Why So Blu?

White Collar The Complete Sixth Season (DVD Review)

White Collar is a USA Network television series created by Jeff Eastin.  It stars Tim DeKay as an FBI Special Agent and Matt Bomer as a very smart con artist.  The twist here is the latter also works as the former’s informant.  The show has been on for six seasons now and I regret to inform you, in case you did not know, this is the final season.  The six-episode sixth season was only six episodes long and found its run ended this past December.  So what do you say?  We only have six episodes to skim over here in this review.  Are you ready to tackle them with me?  Let’s do this!

Season 

The yin yang relationship or should I say cat and mouse one between Neal Caffrey (Bomer) and Peter Burke (DeKay) is the lifeline of White Collar for me.  It’s an unlikely partnership as they work together to take down white collar criminals.  It reminds me of what if the Batman and the Joker worked together.  Would the streets of Gotham be free of organized crime?  I have you thinking, huh? Good!

White Collar also stars Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills 90210‘s Tiffani Thiessen (gotta like that) as Peter’s wife and Willie Garson as Mozzie, an old friend of Neal’s.  The series had a weird run where it saw its seasons have varying quantities of episodes per year.  However, it all culminates here with the final season being only six fun episodes long.  When it was all said and done this past December, White Collar aired a total of 81 episodes in all.

So here we are.  We know there won’t be a season 7, but the show’s creator said a TV movie is always possible.  Hey!  Never say never!  Fox’s 24 did return for such a feat not so long ago so you can’t keep a good show down.  Who knows, maybe Netflix will step in one future day, but for now we have one final team-up to talk about here.  It’s going down.

Neal teams Peter one last time to infiltrate a team of deadly thieves.  The stakes have never been higher as they have this final season.  With Peter’s wife (Thiessen) pregnant and Neal wanting his freedom, the show culminates in one of its most shocking plot twists ever.  However, let’s not jump to the conclusion here just yet.  The season does start off with a bang as Peter tries to locate Neal and an elusive groups of thieves I’m writing about in another project show up here.  They go by the name of The Pink Panthers.

I mention the Pink Panthers also because they are Neal’s meal ticket to freedom, if he can help take them down that is.  Games are played, lies are forged and allies are betrayed as Neal infiltrates the Panthers, but it’s that pesky ending in the tunnel that might not be all rainbows and puppies or is it.  There just might be some “life” yet beyond this sixth and final episode.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is White Collar The Complete Sixth Season.  I hope I whet your appetite effectively without divulging or spilling the beans on any trade secrets.  It’s just too bad this final season only saw a DVD release and not a Blu-ray one.  Boo!

While I never seen this show before, I did not let that stop me from tackling this review nor hampering me from enjoying this final season either.  I have zero complaints.  I enjoyed myself and can’t help wondering if there’s still some life beyond this sixth season.  What do you say USA guys?  I guess I have some catching up on the first five seasons on Netflix.  Oh what the hell!  There have to be endless amounts of connections, comments and relationships that didn’t mean much to me here that I now must go back and comprehend.

Below are the names of the final six episodes that comprise White Collar The Complete Sixth Season:

1. “Borrowed Time”

2. “Return to Sender”

3. “Uncontrolled Variables”

4. “All is Fair”

5. “Whack a Mole”

6. “Au Revoir”

Video 

First off, before we even begin, let me just get this off my chest.  This is my first DVD review I ever wrote.  I started this Blu-ray website in 2008 to review Blu-rays and you will have to forgive me for my unforgiving remarks down below.  I don’t know why any A/V enthusiast would ever opt to watch something in Standard Definition.  I much rather pony up and pick this final season up on iTunes or VUDU in High Definition, even if that means forgoing any extra disc-based supplements or owning the physical media.  It’s a shame this fine show could not see a proper Blu-ray release.  However, for a DVD presentation, I was rather surprised.

• Encoding: MPEG-2
• Resolution: 480i NTSC
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Clarity/Detail: Had this been a Blu-ray presentation, I have no doubt that things would look awesome here.  There’s a lot of opportunities to display fine detail everywhere here in every frame of each episode.  Close-ups reveal a good amount of detail (like the individual stands of hair on a hand for instance), but again it’s a DVD.  Don’t get your hopes up and expect too much.
• Depth: Don’t get me wrong, there’s depth of field here, but it’s the backgrounds that just get lost in a sea of pixels and blur.  Like there’s one shot where we see the city in the background across the water.  While it’s not meant to be the main subject in frame the backgrounds just look poopy.
• Black Levels: The DVD presentation does a fine job with rendering consistent black levels.  I did not have any qualms here.
• Color Reproduction: The colors are bright and snappy especially when outdoor.  If only things were clearer, it would excellent here.
• Flesh Tones: The skin tones are all natural and authentic looking throughout.  Tiffani even has a nice tan to her flesh.
• Noise/Artifacts: Besides the inherent faults with a DVD presentation I did not see anything negative in the print to dig this one for.

Audio 

Since it’s a DVD presentation, don’t expect any lossless surround audio tracks here.  You have vanilla Dolby Digital to work with, but don’t let that keep you down.  It’s quite an acceptable track.

• Audio Format(s): English Dolby Digital 5.1
• Subtitles: English SDH, French Spanish
• Dynamics: It’s not a Michael Bay movie so I don’t have a lot to say here, but there’s a fine balance here between the dialog, score and effects employed.  Events sound authentic and realistic so that’s really all I could ask for here.
• Low Frequency Extension: LFE exists purely here to bring balance to the presentation and keep things on an equal playing field like a punch to the face of our main character.
• Surround Sound Presentation: While dialogue is well prioritized throughout here front and center I was impressed by the score which really engrosses you in the middle here.  You do here ambient noises in the rears too like when our power duo is walking the city streets for example.
• Dialogue Reproduction:  Spoken words were all loud,clear and intelligible, and of course because it’s a drama they are the major focus of the soundtrack.  Can’t get any better than this here!

Extras 

So I guess if you’re a numbers guy, you could compute that there are a total of five extra supplements found within White Collar The Complete Sixth Season two-disc DVD set we’ll talk about below.  There’s no Digital Copy codes or anything to redeem so let’s just skip the fluff and talk about what you’ll find here.  It goes down a little like this.  And by the way, my favorite part of the Extras section is an image of Tiffani that is employed on the options screen.

• Audio Commentaries – There are a total of two audio commentaries found here, one featuring Jeff Eastin, Tim DeKay and Willie Garson on the episode “Au Revoir” and the other with Jeff Eastin and Matt Bomer also on the same episode.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 3:41)
• Gag Reel (SD, 5:52) – There’s some language in here.  Haha.  Some of these gag reel moments are forced and some are genuinely funny.
• White Collar: Case Closed Retrospective (SD, 4:48) – The cast and crew discuss their favorite moments from the show’s six seasons on the last day of principal photography in this brief featurette.  They even hint there’s still more story to tell here.  It’s always sad to see a good thing end.

Summary 

Closure’s a batch sometimes.  I say that in a good way because this show seems like it’s a lot of fun and if you watch the extras, you could tell how much White Collar meant to them.  Come on USA or Netflix…what do you say?  Help these boys out!  There’s more stories to tell here!  While it’s always sad to see a good show end, rest assured they did a fine job here with an acceptable ending to a White Collar amateur like myself.  If you’re a fan, pick this season up the only way you can on physical media.  Click below.  All others, myself included, you have five seasons of marathoning to do on Netflix.  Get to it!

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