wc_confab, posts by tag: character: peter burke - LiveJournal

This will contain spoilers from the premier of Season 4. If you don't want to read spoilers, don't read beneath the cut. :-)

I had this discussion on a flisties lj, and I thought I would bring it over here.

As many of you know, iTunes had a free clip from the first three minutes of the Season Four premier of White Collar. Everyone was abuzz about a particular scene in the clip, but a quieter moment was mostly over-looked...

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[Post put under spoiler tag as there are some minor spoilers for some dialogue in Judgement Day; nothing for the overall plot though.]
Peter mentions during his testimony that Neal's file "landed on his desk" six years ago. But at the end of Season 3 (and under the presumption that each season approximately spans a year), that would mean he got the file when Neal had already been in prison for a year.

Further more, the panel talks about how Neal has helped Peter "over the last two years", and Neal said that if he didn't get the commutation he'd be on the anklet "another two years". Now I assumed that after the fiasco with the music box and Kate's death, he just got re-sentenced or another year was added to his sentence, so he had a total of five years on the anklet after his initial prison bout instead of the original four years. But that begs the question of why the hell the panel isn't counting his first year with Peter. Is it because the conspiracy and (presumably) messed up records around it just made everyone decide not to count it?

Or, did the last three seasons actually span two years instead of three?

I was thinking maybe that was it - no matter how much I hoped otherwise, I hate it when seasons have such ambiguous timespans - but that still doesn't make sense of Peter's comment, because then that just means he got his file around the same time he arrested Neal.

Except we know for a fact he had to have gotten the file at least a year ahead of Neal's arrest from the Forging Bonds episode. At minimum, that would make 2 years on anklet + 4 years prison time + 1 year pre-prison chasing = 7 years total.

That was just what we'd directly seen - I don't remember where/which episode, but I've gotten the strong implication several times that Peter was chasing Neal for much longer than that prior to Neal's arrest. For some reason I've always thought it was three years (no idea why, though, as I don't recall any specific time frame mentioned in the show), and I think this is what I've seen most often in fanfic. So now we have 2 years on anklet + 4 years prison + 3 years pre-prison chasing = 9 years.

And quite frankly, the show itself spanning 2 years doesn't actually make that much sense, at least from the personal/emotional point of view. Otherwise, Neal and Peter built an impossibly strong relationship in just a few months, much of which would've been filled with some pretty severe trust issues second only to the first half of S3. Not to mention it implies that just weeks after nearly killing someone to avenge Kate, Neal was going after Sara. Hell sometimes it feels like even just three years is pushing it, but three years does make sense at least. Mostly.

But then we 3 years pre-prison chasing + 4 years prison + 3 years on anklet = 10 years total of Peter and Neal's relationship.

So, if Peter got Neal's file "6 years ago", where the hell did those 4 years go? Are the writers really that bad at math or did I miss some massive timeline shifts in the show and not notice?

Any other theories, guys? This is really confusing me. :O


Loosely inspired by/when rereading this comment threat and realizing the timeline made no sense with canon context.