elrhiarhodan

I agree with you here - Peter likes to say that he has always played it straight and by the rules, but in fact he has been bending them from the very beginning. And in this way, he is also some of a hypocrite, and I'm not taking about this episode in particular. I can't count the amount of times that Peter has scolded Neal for going off the books on some FBI cases, but then other times he encourages it (going so far as Season 1 episode 3, when he lets Neal and Moz borrow his FBI jacket to impersonate an FBI agent to solve a case). Or a more recent case - drugging the psychologist to get a confession. And I'm not even mentioning all the times that Peter broke the law for Neal because Neal is his friend and "worth it". Let's face it, Peter often breaks the rules when he thinks that the endgame is just (not unlike Neal) - but because his and Neal's moral code is set differently, Peter thinks that his rule-breaking is justified while Neal's is not.

I guess this is another thing that is needed for the boys to solve this crisis - for Peter to accept the truth about himself and decide - either he can keep pretending that he has this high morals (and then he should live by them), or he can help Neal get Hagen - but then he has to stop pretending that he has always been playing by the rules and that the system is infallible.

And you're right - Diana's absence is really obvious right now. Not that I don't like Jones, but Diana was always more reliable in stuff like this.