White Collar's Mozzie: A Modern Renaissance Man
Neal Caffrey is one smooth and savvy individual. On the USA Network drama White Collar, the former conman/forger/thief continuously smiles his way through tricky situations, using his charm and debonair persona to manipulate people in order to get his way. The convicted felon is now a “consultant” for the FBI and while his handler, Peter Burke, is more middle class and down to earth, he likewise exudes a likeable charm to go along with his ample crime solving skills and respect for the law. His wife Elizabeth, meanwhile, is an attractive and successful caterer with a knack for keeping her often preoccupied husband grounded.
Then there’s Mozzie, Neal Caffrey’s confidante and former criminal cohort. While Caffrey rents a room in a luxurious New York City mansion and the Burke’s reside in a respectable suburban townhouse, Mozzie lives in a storage unit. While the others are comfortable in most social situations, Mozzie is awkward and slightly socially inept. And while Neal Caffrey and Peter Burke have a successful working relationship based on trust and open communication, Mozzie has a deep distrust for the FBI and relies on cryptic comments and codes as a personal form of conversation.
Yet despite Caffrey’s upscale and sophisticated qualities, as well as his appreciation for the finer things in life, and Burke’s law-abiding “everyman” characteristics, it is Mozzie that best exemplifies the modern day Renaissance man attempting to make sense out of the upheaval known as the Twenty First Century. During a time period where freedom and privacy have been curtailed in order to serve the greater good, for instance, Mozzie still believes in such concepts. “It’s about doing what we want to do,” he tells Peter Burke during the first season of White Collar. “Who cares about nine-to-fives and 401Ks. Playing by the rules only makes borders that just take away everything that’s good about living life.”
When Neal Caffrey points out that Mozzie has lived in a storage unit, his friend replies, “But I lived there, man. I lived. As long as I don’t have to live under anyone else’s time or dime, I’m a free man. I can do whatever I want.”
Mozzie is also extremely well-read and often quotes everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Disney, Albert Einstein to Jimmy Buffet, depending on the situation. He likewise mixes in his own sayings, thus making him a contemporary wordsmith and equal to the great masters of the past. Placing his own observations next to those who came before him, it is often difficult to separate the classics from the Mozzies.
“You lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.”
“We feel free when we escape even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire.”
“Life is more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.”
“Realists don’t fear the results of their studies.”
“Though we may not change the direction of the wind, we may adjust our sails.”
“Fate has a way of putting in front of us that which we most try to leave behind.”
“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides.”
“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”
“The reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”
“Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weaker minds.”
“A wise man once said, it’s fun to do the impossible.”
Despite Mozzie’s wisdom—or maybe even because of it—the turtle-esque looking con artist has a deep distrust for governments and sees conspiracy in almost everything. “Paranoia is a skill, the secret to longevity,” he states in White Collar and his conspiratorial belief system extends to everything from the Apollo moon landings to Paul McCartney having died in 1966 and replaced by a look-alike. “Plutonium would be an educated guess,” Mozzie tells Peter Burke in regards to the contents of an old Nazi U-boat. “You know they had the bomb years before we did. It could also contain Hitler clones.”
When it comes to clandestine meetings, meanwhile, Mozzie takes extraordinary precautions. “You will me meet me with all the pertinent files at a time and place of my choosing,” he explains to an FBI agent in season two. “I will contact you via express courier. You will receive a package. In that package will be a sonnet giving clue to our rendezvous point.”
It is because of his paranoia and distrust that Mozzie has often lived in a storage unit. It is his goal in life, after all, to remain off the grid and not be entered into the system. “The light’s how they find you, man,” he tells Neal Caffrey in the pilot episode of White Collar. In a later installment, he assists in keeping Peter Burke out of harm’s way by hiding him in one of his many safe houses. The location is an abandoned and empty warehouse with a solitary Zen garden strategically placed in the center. “I call it Tuesday,” he remarks. “Because I’m usually here on Wednesdays.”
Mozzie has a law degree from the University of Phoenix and an arsenal of Russian military surplus supplies ranging from cell phone scramblers to listening device detectors to a thermal scope that senses residual heat from fingertips on a key pad lock. He also has the uncanny ability to locate obscure objects at a moments notice. In the episode “Bottlenecked,” for instance, he is charged with the task of assisting Neal Caffrey reconstruct a centuries-old bottle of wine. “I paid off a guard at that maritime exhibit for French cork made before the industrial revolution,” he tells his colleague. The paper, meanwhile, is a copy of the New York Gazette from 1785. “They use it for insulation in the walls at the Colonial Ale House,” Mozzie explains.
Mozzie originally grew up in Detroit and started running street cons as a kid. Despite this slightly mid-western upbringing and his worldly ways, however, Mozzie is now a bona fide New Yorker. “I once met a man in this park who claimed to be John Lennon and I believed him,” he tells Neal Caffrey. “The year was 1991.” In an earlier installment of White Collar, meanwhile, he remarks, “A New Yorker who does not take the subway is not a New Yorker you can trust.”
While on the surface White Collar may follow the crime-solving adventures of conman extraordinaire Neal Caffrey and FBI agent Peter Burke, in many way Mozzie is the actual heart of the show. Caffrey may be at a crossroads, attempting to figure out exactly what kind of man his is, and Burke may believe he found the ideal life as a law enforcement officer and loving husband, but it is Mozzie who most has a grasp in regards to living life to the fullest and being true to oneself.
“I get it, we’re fascinating creatures,” Mozzie explains during season two of the USA Network drama. “We live a life of danger. It’s exciting, slightly erotic. But guys like us, you find yourself always trying to stay a step ahead. You relax once, let down your guard and it all goes away.”
Spoken like a true Renaissance man.
Anthony Letizia (March 18, 2011)
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