I recently watched the series premier of White Collar on USA. In all honesty, I had pretty low expectations of the show from the clips and previews I had seen. I thought of it to be more along the lines of a 48 Hours type show when it became clear that it was more along the lines of Catch Me If You Can.
I must say I was pleasantly surprised after viewing the pilot. Let’s be honest, in today’s world there are very few original ideas so what makes for good entertainment is often the characters, writing, and execution of the story and White Collar made a good showing of all four.
Let’s start with the two main characters : Neal Caffrey is the con man out of prison helping the FBI to catch other con men. He comes off as being very charming and persuasive without seeming smarmy. It’s difficult to portray a criminal in a sympathetic way without pity but he pulls it off effectively. The writers have given him a backstory of wanting to be out of prison to track down the woman he loves that left him. While this storyline may not be the most solid it does seem like a good reason to get him to suddenly want to be on the outside.
Peter Burke is the FBI agent that originially captured Neal and is now keeping him in custody working to catch other cons. He comes off as a straight-laced, but not too stiff FBI agent who seems really dedicated to his job and to his wife. It is clear from the start that while he may not like Neal much he does respect him enough to let him do his thing in service to the police.
The other characters have yet to be fleshed out but they do seem to have potential.
As far as the writing goes, the pilot episode was pretty well paced and had an ending (which I won’t spoil) that was clever and involved a plan that felt like something only an intelligent criminal could come up with to catch another intelligent criminal.
I have hopes for the show after seeing it which I didn’t when I started. It’s nice to be pleasantly surprised.




