Episode Title: 'Neighborhood Watch'
Writer: Jeff F. King
Director: Andrew McCarthy
Story:
When Elizabeth (Tiffani Thiessen) hears two men plan a robbery on Peter's scanner, Neal (Matt Bomer) and Peter (Tim DeKay) go to the location. When nothing goes down, Peter begins to suspect Elizabeth is still spooked from her experience with Keller. Elizabeth enlists Mozzie (Willie Garson) to help her get to the bottom of what she heard. Later, they hear the men on the scanner again and rush to the window. There they see the Burke's new neighbor on the phone with a gun stuffed in the back of his jeans.
Neal urges Elizabeth to tell Peter about what she saw but she's afraid he'll dismiss it. Mozzie and Neal sneak around the neighbor's place and Neal spots an illegal lock picking set sitting near the window. The pair concoct a plan to alert Peter to what is going on.
Elizabeth drops by the house with peas and manages to get her and Peter invited over for dinner. Later that night, Peter and Elizabeth share a meal with neighbors, Ben (Joe Manganiello) and Rebecca. Elizabeth asks to use the bathroom so she can snoop around upstairs. However, Ben hears what he thinks is a rat, heads up and locks Elizabeth in the room. Unable to escape, Elizabeth signals Mozzie and Neal, waiting in a car outside. Neal coaches Elizabeth through picking the lock. As she opens the door, a concerned Peter is standing there. When he sees Neal through the window, Elizabeth gets Peter up to speed.
Mozzie, Elizabeth and Neal tells Peter about the phone company uniform Ben, who claims to be a painter, had stashed in his room. When info comes in on a phone outage at the location Ben and his partner talked about the day before, Peter becomes convinced something is up.
While Peter and Neal work the case at the office, Ben comes by to return Elizabeth's bowl and confronts her about sneaking around his house. Concerned for her safety, Peter agrees to have Mozzie stay with her.
Peter and Neal learn that Ben is working with a partner. Neal arranges for Ben, a convicted felon, to get a call from his PO for violating his parole. Neal poses as a fellow parolee and ingratiates himself with Ben, who invites him to a high-end strip club. There, Neal is able to get a job number off a napkin Ben wrote on. Jones (Shariff Atkins) tells Peter about a midtown work order for a phone company. Neal theorizes that Ben and his partner are using the phone company ruse to rob area businesses. Meanwhile, Jones learns that Ben's partner is a daytime manager at the strip club.
When Neal and Peter arrive at a hotel Ben and Conor robbed, shots are fired as the crooks make off with the safe. Meanwhile, Ben's wife, Rebecca is on the move. Elizabeth decides to tail her and takes Mozzie along.
Mozzie and Elizabeth follow Rebecca to the strip club. They pose as FBI agents to stop Ben's partner, but Rebecca and Ben recognize them from a surveillance monitor in the backroom where they're hiding. Ben emerges with a gun and Elizabeth and Moz make a run for it. However, when he goes outside, Ben finds Peter and Neal waiting for him with FBI back up.
Breakdown:
"White Collar" likes to get cute from time to time. Thrusting Elizabeth and Mozzie into the action, up against "True Blood's" Joe Manganiello definitely veered towards the silly side. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Mozzie is a great character who I only wish had more screentime. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Elizabeth needs to step out from the background to develop and flesh out her character. Thus, throwing these two into a caper was a great idea.
Although there wasn't any real movement on the over-arcing "will he/won't he?" Neal storyline, it was touched upon. Mozzie one again tried to give Neal a reality check about staying on with the FBI. And the former "Dentist of Detroit" also told Elizabeth that "some of us are prepared to disappear." However, I don't think Mozzie is planning to go solo, which means he'll continue to put pressure on Neal to bounce.
As for this week's guest star, Joe Manganiello looked the part but his penchant for quinoa kinda took away from his bruiser image. Maybe that was the point.
"White Collar" is a show that often asks us to go along with the implausible for the sake of a fun, light-hearted ride that makes up for its leaps of logic with its wit and charm. However, there were a few holes in this episode that were too big to ignore. Why didn't Peter think something was up when Elizabeth suddenly got an invite to a neighbor's for dinner, right after alerting him to a possible criminal presence on their block? And how could Mozzie think Elizabeth's FBI ruse would work without a badge? Also, wouldn't Rebecca recognize her and Moz immediately? Oh wait, she did.
Aside from minor complaints, "Neighborhood Watch" was a nice aside for Mozzie and Elizabeth. After all, who knows how much more time these two will have together?
Crave Online Rating: 7 out of 10.
