Boxed In: Thoughts on Tuesday's Summer Season Finale of USA's White Collar

I promised you some thoughts about next week's summer season finale of USA's slick and stylish drama series White Collar and I hate to disappoint.

Airing on Tuesday evening, the summer season comes to an end with next week's fantastic and taut installment ("Point Blank"), after which we'll have to wait until January to find out just what happens to Peter, Neal, Mozzie, and the others.

Suffice it to say, the wait will be especially difficult, given the cliffhanger ending that creator Jeff Eastin and his crack writing team have left us with. It's far more intoxicating--and far less head-scratching--than the Peter/Ring scenario that they left us with halfway through the first season.

While there's no sign of Hilarie Burton's savvy insurance investigator Sara (sorry, folks!), the episode itself is extremely mythology-heavy, which makes it rather difficult to enmesh newbie Sara to the action right now. But while Burton is not present, Sara's absence isn't felt at all, thanks to a fantastic plot that draws together the various storylines involving the music box, Neal's key, some nifty codes, Kate's murder, Fowler, and OPR.

I don't want to say too much lest I spoil some of the deliciously twisty plot mechanics of this episode but I will say that we see Matthew Bomer's Neal Caffrey in a way that we haven't seen him before... and that the stakes for everyone are higher than ever.

The mysteries that have lurked in the background of White Collar throughout the back half of the first season and the first nine episodes of Season Two are pushed front and center and they manage to bring together just about all of the series' fantastic characters into a single storyline. Which means, yes, Neal, Peter, Mozzie, Diana, and Alex are all entangled in a unified narrative and, while there are answers given, there are more questions still that are raised here. Certainly enough that make us question some of the things we've taken for granted the past dozen or so episodes.

Motivations become crystal clear, alliances are formed and shattered, and Neal makes a decision that will have lasting consequences for himself and several others. Along the way, plot points that have been planted throughout the season come to fruition as the music box storyline begins to reach its climax. Just what secrets does the box contain? Why are so many people after this object? And what will Neal's key unlock once it's inserted?

Like a matryoshka, this box seems to contain secrets within secrets, puzzles within other puzzles. It's a Rambaldi device without the ominous apocalyptic overtones, yet it also connects deeply to the mystery of who wanted Kate dead and just what happened aboard that plane in the final minutes of the first season.

All this and some swashbuckling from Neal that has to be seen to be believed (yes, seriously), some great comedic interludes between Neal and Willie Garson's Mozzie (one of the best being how they age an FBI case file), and a tense standoff involving several interested parties. Not to mention that aforementioned cliffhanger, which will have people talking over the next few months, even as they hum the Batman theme.

In other words: miss Tuesday's episode at your own peril.

The summer season finale of White Collar airs Tuesday at 9 pm ET/PT on USA.