[(Someday I'm going to write the fic where he and Peter talk about this.)]
...yes. Please do.
I feel like Mozzie has all these inviolable personal rules and priorities, and is willing to stick to them (or inclined to stick to them) even in the face of evidence that they'll make him and/or everyone around him miserable, because they're what he knows, and what he's relied on so far. Going so far as to give that ultimatum to Neal in Countdown, and the entire predicament he puts Neal into in S3 – which, yes, was half about freedom, and how Neal was essentially imprisoned and dancing to the FBI's tune, but there was also so much about it that was about the score, which by that point Mozzie had already stolen (taking the rush of the con somewhat out of it), and Neal has never been shy about saying It's not about the money. It's about the people. And Neal has always tended toward trying desperately to belong somewhere, from planning out a future life with Kate and kids to choking on the Adler con because he felt like people cared about him, there. ...and Mozzie was calling him on his "paternalistic relationship with the suit" as early as What Happens In Burma, and talking about how he knew it would be hard for Neal to leave at the end of Dentist of Detroit.
But they have to leave, because it will be better, and it takes him until he's actually trying to leave, alone, without Neal, to really stop and confront that in a meaningful way. And even then, I feel like he doesn't so much accept that this is a good thing as surrender to the inevitability of it remaining the status quo.
[Not just because of how incredibly gentle he is with Neal, there - although that's part of it, and I love that there's no anger and no judgment, there, just stark terror for Neal and then overwhelming relief - but because of the way he deals with Fowler.]
Yes, yes, yes. I adore that Peter is such a good sport about things, and doesn't kick people when they're down. Even when they're criminals, sometimes. And yet has no problems calling the people he works with – and even his superiors – on their bullshit when he feels like they're bullshitting, and then can back off when he feels like they've learned their lesson. (The vitriol with which he went after Agent Rice in Front Man and the grace with which he steps back and offers to let her take the spotlight when they've won is such a wonderful pair of moments.)
[I also have this whole headcanon where Kate and Fowler were like a darker, sharper-edged version of Neal and Peter where he starts off chasing her and then they gradually start working together sort of and they never quite trust each other but they snark at each other a lot.]
Ironically, I was playing with an idea like this a bit ago, though I never did anything with it. It really does work, though.
[Kate]
I have to say, I like your headcanon for Kate a hell of a lot more than anything I was able to glean from the show's execution. (I... tend to have a very low tolerance for romance and traditional Western depictions of romance, which is why the fact that I found myself actually shipping Peter and Elizabeth completely floored me when I started watching the show. And having the relationship filtered through Neal's perspective – I gripe with some of my friends that you can actually see the logic centers of Neal's brain shut down when Kate is involved – meant that almost every time Kate was onscreen, it was buried in a lot of stuff that really didn't work for me, tonally or narratively, as a viewer. But I would read the crap out of your Kate, because there's so much more depth there.)
[because it's easy to forget just how good Neal is at what he does. Most of the time we see him with his wings clipped]
Heh. I have kinda mixed feelings about this, because on the one hand, I do completely adore competence-as-badassery; the part of Empire City where Mozzie, June, Neal and Peter are all working together made me intensely happy, for example. And watching Neal be clever is always entertaining. But I find myself more usually on Peter's side, and it gets a little tiring watching my guy made a fool of time and time again and being expected to cheer about it. (Which is... one of the reasons I find a lot of S3 nigh-unwatchable, really; I totally buy Neal not being able to betray Mozzie's expectations in him but not being able to commit to the con, and thus dragging his feet because he doesn't want to burn either bridge and is hoping that if he doesn't look too hard at the predicament, it'll stop being able to see him, or something. But half the season is Neal and Mozzie pulling things over on Peter and then toasting each other and smirking about it, and by the time Neal BASE jumps off a building and then sneaks back into the storeroom to smirk about it, I was about ready to strangle him. And it's one of those things where I would be so much more okay if there was some narrative awareness of what was going on and that this was a sketchy-as-hell thing to be going on, but there wasn't. It came across as all, "Neal is in trouble! Neal got himself out of it! YAY NEAL!" ...I like having a good dose of What The Hell, Hero, in my media. :/ ) And, well...
[and he has this combination of terrifying competence and dangerous tunnel vision that narrows the closer he gets to his goal to the point where at the end he sees nothing outside it.]
Yes. Yes, yes yes. And I love that it's completely terrifying for everyone around him, and completely terrifying in implication, and incredibly dangerous, because no one is going to be able to predict what he's going to do or what's going to happen to anything in the general vicinity. (Every time I watch the sequence in Family Business where Neal says "One way or another, we're going to make sure he goes down for murder," I have this gut reaction of Oh god Neal hopefully in a way which does not involve YOU GETTING MURDERED, YOURSELF!", because Neal with his gloves off does not have the limits on his behavior that normal people do.)
I just... wish that the danger came across more palpably, but that's not really the tone of the show.
(And don't get me started on the phenomenon of consequence.)
[And, um, yeah, that got long. I have A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS SHOW.]
Hah. I like long! And yeah, I do also. ...I find that when I really engage with something, I tend to rip it into little pieces, which may make me come across as more critical than I actually am, so, er, apologies if that's coming across here. But I completely adore so many aspects of canon that the parts that don't work for me stick out.
And even then, I feel like he doesn't so much accept that this is a good thing as surrender to the inevitability of it remaining the status quo.
Yes, this - the thing about Mozzie is he is absolutely, one hundred percent convinced that the feds are eventually going to screw Neal over and break his heart and/or get him locked up or killed. It's something he knows, as sure as gravity or the sun going down. Happily ever after isn't for guys like them. And he thought this time he could make Neal see reason but no, once Neal has his heart set on something he will not be turned aside, and now he's decided Peter and the FBI are his happily ever after and by mid-S3 Mozzie has finally accepted that all he can do is hold on, and watch, and wait, and be there to help Neal pick up the pieces, again, when it all blows up in Neal's face again as Mozzie knows it will. Because everything in Mozzie's life experiences has taught him that this is the way the world works.
I would read the crap out of your Kate, because there's so much more depth there.
Thank you! :) I do wish canon had developed her more - there's a lot of potential for depth that didn't get explored as much as it could have. (Which is what fic is for, of course.) To be honest, I find Kate's journey toward the wrong side of the law, and the choices she makes and how she learns to live with them and how she tries to take control of her life, a lot more interesting than Neal's journey away from it, but then found families on the fringes of society are kind of a thing, for me. I have a lot of pre-series Neal&Kate&Mozzie plotbunnies:
Five hours ago she got the text: Got him he’s hurt need a car corner of 34th and Park NOW.
Now the light is fading outside, and in the silence she can hear tires squealing, cars sliding on ice in the motel parking lot. There’s a puddle in the tiled entryway, snow blown in through the crack under the door.
“An ‘89 Toyota. Seriously?” Mozzie shakes his head at her. “Baby’s first grand theft auto and you go for the ‘89 Toyota.”
“What, you think Neal would rather have been rescued in a Ferrari?”
“He’s Neal. What do you think?”
Kate chokes on a sharp bark of laughter. “It’s what was available.”
The driver had been a woman about her own age, dark hair in a hasty ponytail and a battered denim jacket that, like the car, had clearly seen better days; Kate watched her leave the engine running to duck into a convenience store; there were cheap coloring books piled in the back seat and a child’s coat that had obviously been mended by hand.
The back door stuck; the woman, whoever she was, clearly couldn’t afford to have it repaired. (Kate thinks she should care about this.) She’s stolen many things, in the last year, but that car is the first thing she can’t possibly convince herself the owner won’t miss.
(She should care, but right now all she can think of are those extra three seconds Moz spent wrestling the door open before they could get Neal into the back seat and away and safe.)
(This is the backstory of that first job with Wilkes that they talk about in Front Man, which will get finished someday.)
I do think that if Neal loved someone that much there would have been a good reason - they were together for almost seven years, I think, and Neal is too good at reading people to not know what sort of person she was for that long. I think his view of her is somewhat idealized, but he's exaggerating good qualities that she actually has, not making things up.
Yes, Neal does some incredibly stupid things because of her, certainly. But I don't agree with the common fandom perception that his trust in her or his faith in her loyalty to him is evidence that he's too blinded by love to think clearly. It's canon that she visited him "every week like clockwork" in prison for three and a half years. That's a long time to wait for somebody. And yes, her actions in S1 often are a little suspicious and confusing (largely, in part, because the writers just want to have Kate do something mysterious for the sake of adding mystery, or something) but I'd say she's earned the benefit of the doubt.
I totally buy Neal not being able to betray Mozzie's expectations in him but not being able to commit to the con, and thus dragging his feet because he doesn't want to burn either bridge and is hoping that if he doesn't look too hard at the predicament, it'll stop being able to see him, or something
I ... really don't. He's been refusing to go along with what Mozzie thinks is the sensible course of action ever since the first job, when he decides to give up his chance to steal billions of dollars from Adler to spend the evening on a park bench with Kate.
(I've always wondered if he told Kate about that, later, after she'd joined their life of crime and started robbing banks with him. And how she reacted. I can imagine she'd be rather touched and utterly exasperated at the same time, like, dude, that's really sweet but I wasn't being serious you could have come up with some excuse and then we'd have a bazillion dollars right now or something.)
But this sudden inability to stand up to Mozzie and say this is not what I want makes no sense. He was willing to say goodbye to Mozzie at the end of S1. And Mozzie certainly doesn't approve of Neal running around trying to shoot people, and Neal isn't discouraged in the slightest. Maybe if the show had emphasized a bit more that Kate was the center of Neal's life for eight years and with her and her killer both dead Neal is flailing because he doesn't have a clue what he really wants anymore, it might have been more convincing. But Mozzie is really not very good at standing up to Neal when Neal digs his heels in about something, so I don't understand why Neal doesn't just tell Mozzie they're not doing this.
(I suppose one could make the argument that this only proves that he'll stand up to Mozzie and/or give up the chance to have a lot of money when Kate is involved, thus proving that Neal loves Kate more than he loves Peter or anyone else in his life, and my little shipper heart would be perfectly happy with that, but I really doubt that's what the writers intended to convey.)
And I've ranted at length about this elsewhere, but I feel like S3 is primarily plot-driven, not character-driven - Neal won't stand up to Mozzie because the plot won't work if he does. Neal wants to run off with the treasure because, well, the plot requires him to want it. But we get no other explanation. I don't understand why he wants the treasure. I honestly don't believe he does want it. (If they'd introduced some of the S4 backstory in S3 it might have made more sense, maybe? Neal's relationship with money is a fascinating and complicated subject all on its own, and S4 suggests he grew up with some pretty severe financial uncertainty, but that's never addressed in S3.)
And then the writers hope that if they throw in enough "Neal is shiny! Wheeeeee!" capers the viewers won't notice that his motivations don't actually make any sense.
(I feel like in S3 and parts of S4 the show veers wildly back and forth between "crime is fun and sexy and exciting and isn't Neal shiny wheeeeeeeeeee!" and anvilicious moralizing along the lines of "Neal is a very bad person who must learn the error of his ways and stealing and lying are bad and wrong and will totally screw up your life" ... with no acknowledgement of any shades of grey in between. This is incredibly frustrating, because the shades of grey in between is where all the interesting stuff is, IMO. *sigh* I keep wanting this show to be more morally complex than it is. But I guess that is what fic is for.)
To me, the version of Neal we get in S3 and parts of S4 feels like a fundamentally different person from the S1-2 version. And not in a logical character growth and evolution sort of way, either - the two Neals are similar, certainly, but I don't see how the 3-4 version grew out of the 1-2 version. I spent most of S3 going ... "who are you and what have you done with Neal?" because that was not him.
(Except now I have to figure out a way to reconcile the two versions of him in a way that makes sense if I'm going to write the epic S4-in-DC AU fic. This is frustrating.)
(Every time I watch the sequence in Family Business where Neal says "One way or another, we're going to make sure he goes down for murder," I have this gut reaction of Oh god Neal hopefully in a way which does not involve YOU GETTING MURDERED, YOURSELF!", because Neal with his gloves off does not have the limits on his behavior that normal people do.)
I just... wish that the danger came across more palpably, but that's not really the tone of the show.
THIS. Yes. Neal is ... not very good at dealing with strong emotions. At all. And he's learned to keep himself under such tight control, most of the time, that when he breaks he really breaks, and it gets ugly. And yeah, everyone who knows him well can see this, and it scares the hell out of them.
I find that when I really engage with something, I tend to rip it into little pieces, which may make me come across as more critical ... I completely adore so many aspects of canon that the parts that don't work for me stick out.
... yeah, I know the feeling, and I hope I'm not coming across as too critical here, either. There's so much stuff that is so very awesome, which makes me notice the things that aren't, too.
[Because everything in Mozzie's life experiences has taught him that this is the way the world works.]
Yeah. And by the time canon rolls around, he's been routinely cutting off all chance to see that it might not be, because he takes you-can't-fire-me-I-quit to an art form.
While still being very, very loyal to Neal and being hurt when Neal doesn't trust him (telling him the stash was in Portland, etc) and planning for their retirement together on a tropical island and not seeing the contradiction in this at all.
[(This is the backstory of that first job with Wilkes that they talk about in Front Man, which will get finished someday.)]
Ooh. I eagerly await more of that. Especially when it deals with facing the fact that there are very few true victimless crimes, and even if you do have a strong moral core going into it, things aren't always so cut-and-dried. (Moral dilemmas! Shades of grey! These are the best things.)
[He's been refusing to go along with what Mozzie thinks is the sensible course of action ever since the first job, when he decides to give up his chance to steal billions of dollars from Adler to spend the evening on a park bench with Kate. [...] But this sudden inability to stand up to Mozzie and say 'this is not what I want' makes no sense.]
I'm not sure how sudden it is, really. Going back to what's probably the relevant conversation in the Adler arc between Neal and Mozzie, Neal doesn't really seem all that inclined to stand up to him:
Mozzie: Adler makes the transfer on Friday. And you still haven't gotten the password yet. Neal: I said I'll get it. I'll get it.
Mozzie: Oh, good, because i thought you were having second thoughts about abanonding your new town-and-country lifestyle. Don't kid yourself. Kate doesn't even know your real name. None of them do.
Neal: They care about me, okay? She cares about me.
Mozzie: Uh, no, She cares about Nick Halden. And he doesn't exist. I hear the suit's been asking around about you. He has a sketch.
Neal: Where did he get a sketch?
Mozzie: Oh, they always have a sketch or a print or something. Look, it's time to finish this job and move on.
(Neal nods, looking less than fully at ease with this.)
seems to imply that at that point he's already having reservations, but he doesn't come out and say No, I'm not doing this. He doesn't commit to one course of action. It's after that conversation that he asks Adler for the password, and after he gets the password that he's persuaded to stay with Kate, and after he misses the meeting by staying with Kate that he goes back and either lies to Mozzie or just lets him assume that he didn't get the password, saying "You said it yourself. This is a long con." By the time Adler disappears, Mozzie seems to still think Neal is working the con. If he'd intended to stand up to Mozzie and back out of the con, he wouldn't have gotten the password, and he wouldn't have let Mozzie believe he couldn't get it.
...which, you know, may be contorting the character to fit the script. Forging Bonds is not even an episode I particularly like, because it felt like the writers were trying really too hard to make everything and everyone and every scrap of backstory they'd hinted at fit an arbitrary plot to set up the season villain, and it gave me headache upon headache when I was trying to work out timelines. (I eventually decided that Neal got on a greyhound in St. Louis heading toward NYC and a series of increasingly improbable events delayed their arrival for five years. And also that Diana was a Time Lady.) The episode just seemed poorly-written, to me.
Which is always one of the interesting problems with canon: sometimes things ring true as character motivations, and sometimes you have to say "...no. Bad writers," and pull an I-reject-your-canon-and-substitute-my-own. And those spots will tend to vary wildly from viewer to viewer. :P
[He was willing to say goodbye to Mozzie at the end of S1. And Mozzie certainly doesn't approve of Neal running around trying to shoot people, and Neal isn't discouraged in the slightest.]
Though I feel like at that point, there wasn't really anything Mozzie could argue against. Neal was off to live a life of adventure, having been part of what could be read as a fantastically successful inside con on the FBI, with his government-sponsored disappearing act. He might not approve of Neal plotting out a whole future with Kate, replete with the assumptions of stability and domesticity, but he can't argue with Neal grabbing his freedom to pursue a life which just doesn't include him as a major fixture. Mozzie has, after all, been the one training it into Neal's head that people leave you, and stability and family isn't something Guys Like Them get, in the end. He hasn't left himself an avenue to put up a fight.
But when it comes to the choice between disappearing from under the FBI's nose and fleeing with the score of a lifetime vs. staying with the FBI on a two-mile leash and burrowing deeper into this illusion of domestic bliss, he has no problem pushing Neal and pushing hard, the way he did with the Adler con, because he sees Neal as someone who clearly needs instruction on this point.
And there are things like... well. Neal didn't want to listen to the black-box recording of Kate's plane with Mozzie; he came around. Neal didn't want to watch Ellen's video with Mozzie; he came around. Neal was committed to going after Fowler with a gun, to the point where he crashed through a con to do so (and seriously, the amount Neal screwed up about all of that – being on surveillance stealing a gun, grabbing the knife to slash the banner securement without gloves, leaving it behind, making the most conspicuous entrance ever, destroying what may or may not have been a valuable museum piece to make a warning shot against Fowler – that was pure, singleminded determination, no flare, no outside concern), and yet he didn't shoot Fowler, and he came around and thanked Mozzie for his part in stopping him. Neal might be very good at doing what he puts his mind to doing, but the impression I always got of him was someone who'd come across as completely intractable in the short term, but who could be talked around or swayed over time. Which is a quality I read both Mozzie and Peter as relying on, each of them trying to bring Neal around to their specific worldview.
[And I've ranted at length about this elsewhere, but I feel like S3 is primarily plot-driven, not character-driven - Neal won't stand up to Mozzie because the plot won't work if he does.]
Hah. I'm reminded of the analysis, I can't remember who made it, that Hamlet spends almost all of his play approaching and backing off from killing his uncle, and there are all sorts of theories on why he does this, like maybe he has some kind of oedipal issue, or maybe this, or maybe that... but that's not the reason he does it; the reason is that there have to bee three acts stuffed in the middle and they've got to come from somewhere. Which is how I feel about a lot of White Collar, sometimes; the logic centers of Neal's brain shut down so he can't figure out the blindingly obvious (there's a map, there's an X in Bordeaux on the map, X marks the spot; or, there's a letter from Kate, they used to communicate with codes in letters, maybe he should look for a code) for half an episode, because they need some dramatic tension from somewhere, right? Or, Kate has to be off in the shadows doing mysterious and vaguely manipulative things for an entire season because they need something out of reach for Neal to obsess over, right? Halp, how do you plot, how does plot arc.
And then we as viewers – who, to be fair, have a lot more time to sit back and pick things apart than the writers likely had to weave them together – have to find some way all of this slightly nonsensical stuff can make sense.
[Neal wants to run off with the treasure because, well, the plot requires him to want it. But we get no other explanation. I don't understand why he wants the treasure. I honestly don't believe he does want it.]
I really don't think he wants it, either.
I think he's much more motivated by not wanting to disappoint Mozzie, in the same way that he doesn't want to disappoint Peter, even though both of those goals end up having him playing parts he's not cut out to be. (Peter wants him to settle down and be a nice young man who isn't tempted by the con; Mozzie wants him to never settle down and stop relying on these transitory interpersonal relationships which are bound to let him down.) And I don't think Neal is lying when he says it's about the people – I feel like he wants to belong with people, he wants to feel like he can have stable relationships with people, he can rely on people, he won't blink and have those people disappear. But he has no idea how one goes about getting that. And the only thing in his life that he's been able to make work is this sort of transaction-based paradigm; he plays a role that gives someone what they want, they respond by giving him the connection which he craves. He stops working the law with Peter, Peter vanishes. He stops working the con with Mozzie, Mozzie vanishes. And when those two goals come in direct conflict, a holding pattern is the best he can do until his hand is forced one way or another.
[(I feel like in S3 and parts of S4 the show veers wildly back and forth between "crime is fun and sexy and exciting and isn't Neal shiny wheeeeeeeeeee!" and anvilicious moralizing along the lines of "Neal is a very bad person who must learn the error of his ways and stealing and lying are bad and wrong and will totally screw up your life" ... with no acknowledgement of any shades of grey in between. This is incredibly frustrating, because the shades of grey in between is where all the interesting stuff is, IMO. *sigh* I keep wanting this show to be more morally complex than it is. But I guess that is what fic is for.)]
Hooo, yeah. ~_~ My pet peeve is more with the fact that Neal is so damn good at what he does that there's almost never any consequence that forces him to confront the complexity of what he's doing, and, I mean, by the end of S3, even Peter is calling him on it. ("Neal breaks the rules, but because he's Neal, there's never any repercussion for it, and he gets a gold star." I'm probably paraphrasing.) As the seasons wear on, more consequence becomes apparent, but it's usually all consequence that falls directly on the Burkes' house and caves in their roof. (Which makes a certain amount of sense – Peter and El, as law-abiding sorts, are tied into a more rigid framework of available options and possible consequence. But it still makes me want to hit the writers with things.) And that sort of "Nothing bad ever comes from what I'm doing!" "NEAL, YOU ARE DOING A BAD THING, LISTEN TO ME AND STOP THE BAD THING YOU ARE DOING." dichotomy doesn't leave a lot of room for anything but glamorization and moralizing.
...there was, in one edition of GURPS, a trait (feat? attribute? other term? I haven't touched GURPS or any other tabletop RP system in years) which stuck in my head, though I don't have all the technical detail down and can only remember the gist of it. It was called Jinx, I believe, and it basically gave your character a boost in skill points or the luck stat or something like that, with a tradeoff that everyone else in your party took a hit to their luck whenever you were nearby. I feel like Neal maxed out his available levels in Jinx.
Ooh. I eagerly await more of that. Especially when it deals with facing the fact that there are very few true victimless crimes, and even if you do have a strong moral core going into it, things aren't always so cut-and-dried. (Moral dilemmas! Shades of grey! These are the best things.)
It's actually two fics - that snippet is from a shorter piece from Kate's POV of the aftermath, but I'm eventually going to write out the whole story of that job, probably with interspersed flashbacks to Neal's early years before Kate and Mozzie.
In my head this is "the one where Neal and Kate and Mozzie decide they're not going to be Masked Vigilantes For Greater Justice" - or more like Kate and Mozzie decide and inform Neal of this decision and make it clear to him that this is not up for debate.
I've decided that the Wilkes job came right after the three-man job with Keller where Keller shot that guy who dropped his passport, and the whole reason Neal got it into his head that he was going to sign on with Wilkes in order to sabotage the job and save people was because he was seriously messed up about watching that guy get shot, so it was less of a "Neal is awesome and wants to save people" sort of thing and more of a "Neal is having issues and half trying to get himself killed" sort of thing, and possibly almost getting Kate or Mozzie killed too, when normally he'd stay far away from guys like Wilkes altogether, and once it's over and Neal almost does get himself killed Kate and Mozzie decide that's enough.
sometimes things ring true as character motivations, and sometimes you have to say "...no. Bad writers," and pull an I-reject-your-canon-and-substitute-my-own. And those spots will tend to vary wildly from viewer to viewer. :P
Heh. Yeah, I do this with ... pretty much all of S3. And about half of S4.
And trying to figure out pre-series timelines will totally make your head explode. Hell, trying to figure out in-series timelines is hard because they do this thing where each season is less than a year. And apparently they only film in summer, since S1 ended, or something. Out of the Box is the last time we see anyone wearing a coat, I think.
(And then they go and do things like have the malfunctioning air conditioner in the judge's chamber be a major plot point in Free Fall while everyone is walking around outside wearing coats for that whole episode. And, well, I am the sort of writer who likes to throw in purpley descriptions of weather and scenery and stuff, which is really hard to do when you can never tell what season it is at any point in canon! This is a thing which bothers me. I like my purpley weather descriptions.)
Neal might be very good at doing what he puts his mind to doing, but the impression I always got of him was someone who'd come across as completely intractable in the short term, but who could be talked around or swayed over time.
Hmmmm ... but there's a difference between the sort of pretending-to-go-along-while-dragging-his-heels that he does with the Adler con, and during most of S3, and that sort of ninety-miles-an-hour-toward-a-cliff's-edge-and-stomping-on-the-brakes-at-the-last-minute we see in S2.
I see what you mean about Neal and Mozzie and the Adler con - but the Adler con was eight or maybe nine years ago, and he and Mozzie were still very much in a student/mentor sort of relationship, at that point. Whereas even by the end of Forging Bonds, Neal is clearly the leader in their partnership - and already capable of doing ninety miles an hour toward the cliff. (Mozzie says "I think I know where Kate is but I'm pretty sure it's a trap and the feds are going to be waiting to arrest you," and Neal's all "Great! Where is she?") S3 seems to have Neal and Mozzie reverting back to the dynamic they had in the very earliest days of their partnership, when Mozzie was the leader, and I'm not sure why.
it's usually all consequence that falls directly on the Burkes' house and caves in their roof. (Which makes a certain amount of sense – Peter and El, as law-abiding sorts, are tied into a more rigid framework of available options and possible consequence
And Neal isn't used to a world where you can't just pick up and leave town and find a new house when the roof caves in. It's not so much that his actions haven't had consequences as that he and the people he loves have always been able to leave those consequences behind - he thinks he wants to stop running but he doesn't really understand, yet, what that implies. He's used to being able to leave town, and he's used to the most important people in his life (Kate and Mozzie) being willing and able to leave town with him, while the consequences fall on other people who aren't his family, who aren't people he loves. But Peter and El aren't Kate and Mozzie - having the kind of stable life they have, the kind of stable life Neal thinks he wants, makes them vulnerable to the kind of consequences Neal's unstable, always-on-the-move lifestyle has let him avoid until now.
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[(Someday I'm going to write the fic where he and Peter talk about this.)]
...yes. Please do.
I feel like Mozzie has all these inviolable personal rules and priorities, and is willing to stick to them (or inclined to stick to them) even in the face of evidence that they'll make him and/or everyone around him miserable, because they're what he knows, and what he's relied on so far. Going so far as to give that ultimatum to Neal in Countdown, and the entire predicament he puts Neal into in S3 – which, yes, was half about freedom, and how Neal was essentially imprisoned and dancing to the FBI's tune, but there was also so much about it that was about the score, which by that point Mozzie had already stolen (taking the rush of the con somewhat out of it), and Neal has never been shy about saying It's not about the money. It's about the people. And Neal has always tended toward trying desperately to belong somewhere, from planning out a future life with Kate and kids to choking on the Adler con because he felt like people cared about him, there. ...and Mozzie was calling him on his "paternalistic relationship with the suit" as early as What Happens In Burma, and talking about how he knew it would be hard for Neal to leave at the end of Dentist of Detroit.
But they have to leave, because it will be better, and it takes him until he's actually trying to leave, alone, without Neal, to really stop and confront that in a meaningful way. And even then, I feel like he doesn't so much accept that this is a good thing as surrender to the inevitability of it remaining the status quo.
[Not just because of how incredibly gentle he is with Neal, there - although that's part of it, and I love that there's no anger and no judgment, there, just stark terror for Neal and then overwhelming relief - but because of the way he deals with Fowler.]
Yes, yes, yes. I adore that Peter is such a good sport about things, and doesn't kick people when they're down. Even when they're criminals, sometimes. And yet has no problems calling the people he works with – and even his superiors – on their bullshit when he feels like they're bullshitting, and then can back off when he feels like they've learned their lesson. (The vitriol with which he went after Agent Rice in Front Man and the grace with which he steps back and offers to let her take the spotlight when they've won is such a wonderful pair of moments.)
[I also have this whole headcanon where Kate and Fowler were like a darker, sharper-edged version of Neal and Peter where he starts off chasing her and then they gradually start working together sort of and they never quite trust each other but they snark at each other a lot.]
Ironically, I was playing with an idea like this a bit ago, though I never did anything with it. It really does work, though.
[Kate]
I have to say, I like your headcanon for Kate a hell of a lot more than anything I was able to glean from the show's execution. (I... tend to have a very low tolerance for romance and traditional Western depictions of romance, which is why the fact that I found myself actually shipping Peter and Elizabeth completely floored me when I started watching the show. And having the relationship filtered through Neal's perspective – I gripe with some of my friends that you can actually see the logic centers of Neal's brain shut down when Kate is involved – meant that almost every time Kate was onscreen, it was buried in a lot of stuff that really didn't work for me, tonally or narratively, as a viewer. But I would read the crap out of your Kate, because there's so much more depth there.)
[because it's easy to forget just how good Neal is at what he does. Most of the time we see him with his wings clipped]
Heh. I have kinda mixed feelings about this, because on the one hand, I do completely adore competence-as-badassery; the part of Empire City where Mozzie, June, Neal and Peter are all working together made me intensely happy, for example. And watching Neal be clever is always entertaining. But I find myself more usually on Peter's side, and it gets a little tiring watching my guy made a fool of time and time again and being expected to cheer about it. (Which is... one of the reasons I find a lot of S3 nigh-unwatchable, really; I totally buy Neal not being able to betray Mozzie's expectations in him but not being able to commit to the con, and thus dragging his feet because he doesn't want to burn either bridge and is hoping that if he doesn't look too hard at the predicament, it'll stop being able to see him, or something. But half the season is Neal and Mozzie pulling things over on Peter and then toasting each other and smirking about it, and by the time Neal BASE jumps off a building and then sneaks back into the storeroom to smirk about it, I was about ready to strangle him. And it's one of those things where I would be so much more okay if there was some narrative awareness of what was going on and that this was a sketchy-as-hell thing to be going on, but there wasn't. It came across as all, "Neal is in trouble! Neal got himself out of it! YAY NEAL!" ...I like having a good dose of What The Hell, Hero, in my media. :/ ) And, well...
[and he has this combination of terrifying competence and dangerous tunnel vision that narrows the closer he gets to his goal to the point where at the end he sees nothing outside it.]
Yes. Yes, yes yes. And I love that it's completely terrifying for everyone around him, and completely terrifying in implication, and incredibly dangerous, because no one is going to be able to predict what he's going to do or what's going to happen to anything in the general vicinity. (Every time I watch the sequence in Family Business where Neal says "One way or another, we're going to make sure he goes down for murder," I have this gut reaction of Oh god Neal hopefully in a way which does not involve YOU GETTING MURDERED, YOURSELF!", because Neal with his gloves off does not have the limits on his behavior that normal people do.)
I just... wish that the danger came across more palpably, but that's not really the tone of the show.
(And don't get me started on the phenomenon of consequence.)
[And, um, yeah, that got long. I have A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS SHOW.]
Hah. I like long! And yeah, I do also. ...I find that when I really engage with something, I tend to rip it into little pieces, which may make me come across as more critical than I actually am, so, er, apologies if that's coming across here. But I completely adore so many aspects of canon that the parts that don't work for me stick out.
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Yes, this - the thing about Mozzie is he is absolutely, one hundred percent convinced that the feds are eventually going to screw Neal over and break his heart and/or get him locked up or killed. It's something he knows, as sure as gravity or the sun going down. Happily ever after isn't for guys like them. And he thought this time he could make Neal see reason but no, once Neal has his heart set on something he will not be turned aside, and now he's decided Peter and the FBI are his happily ever after and by mid-S3 Mozzie has finally accepted that all he can do is hold on, and watch, and wait, and be there to help Neal pick up the pieces, again, when it all blows up in Neal's face again as Mozzie knows it will. Because everything in Mozzie's life experiences has taught him that this is the way the world works.
I would read the crap out of your Kate, because there's so much more depth there.
Thank you! :) I do wish canon had developed her more - there's a lot of potential for depth that didn't get explored as much as it could have. (Which is what fic is for, of course.) To be honest, I find Kate's journey toward the wrong side of the law, and the choices she makes and how she learns to live with them and how she tries to take control of her life, a lot more interesting than Neal's journey away from it, but then found families on the fringes of society are kind of a thing, for me. I have a lot of pre-series Neal&Kate&Mozzie plotbunnies:
I do think that if Neal loved someone that much there would have been a good reason - they were together for almost seven years, I think, and Neal is too good at reading people to not know what sort of person she was for that long. I think his view of her is somewhat idealized, but he's exaggerating good qualities that she actually has, not making things up.
Yes, Neal does some incredibly stupid things because of her, certainly. But I don't agree with the common fandom perception that his trust in her or his faith in her loyalty to him is evidence that he's too blinded by love to think clearly. It's canon that she visited him "every week like clockwork" in prison for three and a half years. That's a long time to wait for somebody. And yes, her actions in S1 often are a little suspicious and confusing (largely, in part, because the writers just want to have Kate do something mysterious for the sake of adding mystery, or something) but I'd say she's earned the benefit of the doubt.
I totally buy Neal not being able to betray Mozzie's expectations in him but not being able to commit to the con, and thus dragging his feet because he doesn't want to burn either bridge and is hoping that if he doesn't look too hard at the predicament, it'll stop being able to see him, or something
I ... really don't. He's been refusing to go along with what Mozzie thinks is the sensible course of action ever since the first job, when he decides to give up his chance to steal billions of dollars from Adler to spend the evening on a park bench with Kate.
(I've always wondered if he told Kate about that, later, after she'd joined their life of crime and started robbing banks with him. And how she reacted. I can imagine she'd be rather touched and utterly exasperated at the same time, like, dude, that's really sweet but I wasn't being serious you could have come up with some excuse and then we'd have a bazillion dollars right now or something.)
But this sudden inability to stand up to Mozzie and say this is not what I want makes no sense. He was willing to say goodbye to Mozzie at the end of S1. And Mozzie certainly doesn't approve of Neal running around trying to shoot people, and Neal isn't discouraged in the slightest. Maybe if the show had emphasized a bit more that Kate was the center of Neal's life for eight years and with her and her killer both dead Neal is flailing because he doesn't have a clue what he really wants anymore, it might have been more convincing. But Mozzie is really not very good at standing up to Neal when Neal digs his heels in about something, so I don't understand why Neal doesn't just tell Mozzie they're not doing this.
(I suppose one could make the argument that this only proves that he'll stand up to Mozzie and/or give up the chance to have a lot of money when Kate is involved, thus proving that Neal loves Kate more than he loves Peter or anyone else in his life, and my little shipper heart would be perfectly happy with that, but I really doubt that's what the writers intended to convey.)
And I've ranted at length about this elsewhere, but I feel like S3 is primarily plot-driven, not character-driven - Neal won't stand up to Mozzie because the plot won't work if he does. Neal wants to run off with the treasure because, well, the plot requires him to want it. But we get no other explanation. I don't understand why he wants the treasure. I honestly don't believe he does want it. (If they'd introduced some of the S4 backstory in S3 it might have made more sense, maybe? Neal's relationship with money is a fascinating and complicated subject all on its own, and S4 suggests he grew up with some pretty severe financial uncertainty, but that's never addressed in S3.)
And then the writers hope that if they throw in enough "Neal is shiny! Wheeeeee!" capers the viewers won't notice that his motivations don't actually make any sense.
(I feel like in S3 and parts of S4 the show veers wildly back and forth between "crime is fun and sexy and exciting and isn't Neal shiny wheeeeeeeeeee!" and anvilicious moralizing along the lines of "Neal is a very bad person who must learn the error of his ways and stealing and lying are bad and wrong and will totally screw up your life" ... with no acknowledgement of any shades of grey in between. This is incredibly frustrating, because the shades of grey in between is where all the interesting stuff is, IMO. *sigh* I keep wanting this show to be more morally complex than it is. But I guess that is what fic is for.)
To me, the version of Neal we get in S3 and parts of S4 feels like a fundamentally different person from the S1-2 version. And not in a logical character growth and evolution sort of way, either - the two Neals are similar, certainly, but I don't see how the 3-4 version grew out of the 1-2 version. I spent most of S3 going ... "who are you and what have you done with Neal?" because that was not him.
(Except now I have to figure out a way to reconcile the two versions of him in a way that makes sense if I'm going to write the epic S4-in-DC AU fic. This is frustrating.)
(Every time I watch the sequence in Family Business where Neal says "One way or another, we're going to make sure he goes down for murder," I have this gut reaction of Oh god Neal hopefully in a way which does not involve YOU GETTING MURDERED, YOURSELF!", because Neal with his gloves off does not have the limits on his behavior that normal people do.)
I just... wish that the danger came across more palpably, but that's not really the tone of the show.
THIS. Yes. Neal is ... not very good at dealing with strong emotions. At all. And he's learned to keep himself under such tight control, most of the time, that when he breaks he really breaks, and it gets ugly. And yeah, everyone who knows him well can see this, and it scares the hell out of them.
I find that when I really engage with something, I tend to rip it into little pieces, which may make me come across as more critical ... I completely adore so many aspects of canon that the parts that don't work for me stick out.
... yeah, I know the feeling, and I hope I'm not coming across as too critical here, either. There's so much stuff that is so very awesome, which makes me notice the things that aren't, too.
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Yeah. And by the time canon rolls around, he's been routinely cutting off all chance to see that it might not be, because he takes you-can't-fire-me-I-quit to an art form.
While still being very, very loyal to Neal and being hurt when Neal doesn't trust him (telling him the stash was in Portland, etc) and planning for their retirement together on a tropical island and not seeing the contradiction in this at all.
[(This is the backstory of that first job with Wilkes that they talk about in Front Man, which will get finished someday.)]
Ooh. I eagerly await more of that. Especially when it deals with facing the fact that there are very few true victimless crimes, and even if you do have a strong moral core going into it, things aren't always so cut-and-dried. (Moral dilemmas! Shades of grey! These are the best things.)
[He's been refusing to go along with what Mozzie thinks is the sensible course of action ever since the first job, when he decides to give up his chance to steal billions of dollars from Adler to spend the evening on a park bench with Kate. [...] But this sudden inability to stand up to Mozzie and say 'this is not what I want' makes no sense.]
I'm not sure how sudden it is, really. Going back to what's probably the relevant conversation in the Adler arc between Neal and Mozzie, Neal doesn't really seem all that inclined to stand up to him:
seems to imply that at that point he's already having reservations, but he doesn't come out and say No, I'm not doing this. He doesn't commit to one course of action. It's after that conversation that he asks Adler for the password, and after he gets the password that he's persuaded to stay with Kate, and after he misses the meeting by staying with Kate that he goes back and either lies to Mozzie or just lets him assume that he didn't get the password, saying "You said it yourself. This is a long con." By the time Adler disappears, Mozzie seems to still think Neal is working the con. If he'd intended to stand up to Mozzie and back out of the con, he wouldn't have gotten the password, and he wouldn't have let Mozzie believe he couldn't get it.
...which, you know, may be contorting the character to fit the script. Forging Bonds is not even an episode I particularly like, because it felt like the writers were trying really too hard to make everything and everyone and every scrap of backstory they'd hinted at fit an arbitrary plot to set up the season villain, and it gave me headache upon headache when I was trying to work out timelines. (I eventually decided that Neal got on a greyhound in St. Louis heading toward NYC and a series of increasingly improbable events delayed their arrival for five years. And also that Diana was a Time Lady.) The episode just seemed poorly-written, to me.
Which is always one of the interesting problems with canon: sometimes things ring true as character motivations, and sometimes you have to say "...no. Bad writers," and pull an I-reject-your-canon-and-substitute-my-own. And those spots will tend to vary wildly from viewer to viewer. :P
[He was willing to say goodbye to Mozzie at the end of S1. And Mozzie certainly doesn't approve of Neal running around trying to shoot people, and Neal isn't discouraged in the slightest.]
Though I feel like at that point, there wasn't really anything Mozzie could argue against. Neal was off to live a life of adventure, having been part of what could be read as a fantastically successful inside con on the FBI, with his government-sponsored disappearing act. He might not approve of Neal plotting out a whole future with Kate, replete with the assumptions of stability and domesticity, but he can't argue with Neal grabbing his freedom to pursue a life which just doesn't include him as a major fixture. Mozzie has, after all, been the one training it into Neal's head that people leave you, and stability and family isn't something Guys Like Them get, in the end. He hasn't left himself an avenue to put up a fight.
But when it comes to the choice between disappearing from under the FBI's nose and fleeing with the score of a lifetime vs. staying with the FBI on a two-mile leash and burrowing deeper into this illusion of domestic bliss, he has no problem pushing Neal and pushing hard, the way he did with the Adler con, because he sees Neal as someone who clearly needs instruction on this point.
And there are things like... well. Neal didn't want to listen to the black-box recording of Kate's plane with Mozzie; he came around. Neal didn't want to watch Ellen's video with Mozzie; he came around. Neal was committed to going after Fowler with a gun, to the point where he crashed through a con to do so (and seriously, the amount Neal screwed up about all of that – being on surveillance stealing a gun, grabbing the knife to slash the banner securement without gloves, leaving it behind, making the most conspicuous entrance ever, destroying what may or may not have been a valuable museum piece to make a warning shot against Fowler – that was pure, singleminded determination, no flare, no outside concern), and yet he didn't shoot Fowler, and he came around and thanked Mozzie for his part in stopping him. Neal might be very good at doing what he puts his mind to doing, but the impression I always got of him was someone who'd come across as completely intractable in the short term, but who could be talked around or swayed over time. Which is a quality I read both Mozzie and Peter as relying on, each of them trying to bring Neal around to their specific worldview.
[And I've ranted at length about this elsewhere, but I feel like S3 is primarily plot-driven, not character-driven - Neal won't stand up to Mozzie because the plot won't work if he does.]
Hah. I'm reminded of the analysis, I can't remember who made it, that Hamlet spends almost all of his play approaching and backing off from killing his uncle, and there are all sorts of theories on why he does this, like maybe he has some kind of oedipal issue, or maybe this, or maybe that... but that's not the reason he does it; the reason is that there have to bee three acts stuffed in the middle and they've got to come from somewhere. Which is how I feel about a lot of White Collar, sometimes; the logic centers of Neal's brain shut down so he can't figure out the blindingly obvious (there's a map, there's an X in Bordeaux on the map, X marks the spot; or, there's a letter from Kate, they used to communicate with codes in letters, maybe he should look for a code) for half an episode, because they need some dramatic tension from somewhere, right? Or, Kate has to be off in the shadows doing mysterious and vaguely manipulative things for an entire season because they need something out of reach for Neal to obsess over, right? Halp, how do you plot, how does plot arc.
And then we as viewers – who, to be fair, have a lot more time to sit back and pick things apart than the writers likely had to weave them together – have to find some way all of this slightly nonsensical stuff can make sense.
[Neal wants to run off with the treasure because, well, the plot requires him to want it. But we get no other explanation. I don't understand why he wants the treasure. I honestly don't believe he does want it.]
I really don't think he wants it, either.
I think he's much more motivated by not wanting to disappoint Mozzie, in the same way that he doesn't want to disappoint Peter, even though both of those goals end up having him playing parts he's not cut out to be. (Peter wants him to settle down and be a nice young man who isn't tempted by the con; Mozzie wants him to never settle down and stop relying on these transitory interpersonal relationships which are bound to let him down.) And I don't think Neal is lying when he says it's about the people – I feel like he wants to belong with people, he wants to feel like he can have stable relationships with people, he can rely on people, he won't blink and have those people disappear. But he has no idea how one goes about getting that. And the only thing in his life that he's been able to make work is this sort of transaction-based paradigm; he plays a role that gives someone what they want, they respond by giving him the connection which he craves. He stops working the law with Peter, Peter vanishes. He stops working the con with Mozzie, Mozzie vanishes. And when those two goals come in direct conflict, a holding pattern is the best he can do until his hand is forced one way or another.
[(I feel like in S3 and parts of S4 the show veers wildly back and forth between "crime is fun and sexy and exciting and isn't Neal shiny wheeeeeeeeeee!" and anvilicious moralizing along the lines of "Neal is a very bad person who must learn the error of his ways and stealing and lying are bad and wrong and will totally screw up your life" ... with no acknowledgement of any shades of grey in between. This is incredibly frustrating, because the shades of grey in between is where all the interesting stuff is, IMO. *sigh* I keep wanting this show to be more morally complex than it is. But I guess that is what fic is for.)]
Hooo, yeah. ~_~ My pet peeve is more with the fact that Neal is so damn good at what he does that there's almost never any consequence that forces him to confront the complexity of what he's doing, and, I mean, by the end of S3, even Peter is calling him on it. ("Neal breaks the rules, but because he's Neal, there's never any repercussion for it, and he gets a gold star." I'm probably paraphrasing.) As the seasons wear on, more consequence becomes apparent, but it's usually all consequence that falls directly on the Burkes' house and caves in their roof. (Which makes a certain amount of sense – Peter and El, as law-abiding sorts, are tied into a more rigid framework of available options and possible consequence. But it still makes me want to hit the writers with things.) And that sort of "Nothing bad ever comes from what I'm doing!" "NEAL, YOU ARE DOING A BAD THING, LISTEN TO ME AND STOP THE BAD THING YOU ARE DOING." dichotomy doesn't leave a lot of room for anything but glamorization and moralizing.
...there was, in one edition of GURPS, a trait (feat? attribute? other term? I haven't touched GURPS or any other tabletop RP system in years) which stuck in my head, though I don't have all the technical detail down and can only remember the gist of it. It was called Jinx, I believe, and it basically gave your character a boost in skill points or the luck stat or something like that, with a tradeoff that everyone else in your party took a hit to their luck whenever you were nearby. I feel like Neal maxed out his available levels in Jinx.
no subject
It's actually two fics - that snippet is from a shorter piece from Kate's POV of the aftermath, but I'm eventually going to write out the whole story of that job, probably with interspersed flashbacks to Neal's early years before Kate and Mozzie.
In my head this is "the one where Neal and Kate and Mozzie decide they're not going to be Masked Vigilantes For Greater Justice" - or more like Kate and Mozzie decide and inform Neal of this decision and make it clear to him that this is not up for debate.
I've decided that the Wilkes job came right after the three-man job with Keller where Keller shot that guy who dropped his passport, and the whole reason Neal got it into his head that he was going to sign on with Wilkes in order to sabotage the job and save people was because he was seriously messed up about watching that guy get shot, so it was less of a "Neal is awesome and wants to save people" sort of thing and more of a "Neal is having issues and half trying to get himself killed" sort of thing, and possibly almost getting Kate or Mozzie killed too, when normally he'd stay far away from guys like Wilkes altogether, and once it's over and Neal almost does get himself killed Kate and Mozzie decide that's enough.
sometimes things ring true as character motivations, and sometimes you have to say "...no. Bad writers," and pull an I-reject-your-canon-and-substitute-my-own. And those spots will tend to vary wildly from viewer to viewer. :P
Heh. Yeah, I do this with ... pretty much all of S3. And about half of S4.
And trying to figure out pre-series timelines will totally make your head explode. Hell, trying to figure out in-series timelines is hard because they do this thing where each season is less than a year. And apparently they only film in summer, since S1 ended, or something. Out of the Box is the last time we see anyone wearing a coat, I think.
(And then they go and do things like have the malfunctioning air conditioner in the judge's chamber be a major plot point in Free Fall while everyone is walking around outside wearing coats for that whole episode. And, well, I am the sort of writer who likes to throw in purpley descriptions of weather and scenery and stuff, which is really hard to do when you can never tell what season it is at any point in canon! This is a thing which bothers me. I like my purpley weather descriptions.)
Neal might be very good at doing what he puts his mind to doing, but the impression I always got of him was someone who'd come across as completely intractable in the short term, but who could be talked around or swayed over time.
Hmmmm ... but there's a difference between the sort of pretending-to-go-along-while-dragging-his-heels that he does with the Adler con, and during most of S3, and that sort of ninety-miles-an-hour-toward-a-cliff's-edge-and-stomping-on-the-brakes-at-the-last-minute we see in S2.
I see what you mean about Neal and Mozzie and the Adler con - but the Adler con was eight or maybe nine years ago, and he and Mozzie were still very much in a student/mentor sort of relationship, at that point. Whereas even by the end of Forging Bonds, Neal is clearly the leader in their partnership - and already capable of doing ninety miles an hour toward the cliff. (Mozzie says "I think I know where Kate is but I'm pretty sure it's a trap and the feds are going to be waiting to arrest you," and Neal's all "Great! Where is she?") S3 seems to have Neal and Mozzie reverting back to the dynamic they had in the very earliest days of their partnership, when Mozzie was the leader, and I'm not sure why.
it's usually all consequence that falls directly on the Burkes' house and caves in their roof. (Which makes a certain amount of sense – Peter and El, as law-abiding sorts, are tied into a more rigid framework of available options and possible consequence
And Neal isn't used to a world where you can't just pick up and leave town and find a new house when the roof caves in. It's not so much that his actions haven't had consequences as that he and the people he loves have always been able to leave those consequences behind - he thinks he wants to stop running but he doesn't really understand, yet, what that implies. He's used to being able to leave town, and he's used to the most important people in his life (Kate and Mozzie) being willing and able to leave town with him, while the consequences fall on other people who aren't his family, who aren't people he loves. But Peter and El aren't Kate and Mozzie - having the kind of stable life they have, the kind of stable life Neal thinks he wants, makes them vulnerable to the kind of consequences Neal's unstable, always-on-the-move lifestyle has let him avoid until now.