Shonda
Rhimes, the ABC Prime Time Queen, has once again given us a rare gem in
dramatic entertainment. The Catch -- ABC’s Mid-Season
replacement for ‘How To Get Away with Murder’ – can be seen on Thursday’s right
after Scandal.
Starring Mireille Enos,
best known for playing detective Sarah Linden in The Killing
and opposite Brad Pitt in World War Z.
In The Catch, Mireille plays a successful private
investigator and co private security firm owner, Alice Vaughn. In the pilot episode Alice is glowing with
happiness about her upcoming nuptials to successful business man, Christopher
Hall, played by Peter
Krause. Peter is known for such shows as Dirty Sex Money, Six Feet Under
and most recently, Parenthood.
So the twist in The Catch comes when Christopher wakes Alice
the day before their wedding and asks her to run away with him. She laughs him
off, thinking he is being ridiculous.
When she returns home she discovers he is missing, she goes to his
office and finds an empty space. Finally, the 1.5 million dollars she’s given
him to purchase their new house is gone.
Alice has a good cry, a little tantrum and then picks
herself up. Resolute on finding this man who has destroyed her heart, hopes and
dreams Alice Vaughn goes to work.
As The Catch plot develops, Christopher’s love for Alice is
genuine, and had she said yes to him that fateful morning when he asked her to
run away he would have abandoned his con-artist life forever. But of course, that would make for a boring
drama, right?
So why doesn’t he just drop everything and tell her he loves
her? Well, the life of a con-artist is complicated. Christopher and his
associates owe some very powerful bad guys a lot of money, 15 million to be
exact. When the ‘score’ with Alice
tanked, forcing the return all of the money stolen from her and her firm,
Christopher’s little con man team was left penniless.
Christopher wants to put as much distance between Alice and ruthless associates as possible before they
find out the truth about his feelings. The most eminent threat is his dominating
lover played by the glorious Sonya Walger, (known for Parenthood, Lost, and
even a small 2 episode stint on Scandal).
Christopher, despite many attempts is unable to let go of
Alice, his pull to her is magnetic. As
she gets closer to finding him, he allows it, if only to give into his needs
for a short time. Awwww…so sweet.
Add in The Catch sub-plots of a French Secret Service Agent
also looking for Christopher Hall, Alice’s wanting to keep her endeavor secret
from her trusted friends, and her regular day-to-day job and you have the
mixing of a dramatic masterpiece. To be honest, Alice is just as diabolical as Christopher
in many ways and thus making the series so addictive.
Plot twists and high fashion abound in The Catch making is
visually and psychologically stimulating. The brilliance of Shonda Rhimes in my
opinion is nothing is ever black and white, she loves to dabble in the gray’s
of the world.
I put this new series to the three
episode test, and it passed with flying colors, full of intrigue, romance,
deception and uniquely flawed characters, The Catch is most definitely worth your
time and DVR space!