It’s been a big year for Matthew Bomer and a lot has changed since the last season of White Collar, his I’m-a-con-man-but-I-work-for-the-feds-and-seduce-ladies-and-hang-with-Kelly-Kapowski USA brocedural (that is a procedural that stars a man). First of all, he came out of the closet, which is a pretty big deal since he plays a sexy ladies’ man on the show. Secondly, he played a sexy ladies’ man and stripper in Magic Mike, which means his slabs of beefcake have been plastered all over man-loving websites from here to BomerBordello.com and back. Considering his star is on the rise, I thought I’d check this show out for the first time.
I will say, I was not disappointed. There were two scenes where Matt Boner — I mean Bomer, sorry — is without his shirt. That’s about all the excitement I needed. But shameless flesh aside, the show had some rock-’em, sock-’em action as well. At the end of last season (based only on what happened in the first episode and the “last season on White Collar” montage that started the episode) Neal (Bomer’s character) had to take off because the Feds wanted to prosecute him for crimes he committed, possibly something having to do with a whole Scrooge McDuck vault full of treasures and forgeries he found.
He winds up in a picturesque tropical island where he spends his days hanging out with Stanford Blatch, Carrie Bradshaw’s best friend from Sex and the City, and trying to woo the hot macchiato-colored lady who owns the local cafe. There’s also some plot about getting protection from the guy who runs the island and a kid and his papayas, but that was all very silly.
Back in New York, Peter Burke, Neal’s friend, and his wife Kelly Kapowski are trying to find Neal so that they can warn him that the FBI sent this mean guy named Agent Cooper (a welcome Mekhi Phifer) to find him, dead or alive (just like the Bon Jovi song). They don’t know where to look so they find this old lady who is a good friend of Neal’s who gives them a pager number to contact him. A pager! Remember those? For all the kids out there, it was sort of like a text message except the only thing you could send was your phone number and then someone had to call you on a land line or one of these things where it was like a cell phone but it was attached to the wall and you had to put a quarter in it to get it to work! Yes. Can you even imagine the inconvenience?
Peter pages Neal and he calls him back on a cell phone because this is the future and Neal figures out that he’s on beautiful Cape Verde which sounds like a kind of burrito I would order. (Mmmmm. I just figured out what I’m having for lunch!) So, Peter goes to find him but Agent Cooper (not the one from Twin Peaks) is hot on his trail and they both show up in Cape Verde at the same time and Neal uses the papaya kid, the cafe owner he’s screwing (thanks to a sand sculpture of the New York skyline, I kid you not), and the guy he paid for protection to escape. Neal and Stanford Blatch and Peter all sail off into the sunset to go to another island and avoid the cops for a little bit longer.
But what does this mean for season three? Are they just going to go to a new island every week for Neal to sleep with another lady like it’s The Love Boat and Fantasy Island at the same time? I wouldn’t mind if they stayed near the beach because the beach means bathing suits and that means shirtlessness and that means my DVR will be set. They’ve eventually going to have to come back to New York though, because that is where the show is most exciting and, come on, how many tropical locations can one modestly successful cable TV show really afford?
Did you guys watch? What did you think of shirtless Matthew Bomer?
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
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