Revamped ‘The Catch’ swings and misses
Maybe ABC should have thrown this one back.
Or to be accurate, farther back, and for a bit longer. The Catch that you’ll see Thursday (10 ET/PT, out of four) is a revamped version of the series’ pilot, with a new executive producer, some new stars, a new visual flair and a new, lighter, caper-y tone in keeping with ABC’s Thursday Shondaland lineup, promoted as “crazy fun.”
The problem, beyond the fact that those promos have given away almost the entire plot of the premiere episode, is that the new changes are often an uncomfortable fit with the lingering remains of the old idea. What you get is a show that’s neither here nor there, with actors who aren’t always a good match for their roles and a tone that isn’t always a good match for the plot.
This latest effort from Shonda Rhimes’ company liberates the always welcome Mireille Enos from the damp drabness of The
Killing and glams her up as L.A. private investigator Alice Vaughan. With her partner, Valerie Anderson (Rose Rollins), Alice leads one of those teams of just-outside-the-law problem solvers of which TV is so fond, a group you hire to protect you from con men and cat burglars. And, of course, the team also includes an unstoppable hacker.
At the moment, Alice and her team are close to catching a con artist who’s targeting their clients — until, through the magic of split-screens, we see him slip away. Dejected, Alice goes home to her rich, handsome fiancé, played by Peter Krause. And as those promos have told you, her fiancé is the con man she has been chasing, and he’s about to con her out of her life savings.
This sets up an ongoing catand-mouse game — or as Alice puts it: “You want to play? Let’s play.” Eventually that playful tone may take hold, but in this first outing, the shift is way too abrupt. Alice has been betrayed and bankrupted, but the character is given no time to let the emotional impact land because the show needs to get her into another fancy dress for some Mis
sion: Impossible- type sting.
An equally troubling issue, particularly for a show that clearly wants to plant its flag in the Shondaland “sexy” territory, is that the two stars generate precious little onscreen heat. At 50, Krause is a more experienced actor than Damon Dayoub, 35, whom he replaced, and possibly a more dependable series lead who may be able to take the show in other directions. But the nice-guy placidity Krause projects here provides no sparks with Enos’ Alice. Rather than being seduced, Alice just seems to have been outsmarted, a change in dynamic the show has not accounted for, which is what happens when you shift gears on the fly.
It’s possible that in future episodes the remnants of the old ideas will fade and the new approach will gain a firmer foothold. But for that to matter, you have to assume in this packed TV age that people are willing to wait.
And that, as they say, is the catch.