What I’m Watching: White Collar

White Collar: Season 1, Episode 12 “Bottlenecked” (B+)

It seems like Peter is just going under cover all the time these days, doesn’t it? Well, fortunately that’s not a bad thing, and it’s equally entertaining every time. In this instance, he gets the chance to make Neal’s jaw drop by very accurately and succinctly describing the wine he tries after making him think that he has no idea what he’s talking about at all. Neal’s transferal of Peter’s attempt at classifying a wine as “rich with nice body” to the woman who came over to them was very funny indeed. The conversations between Neal and Peter are always the best part of the show, and this episode featured a great scene where Peter immediately said “no” and Neal proceeded to point out, “that’s your favorite word isn’t it?” Another unexpectedly enjoyable exchange was between Peter and the little-seen Reese (James Rebhorn), where Peter remarked “this can’t be good” and Reese asked, “why does everyone say that when I walk into their office,” to which Peter retorted, “do you have good news,” and Reese despondently replied, “no.” Humor always works well on this and other USA shows, and it’s one of their strongest assets, especially for this program. A nice bonus, however, was hearing the fast-paced thriller-style music playing during the search in the garage. Neal and Peter may seem like they’re goofing off most of the time, but when all is said and done, Peter is still an FBI agent and he occasionally likes to take his job seriously and catch the bad guys. And what a clever way to do it in this episode.