The best episodes of White Collar
Ranked by viewer rating, highs first. Lit marks on the season rail place this list across the run. Vote on a placement to back it or contest it.
- 01
With a few months left on his four-year sentence, criminal mastermind Neal Caffrey escapes from maximum security prison to save his relationship with his girlfriend. FBI Agent Peter Burke, the man who had chased him for years and had finally caught him, is called in to track him down. He easily finds Neal at his girlfriend's apartment, deflated and defeated. She has completely disappeared. Back in prison and with four years added to his sentence, Neal decides to make a deal with Agent Burke to help him in finding other master criminals. The deal is made and Neal is released, with a GPS ankle monitor, of course, into the custody of Agent Burke. The uneasy partnership proves a success and Neal becomes an official FBI consultant, living large, to Agent Burke's astonishment and frustration, in a wealthy widow's guest-room. Neal, also, secretly brings in an old friend to help him find his girlfriend.
- 02
A female thief escapes from the home of a murdered art collector, posing as a victim. Neal helps bothersome Burke, who invites himself to his luxury home while his apartment has state of the rat HiFi installed, identify and find her. They work out her latest robberies are after a historically priceless set of imperial Chinese jade elephants, a matter of diplomatic interest, but find setting a trap unusually hard.
- 03
Alex Hunter finally teams up with Neil to steal the music-box, which she located in the Italian consul's safe, doubtlessly obtained illegally. Pete smells a rat but is kept at a distance, as the plan requires entering a witness protection relocation to Canada, arranged by dirty agent Garrett Fowler. An explosion changes everything.
- 04
Mozzie was shot by a hit-man but surgery saved him. Neal agrees to go by the FBI book to see the hit-man, soon identified as Julian Larssen, and whoever hired him caught and punished. Larssen is suspiciously easily arrested after the forgers help burn his known aliases except one, but somehow managed to plant false evidence pointing to Burke as the killer. That suffices for Peter's suspension from the FBI, leaving only Neal's ways.
- 05
Neal Caffrey has no alibi for the robbery from a Manhattan fashion house's safe of the world's largest pink diamond, which was replaced by a masked man resembling him with a synthetic one bearing his initials. Peter Burke has nothing to prevent Neal being jailed by a hostile agent from OPR, the FBI's internal affairs branch. Neal however escapes, helped only by Mozzie, 'hides' at the Burke home invited by Elisabeth and sets out to prove the only other logical suspect, Tumblane, faked his alibi and was hired by a third party.
- 06
When Agent Kramer returns to derail Neal's commutation, Neal races to right a wrong from his past. Peter in turn must choose a side. Set against the backdrop of Neal's commutation hearing, Neal will ultimately decide between fight and flight.
- 07
FBI stumbles upon a new con-artist who is using Neal's styles to steal paintings from the museum.
- 08
An FBI Agent is accused of selling witness locations during criminal trials, and the U.S. Marshals ask Peter and Neal for help tracking down the suspect. But when Peter uncovers the truth behind the plot, he must dive into the world of exotic cars and go on the run with his fellow agent until he can prove the man's innocence.
- 09
With the mastermind behind Kate's death uncovered, Peter and Neal explore their pasts to gain answers.
- 10
Neal gets closer to finding out the truth about Kate's death.
- 11
An old rival of Neal's issues a challenge to re-create a rare bottle of wine owned by Ben Franklin.
- 12
When the daughter of a man Neal once robbed, is kidnapped and the kidnapper is a man whom Neal worked with and betrayed, will only deal with Neal. So the FBI agent in charge of the kidnapping takes possession of Neal and sends him to meet with the man. When Peter talks to the father, he realizes that the man wants Neal but before he could warn him, he's grabbed. He wants Neal to help pull a job. Peter tries to find him. Neal gets word to Mozzie what he's been doing who tells Peter who figures out what the man is doing.
- 13
Neal and Peter must go undercover into the world of corporate espionage after a tech company's head researcher is murdered.Wesley Kent's microchip firm's head researcher Joseph Hayes is murdered by poisonous overdose, presumably on account of his revolutionary invention. The duo goes undercover, but due to his major, Peter now gets the cushy alias of pampered rating agency accountancy expert. Neal joins the competitive junior executives in a cubicle, but gathers no less information there. After Mozzie discovers Peter has the music-box, he must accept to continue the Kate investigation officially, with a stuck-up FBI agent as equally unamused partner.
- 14
Realizing the music box is part of the treasures Alex Hunter robbed from single ship, Neal lets Mozzie fake an FBI file so Brooks will enlist his help to investigate just that. They realize the musical code requires an expert, Akihiro, but he's found murdered later. Neal is found out having arranged the music-box being stolen and donated to a Russian action, then refuses to accept being 'benched' when the trail leads to rogue FBI agent Garrett Fowler, whom he presumes Kate's murdered. His excessive risks pay off.
- 15
Peter and Neal assume each other's identities to uncover a collusion scheme.
- 16
When Peter assigns Neal to work the case of a missing Stradivarius alongside Neal's ex-girlfriend, Sara Ellis, sparks fly and Neal gets a taste of what his ideal life in New York might be like.Peter takes the day in an attempt to give Elizabeth an extraordinary birthday complete with her parents. He leaves Diana in charge to find a missing Stradivarius with Sara and Neil all under the prying eyes of Agent Kramer.
- 17
When a painting is stolen, Peter and Neal are tasked with finding it. They get a lead on the thief, they set a meeting but something goes wrong and the man disappears. They try to find him using info he uttered at the meeting. Later a curator from a museum in Europe claims that the painting was stolen from the museum years ago and when the painting is recovered, he expects it to be returned to him. Neal talks to the owner and learns that her family has a connection to the painting, which makes Neal wonder who the painting really belongs to.
- 18
Neal goes undercover as a political "fixer" in order to bring down a corrupt politician.Tipped off by campaign official Dylan Ledding, the FBI suspects slick senator Gary Jennings of illegal campaign fund raising and having inconvenient witnesses eliminated by Robert Barrow. Burke poses as a bulldog agent who promises to dig until he makes the earlier rejected charges stick. Neil gets recruited with a fake Harvard wonder boy identity and proves himself by solving a non-existent problem of his own making which even Mozzie fell for.
- 19
A routine bond theft escalates into an attempted murder when Neal is unknowingly hired to kill the assigned insurance investigator, Sara Ellis.Neal finds himself working with Sara Ellis an insurance investigator who has it for him. He and Peter are helping her find out who has possession of Japanese bonds. They believe that man named Mr. Black who they believe is a courier whom the one is possession of the bonds wants to move them. So they come up with a plan for Neal to take his place. When he meets the contact he gives Neal a gun and brings him to the apartment of Ellis, whom he has to kill. When they fake her death, she along with Peter and Neal try to find out who wants her dead.
- 20
When Peter is kidnapped by an old nemesis, Neal must race against time and defy the FBI to save him.
- 21
Neal and Peter go undercover to take down a corrupt group of Wall Street brokers. If the mission fails, Neal's deal with the FBI could be negated.
- 22
Mozzie discovers clues to a treasure he is convinced were left by a spy ring.
- 23
When June's granddaughter Samantha needs a donor organ, Peter and Neal stumble on the trail of illegal organ trade. Neal approaches Dr. Wayne Powell, the ringleader, posing as an 'approachable' doctor. That leaves only Peter to seduce his female cahoot. Finally an elaborate 'Indian' trap is set.
- 24
An elusive master thief has targeted a handful of New York's most prestigious banks, and it's up to Peter and Neal to thwart his next heist.Manhattan is the latest branch of a bank to receive the calling card of the Architect, a master robber who got away with three earlier, similarly bloodless hold-ups. Peter sort of clears himself and gets jailed Neal his ankle device parole back, but on a trial basis for both of them. Neal proves the security insufficient and works out the likely identity of the Architect, squeaky clean but bored and arrogant wall Street mogul Edward Walker. Catching him proves harder, his easily seduced secretary and an inside accomplice the keys. Meanwhile Mozzie helps Burke keep track of Neal's mental recovery and discovers the mysterious music-box's disappearance from evidence.
- 25
Peter must devise a plan to return Neal to New York and avoid Collins.
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