Shonda Rhimes is burning it up on ABC's TGIT with Grey's Anatomy, and now with a new show that is proving to be steamy and gritty, The Catch.
We start the show in an art gallery party. The lead character played by Mireille Enos (The Killing) is introduced, as she nabs a would-be burglar who is trying to use his suave moves to take her key card (thinking she works for the gallery). He has it totally wrong, though. She is Alice Vaughan, P.I., and don't mess with her! She likes the "fun part" of beating criminals to the ground to let the police make the arrest.
Back at the office, we get to meet her team, as they talk about business over tasting wedding cakes, because apparently, Alice is soon to get married. Her partner Val is going to be Maid of Honor, or "Best Woman." There is Sophie, who is a lawyer, new to the firm, and who butts heads with Danny, another P.I. who likes to break rules. They are interrupted in their conversation by e-mail from "Mr. X." He's stolen 5 million dollars from their clients, and they don't know who he is, or what he looks like, but he is getting them on the chase, saying the show's tagline, "Are you ready to play?"
Mr. X(Peter Krause) gets out of his fancy blue Lamborghini, and the chase is on, Mr. X moving smoothly through the scenery, using a dog to lose his follower, and a bunch of private school children to deliver the briefcase to the person delivering the hard drive to him in a sub sandwich wrapper, and changes his clothes to walk right past Alice, undetected, and this show is trying very hard to use split screen shots in their scenes it seems to me.
Alice goes back to her place and is lamenting her inability to catch this person to her boyfriend in the shower. When he steps out of the shower, "I'm sure you're closer than you think," we discover the twist- it's Mr. X, I mean, Christopher Hall.
At Hall's office, Alice visits, and writes a check for $1.4 million- half of what they are putting together for a house to move into. She leaves before his boss comes in. Margo tells him that he needs to break it off with her in 24 hours because they are disappearing in two days. She reveals that he has been with Alice for a year, and Margo "wants him back."
Margo has arranged for Reggie to extract him from her life. "You've become this fine upstanding citizen, who all he wants to do is marry the red-headed lady detective and settle down. You are not that guy." "Are you ready to play?" repeated. Reggie assures him that any trace of Christopher Hall will ever exist after he's done in her apartment the next day. Oh, and Chris's name is Ben.
Being a Shonda Rhimes show, you know there is going to be steamy passion, and there is between Ben/Chris and Alice. Ben asks Alice if she'll elope with him and run away, but realizes that he's going to have to disappear when she says, "Once I catch this guy, I'm all yours." She leaves for work, and comes back to tell "Chris" that she's ready to run away with him, but Reggie moved fast. All of his stuff is gone. Even his office is devoid of any sign that he existed. He's "GONE."
She puts 2 and 2 together and realizes that he was a con artist. Dude even hid his face in all of her personal pictures with him. He is very slick. After a bunch of flashbacks, she puts 4 and 4 together and realizes that Chris/Ben is Mr. X.
An FBI agent, Jules Dao (Jacky Ido), shows up and offers to help. He's been chasing Ben across Europe for two years. She refuses their help, and starts looking for more clues- cue more split screens. FBI agent shows up again, asking if she really doesn't want their help. I think we'll be seeing more of this guy.
Alice figures out who he might be targeting. Instead of going after their clients' money, they realize he was really trying to get into an event put on by an inventor- Seth Hamilton. He was stealing the identity of one of their clients so he could get in to heist the new technology being announced at Seth's event.
Ben gets the flash drive that has the specs for this new invention, and is about to get away, but Alice and crew is inside waiting for him. He still manages to get away, as Reggie kills the lights, and he disappears.
Sophie, the rule-following lawyer saves them, though. Apparently, she worked for the hacker group Anonymous. Sophie was able to hack the flash drive and take all of the funds from Margot's computer. Ben's not done, though. He went to the art gallery from the beginning of the show, and somehow gets the painting that Alice was admiring with the first guy she nabbed, and it is now in her bedroom. The show closes with Alice saying, "All right, Christopher. You wanna play? Let's play."
According to Nielsen, the show's premiere wasn't too high- only receiving a 1.2 rating among adults 18-49. Grey's Anatomy received a 2.0, and Scandal was at 1.6. Most t.v. viewers were tuning into the CBS coverage of the NCAA men's basketball Sweet 16 tournament. NBC came in even lower than ABC's line-up with their shows.
According to Variety, even Scandal had a sluggish start in its premiere the Thursday before Easter back in 2012. ABC is going to try again- airing a repeat of the pilot on Monday right after Dancing With the Stars. So watch the pilot all over again, and then catch Episode 2, The Real Killer on March 31st in its regular TGIT lineup.
