almost impossible in The Lying Game. I like to call it “fathering under the influence of privilege.” (I’ve never actually called it that until just now.) There seems to be this extremely immature notion, which Ted and Alec share, that immoral, malicious mistakes of the past can be easily corrected by flexing money and power and committing more immoral and malicious mistakes in the present. Then comedy ensues.

The crux of The Lying Game, the search for “real” parents or, more essentially, the truth, reveals a lot about how ABC Family, author/creator Sara Shepard, and many others perceive the idyllic family and its members. Something about being all white or fringe white (“Whitehorse,” really? Not the name but the delivery) and luckily affluent. Absentee, adulterous, or asshole dads. Take your pick. But unsurprisingly for a series targeted at young women, the dynamic between mothers and daughters and sisters and girlfriends plays a large, perhaps the largest, part of the familial makeup of the show. The portrayal is diverse; albeit sometimes more of a rogue gallery of scorned, naive, boy-crazy, devious, victimized girls of all ages. Still, as long as you aren’t ostensibly a minority, poor, male, or, I guess, homosexual, it’s hard to imagine not readily finding a kindred spirit, a true or “real” version of yourself as you watch.

And I suppose that’s the most compelling part. Just as easily as one twin can become the other, viewers are offered a world of intrigue within homogeneity, sameness. By no means is this the first or last show to use whitewashed privilege as a canvas for storytelling. Standard fare throughout the networks and cable. But the attractiveness of “girl power” alongside “we’re all alike” isn’t something to be take lightly. If you aren’t as nice as Emma or charismatic as Sutton or as simply amaz-balls as Laurel, The Lying Game makes it a little easier to pretend to be, whether that’s a good thing or not.

R.I.P. Amanda Clarke. Long Live Amanda Clarke.

Emily Thorne’s campaign for revenge has become noticeably unfocused throughout this current season of ABC’s hit drama, to the dismay of many fans. Whatever happened to the list? Who cares about the Porters? What the fuck is an Initiative? Fucking racists replaced Takeda? As episodes sauntered on, viewers clamored for answers (with more or less profanity) and a return to the root of what has made this series so compelling to begin with, the eponymous revenge-seeking.

It would take an Amanda Clarke—not the calculating, competent main-protagonist one but the other—to bring back the vengeance we pay good DVR and hard drive space to enjoy. With her new, somewhat makeshift family in danger, Amanda leaped into action, while everyone else in Montauk was busy either chasing ghosts or sleeping with the enemy.¹ Amanda played every Amanda Clarke card at her disposal—video evidence of all of the shady Grayson dealings that left the real Amanda’s dad in prison and eventually dead—in one brash, reckless play that made the casual viewer wonder why this wasn’t Emily’s plan to begin with. The Graysons were afraid. Her demands were met. Everything was going swimmingly.

That is, until we find Amanda and Jack on a honeymoon boat trip foreshadowed heavily to include inevitable bloodshed and at at least one sunken corpse. Fake-Amanda has always been an unpredictable agent of poor decision-making and clumsily unintentional sabotage, so the possibility of her being dispatched at sea by a more solution-oriented goon, simply made sense. In season one, there was even a very real chance that Emily would just kill her like a pawn in a game of chess where you kill pawns for not being good enough pawns.²

But this time around, it becomes clear that Emily needed and loved Amanda just as much as we found her infuriating. She followed directions poorly. She fell over banisters too easily. Her uterus was too healthy. She seemed a little slow. But we all should’ve appreciated fake-Amanda a little bit more. In a show very much about meticulous planning, diabolical schemes, and pristine lifestyles, perhaps ad nauseaum, someone needed to mess things up a bit. Amanda was the hand of the proletariat waving guns and computers filled with incriminating files in the face of all that is summer in the Hamptons. In this week’s episode reminds us that although our Emily Thorne might very well be the true lost child of the whole David Clarke as scapegoat travesty, Emily is still an insider here. Amanda is an outsider and, in a sense, as much the true victim of the Graysons’ and the Initiative’s wrongdoing as subprime mortgage holders or the American people if Conrad is elected to public office. In this light, Amanda’s sporadic, careless, shortsighted but admirable behavior appears to be more of a 99%er power move, orchestrating her own Occupy Revenge.

But sadly, just like her Wall Street counterpart, fake-Amanda Clarke, the poor girl from equal parts juvey and the streets, is now dead. Hopefully, her sacrifice leaves a lasting impression on the fictional landscape of Revenge, like all the bankers and politicians that were held accountable for their roles in ruining the real world landscape, global economy, and the lives of millions. Jk. That didn’t happen. But political ideologies aside, Revenge has an opportunity now to return to its original dynamic of bad guys and comeuppance, exposing the evils of the upper class, and righting wrongs. So just as Emily in some sense regains a bit more of her original Amanda-ness with the death of her surrogate sister, everything about the series must regain the luster of an all out brawl on behalf of the little guys, the ones framed as terrorists and murdered and cheated on and tortured by secretive cloak and dagger organizations. Remind us that rich people suck and designer clothes, lavish Labor Day parties, and convoluted plot points isn’t all that’s left in Montauk. Do it for us, truly just a bunch of fake-Amandas at heart.

¹Sidenote: Wouldn’t finding out your little sister, who you’ve been searching for most of your life, is probably dead be exact time you would want your girlfriend to stop sleeping with her ex, even if it is part of some elaborate scheme to combat the shadowy killers? And after she supposedly stops, wouldn’t this be the exact wrong time for her to start fantasizing about how much she’s still in love with her childhood sweetheart on the day he is marrying her Count of Monte Christo avatar? Is Aiden going through his own hilarious “she’s just not that into” you subplot? Do we care enough about Aiden yet for it to matter?
²How does chess work?

Rayna and Juliette on the Tour Bus and Nashville Predictions

To the most cynically savvy viewer among us, the obvious question hanging over each new episode of ABC’s Nashville at this must be: which one of the lead female vocalists will be caught with their pants down, literally—cheating, two-timing, vow-forgetting, side-piece sampling, etc.—first? Each of these leading ladies has a case to be made for an upcoming oops, I’m in the wrong bed moment. Men in Nashville, TN apparently only come in the flavors of broken and heartbreaking. And if mothers all over the country find it necessary to warn their little girls about falling for musicians, there certainly has to be some sort of skull and crossbones sort of warning for politicians and athletes. It only makes sense for the ladies to continue to sample even after they’ve chosen entrees. So without further ado, let’s explore why, in detail, Rayna will get drunk and make out with Liam, the bad boy record producer guy.

That’s not to say that Juliette’s recent marriage and Scarlett’s faux love triangle (does Hailey make it a trapezoid?) won’t crumble in due time. The claim here that adultery and poor decision-making are on the horizon isn’t meant to be ambitious or even predictive. Rayna’s foreseeable transgression just speaks to how these familiar daytime TV stock characters and tropes have been revitalized in primetime by way of country-western lyrics and Wyclef. Rayna Jaymes and the girls are positioned, not at the mount of originality, but evidently, and more entertainingly, exactly where viewers want them most: firmly planted in familiar dysfunction. Adultery, corruption, drug abuse, Wyclef.

Mommy issues like Juliette Barnes’s usually grow stale pretty quickly on television (like the acting of anyone that has ever played Erica Kane’s daughter on All My Children) because it’s such a hard task to get the right smell of meth and neglect stuffed into the living rooms of the TV watching public. Never seems authentic enough or dramatic enough or we’re all just cold, jaded assholes because of our own mothers’ crack usage. Still, somehow Hayden’s Juliette has become a hypnotic example of an emotionally beaten daughter. She’s a hardened young pop princess with as much emotional baggage as blonde hair extensions and she carries it all as audaciously as could be desired. Her hurried marriage to star quarterback Sean Butler is the latest in her homages to real life celebrity hijinks, a nod to straight from the headlines sort of storytelling. Nothing groundbreaking here. So as we prepare for the Rayna-Juliette co-headlining mega tour (also pretty much written on the wall since the pilot episode), what we can also reasonably expect from Juliette is the continued impulse-driven bad girl act. Groupies should be on alert.

Let us not forget doe-eyed Scarlett and her dual suitors—the ex-boyfriend and the music partner. It’s hard to tell which she makes sweeter music with, perhaps because they have both revealed themselves to be patently subpar beaus while redeeming themselves just slightly enough to keep things interesting. Is it better to realize your mistakes and try to get back the girl that got away or to pounce on your crush as soon as the opportunity arises? Is it worse to start out a petty, insecure, and overbearing boyfriend, or in essence become one while dating another woman? Either way, Scarlett at some point will have to break a heart or two in Nashville, which will likewise come as a welcome non-surprise to many fans.

But why will Rayna Jaymes undoubtedly win this race to unfaithfulness, you ask? Well simply put: Everything begins and ends with Rayna. She is the matriarch of this series and Connie Britton has done a superb job making us all remember a simpler time when Patsy Cline and daytime soaps were legitimate religions for most Americans. She shines on the small screen and has brought all that undeniable magnetism from season 1 of American Horror Stories to Nashville this year in large doses. All of that and her newfound propensity to handle life’s hiccups with a bottle in her hand makes it a safe bet to assume she will have some huge, easily avoidable but nonetheless engaging, life-shattering slip up. If only because she is the actress and character most trusted in the cast to be able to pick herself back up. Deacon might be able to pull this off too, but Nashville is, if anything, about the women. Rayna is simply queen (even if “co-headlining”). And the queen needs to eat first. Liam the music man will increasingly look like food to her as the season moves towards its finale.

With that resolved, the next most pressing question on the Nashville menu would then have to be: Wyclef?

Gossip Girl’s Farewell Address: ‘Gone Maybe Gone’

In the early moments of this week’s Gossip Girl premiere, the image of our Serena van der Woodsen on a train, seemingly battered by a lifetime of pampering and poor decision making, bleeding from her nose like her cocaine had been laced with shards of glass, highlights mortality as a theme in this farewell run of the series that has put the Upper East Side and its scandalous denizens on the map (of everyone who hadn’t previously owned a map.) Our sweetheart has apparently fallen victim to a Princess Diana amount of spotlight, extensively narrated, if not prompted, these past five seasons by the titular voice-over blogger. But these are the first minutes of the first episode of the final season of Gossip Girl, a show as much a vehicle for Blake Lively’s youthful leggy blonde-ness as Gossip Girl is an implicit euphemism for Serena and the girls in our world like Serena, those that solicit and inspire gossip through glamour and celebrity. And smart viewers know that Serena isn’t going anywhere. However, the series does make an effort to go somewhere. Towards a hopefully satisfying close.

As I’ve discussed before, no one actually likes Gossip Girl. Even self-proclaimed fans must also proclaim just how disgruntled they’ve grown over the years and how disenchanted the series’ reluctance to even feign character development or growth has left them. The end of season five felt very much like a culmination of dead horse beatings. Serena once again outed herself as plainly everything bad about the trope she represents — the self-centered, self-destructive, socialite seeking attention — when she discarded both her relationship with Blair and Dan to pull a final ‘Hey, look at me. I’m someone. Love me.’ Coupled with the return of father Bass, because apparently we were all secretly pining for that, and Blair and Chuck reinstating their relationship, or something like that, the series had hit the reset button in various ways. The question remained, however, if the refresh would do us any good or would we find ourselves somewhere uncomfortably similar to where we’d come from when the show started. The van der Woodsen women are manipulative and oblivious. The Humphreys are sulking over heartache. Chuck has full-fledged daddy issues on display. Blair follows him blindly into calamity. Nate is ineffectual. The core of the show remains unchanged.

Season six begins with a reminder of how that may be in fact what we needed. A look back to the earlier seasons. Where’s Serena? proves to be a potently reductive, stripped down way of revisiting classic Gossip Girl. Reluctant alliances. Arbitrary competition. Horribly poor parenting on Lily’s part. All classic staples of the best GG storytelling. The group is back in full form and Dan, for all his faults, is apparently best utilized as the dark horse, the outsider, “Lonely Boy.” He reinforces the core group better than he plays nice amongst them and while his sulking may frustrate some, it establishes the UES as a place incomparable to the rest of the world, especially Brooklyn. While things may happen to Dan like breakups or disappointment, the Upper East Siders are apparently events in and of themselves that can resurrect from the dead as Vassar alums named Sabrina or crash civil union ceremonies and turn them into interventions. Dan is the straight man to this road act. With his self-righteousness and brooding in moderation, and everyone else willing to let go of the silly notion that they’re reasonable, responsible adults (Marriages? Pregnancies? Careers!? How gauche!?), we’re back on track. These are rich, spoiled, outlandish characters and these are their stories.

It’s even clear that relegating Ivy to hijinks with Rufus is a healthy decision consistent with Gossip Girl procedure for deviant characters. It’s not unlike sending problematic characters like Eric (or actresses like Taylor Momsen) to boarding school in London or Spain like Vanessa. And Ivy does well in the premiere to basically stay out of the way and plant seeds that can bloom within the next nine episodes (wow, it’s really almost over) without derailing anything important longtime fans would expect from a final outing with the gang that may never have fully matured out of their Constance Billard-St. Judes uniforms. It seems only right then that the final season start off feeling like they’ve almost put them back on.

White Collar: Surprise! You’re the Daddy!

How foreseeable does a reveal have to be before it ceases to be revealing? The question immediately comes to mind in the final moments of this week’s adventures in the White Collar division of Manhattan’s wacky FBI force. The episode showcases an FBI convention where highlights include an Inside the Actor’s Studio-styled interview with the presumed buddy cops of the year and law enforcement’s version of a science fair (also, there should be cookies available). Shockingly, the crime-free time that the FBI had anticipated for this little shindig is interrupted early on by crooks that don’t seem to take the sanctity of the event as seriously as Peter admonishes Neal to. But the latter still holds on to a grudge from last week’s betrayal (fueled by the betrayal prior to that and setting in motion the betrayal that occurs a bit later in this very episode).

As the season has progressed, it often seems that what we may have gotten ourselves into with White Collar is a melodrama with an aggressively overplayed signature note — trust issues. If either Neal or Peter were your best friend complaining to you about their significant other over sorbet and Ryan Reynolds movies while in pajamas, you would be hard-pressed to find a reason your friend should put up with this any longer. “He doesn’t deserve you!” you would proclaim with a snap and a neck roll. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes when your friend expresses how they feel imprisoned and disrespected and patronized constantly in their relationship. You would suck your teeth loudly when your friend tells you about the time their partner lied, stole, jeopardized your friend’s career, then fled the country. It just doesn’t make sense why they would continue with this. But in that instance and perhaps in this one, you would probably be blind to the unspoken dynamic at play here: Love Maintaining the status quo.

From very early on, this week’s episode, “Vested Interest,” speaks to the beginnings of Peter and Neal’s professional relationship to remind the viewer as well as the character’s of the strength and importance of their partnership. The need for Neal’s help in the Dutchman case is apparent despite Peter’s coyness, but Neal’s need for Peter must be parsed from the very premise of the show — Neal was caught and didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter but in general is a pretty good guy. But as the interview progresses a bit and the season’s Sam arc rears its head in the episode, we’re presented with, well maybe more reminded of, alternative and implicit justifications for their partnership. (Entertainingly ho yay interpretations aside; despite how fun a thoroughly erotic fan-fic story of Peter and Neal finally coming to terms with their yearning for one another, perhaps at a coffee shop or a hat store or as Neal paints Peter like one of his French girls, would be.)

Neal has daddy issues. Plain and simple. He’s had them since forever and they’ve been one of his biggest, most transparent character features since the love of his life exploded early in the series and he promptly forgot about her soon afterwards. Peter, with slight crow’s feet and mature gruff in his voice, exists so patently as a surrogate paternal figure that it should be no surprise that Neal’s unflinching youthfulness subsists without reproach from fans and characters alike. The way he womanizes as if women are simply bits of toys and candies; the way he rashly approaches any conflict or adversity without forethought; his apparent inability to handle the nuances of complex emotions; his largely juvenile and boyish demeanor. Peter seems to be the only man up for the job of setting him straight; sitting him down for the man-to-man talks a growing boy desperately needs sometimes. They’ve even been to a ball game together. To say that this is subtle would be to give too much credit, but it certainly keeps the dynamic of Det. Burke and Mr. Caffrey’s relationship more tight and interesting than any ankle bracelet ever could.

But from another angle, something Neal slyly suggests in the town hall discussion on the values of buddy cop-ing at FBI-con 2012 actually touches upon Peter’s implicit need for Neal. Neal spitefully hints at problems at home with Mrs. Burke and, not to take the point any further than necessary, it did at some point early on seem like Peter was having a hard time communicating with his wife, finding fulfillment, or being as exemplary at home as he is in the workforce. Elizabeth is portrayed as a beautiful, loving, and largely supportive woman these days but once upon a time, as in this episode as well, she was merely an afterthought, sometimes an inconvenience. Neal’s contribution to Peter and Elizabeth’s relationship is therefore undeniable. (Mozzie must be acknowledged here too.) It’s as if the Burkes, after some struggles, could finally conceive (the metaphor has grounding in several remarks made by the couple throughout the series) and the presence of the baby Caffrey has brought them even closer.

On both sides of the partnership between Neal and Peter there’s reinforcement of the value of family. This isn’t new to this season but what is new is the exploration into Neal’s actual family history. It definitely couldn’t have been a surprise that Neal’s father was in law enforcement when it was discovered several episodes ago because we already knew his surrogate daddy, Peter, is. All must remain the same and once again, the status quo seems maintained at all costs. Thus when the switcheroo finally occurs, surrogate dad for biological dad, there might not have been enough actual switch for viewers to take notice. Why would we be surprised that Neal’s dad would lie to him and keep his true intentions a secret, whether for genuinely altruistic reasons or just as an overbearing distrustful parent-figure, especially when this has been the premise of the series all along with Peter as dad? Why would Neal’s resolute attachment to an older man as he seeks to explore his own past and find the answers to questions he’s held on to for so long not lead him directly to his father? Again, how foreseeable does a reveal have to be before it ceases to be revealing?

I think the answer to the question rests on the appreciation one can garner from the elaborately deliberate set ups and pay outs of this series. Almost immediately after an exhibition of the best bulletproof vest in the world, the main character being shot doesn’t necessarily need to surprise you but certainly provides a provocative sort of assurance that White Collar means to coddle and protect you while it entertains you in the best ways it can muster. The world of the series is wholly artificial and manicured and neat with wholly manufactured grit (certainly neater and less gritty than actual New York City). The viewer is presented with surprises and drama not in a traditional sense of unsuspected occurrences and rising and falling action. Surprise, drama, and even family for White Collar are simulated and deconstructed and reinterpreted while the sheen and sturdiness of this world are painstakingly maintained. Sam as dad, in this sense, is less of a shocking reveal, but rather another brick laid to a solid foundation or another shiny thing to play with while safely inside. If at any point there was a fear of things being shaken up, the arrival of Papa Sam has surely put that to rest. And he was a pretty good dad on Everwood, so we’ll probably be taken care of anyway.

(And yes. I’ve ignored the A plot of the criminal of the week. But the plan was so lackluster and destined to fail that I’m fairly sure half of the fictional FBI agents in the vicinity simply ignored it as well, too distracted by those cookies.)