So I realized, a few episodes ago, what the TV show White Collar is.
Despite having a con artist as one of its main characters, it's not a caper show (like Leverage) or an action/MacGyver-y show (like Burn Notice or, indeed, MacGyver). Instead, it's a cop show, subcategory reluctant-partners. This accounts for the (rather disappointing) paucity of capers, cons, and nifty technological tricks, and the generally slower pace.
(Perhaps this was obvious to others from the beginning, but I heard about the show through fannish osmosis and got the impression that it was much more like Leverage.)
Which brings me to the half-season finale which aired some time ago and which I only watched on DVR tonight.
Spoilers:
And therefore I am not very impressed with the !! shocking !! twist at the end of the episode in which Peter is seen greeting Kate (who looks so much like his wife that it has to be deliberate), wearing a familiar ring on his hand, while not-Internal Affairs guy implies that he's investigating Peter.
Because as a cop show, subcategory reluctant-partners, either this can't possibly be what it seems and therefore is an eye-rollingly obvious way at getting us to come back whenever, or it is and therefore we are suddenly in an entirely different genre with no possible way of knowing that we were ending up there.
I might be reconciled to the first depending on how quickly and interestingly they resolve it, but the second is a deal-breaker.
What would make me really happy is if this gets answered in a way that makes sense of events to date, because honestly I'd been putting these things down to sloppiness on the part of the writers. Like, why does Kate have to resort to the message in a bottle to contact Neal—shouldn't the man with the ring want her to talk to him? Why does the Interpol agent give him the information after he deliberately broke the spirit of his end of the bargain? And so forth. I can't be too optimistic about it, though.