'White Collar' Season 2 Finale Recap

For some reason it seems like this is the third season finale of 'White Collar,' doesn't it? The way that the seasons are split up on cable -- and those half-seasons usually see a cliffhanger in each -- it seemed like this was actually the finale for the third season, not the second. I had to double check to make sure I wasn't crazy (note: I wasn't crazy).

And like another finale, this one ended with a bomb going off. But it wasn't the only explosive thing to happen ...

Who would have thought show would turn into 'Raiders of the Lost Ark?' What was once a show about a con man getting out of jail so he could help the FBI with white collar crimes while also looking for his long-lost love has turned into a show where master villains are looking for a sunken Nazi submarine filled with priceless art and other treasures. This show became "bigger" in the second season, and that's both a good and bad thing.

The whole Adler/Nazi plot certainly takes the show in new directions, but let's not hope that it suddenly becomes outlandish. When Neal and Peter opened the hatch (yes, the hatch) of the sub, the camera angle was the same exact one that 'Lost' used when Jack and Locke opened up their hatch. That was either a subtle nod to that show, or maybe there are only so many cool camera angles to choose from when it comes to hatch-opening scenes.

So this season finale ended with three different things happening that I didn't expect. First we had the death of Adler, killed by Peter after Adler was going to shoot Neal. I actually thought that Adler was going to be the villain that taunted Peter throughout the entire run of the series, but he was killed off pretty quickly, a surprise considering he was the "big bad" behind the whole Kate plot (oh, I hope there isn't yet another, bigger bad waiting in the wings). Or maybe Keller can be the bad guy Neal and Peter chase forever.

The second surprise was the explosion in the warehouse. At first everyone thought it was the unstable, WWII dynamite, but someone did it on purpose to cover up the fact that they actually took the treasures out. Peter thinks it was Neal, which irritates the hell out of me. After all these episodes, do they STILL have to trot out the old "Neal, can I really trust you" angle? I really thought we were over that.

And so we come to the third surprise. All of the treasures in the warehouse. Now, this was a surprise to Neal. He went home and found a card -- typed, of course, so we can't figure out whose handwriting it was -- with an address on it. When he went to the address it was yet another warehouse with all the treasures from the sub (and more, it seemed). But this was rather confusing. The narrator hinted that Neal might be behind the con, but that's impossible, because Neal was just as surprised by all of the loot in the warehouse. So he can't be the person behind it.

So who was it? Alex? Mozzie? Sara? Keller? Is Kate still alive? Or how about June? Let's throw her into the mix too. That would be a funny twist.

TV Guide has news on the next season (which premieres this summer) including an interview with creator Jeff Eastin.

More thoughts:

• The gang was right, Adler did take the arch villain thing seriously." Killing them by flooding water into a dry dock while they were all tied up was very 'Batman'-esque. Real crooks would have just shot them and left them on the sub.

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