3 out of 5

Created by: Jennifer Schuur, Kate Atkinson, and Helen Gregory

covers season 1

Ah intrigue, gloss, ample casual sex, twisty turns…  Shondaland?  Is that you?  Surely, surely it is.  And if you ever want a refresher on the Make It Fantastic expectations of the average American viewer, make sure you check out any related message boards to these shows, to witness the demands for prettier people and fresher faces.  Whatta world!  If only the shows weren’t so deviously _addictive_, it’d be easier to damn them as pure fluff.  Because let’s get real: even though there are some great performances on The Catch (Mireille Enois, Peter Krause, John Simm… all goddamned delightful), none of this really has any emotional impact, even when it attempts to play a relatable tune of trust and betrayal.  But again: Shonda.  It’s par for the course, and the style is so polished, it’s hard not to enjoy despite sheepishly suspecting the trashiness.

Enos plays Alice Vaughan, co-senior person at an investigative firm, specializing in preventing people from getting a’swindled, as played out to us in a super snazzy Ocean’s 11-style heist intro.  Deft smiles at the camera and a trademark criss-cross edit wash are present from this moment and remain consistent (and consistently well applied) throughout.  Alas, the firm’s anti-swindling abilities are at stake when the company itself is swindled… by Alice’s husband (Krause).  Who’s been pulling a long con for the past year.

And so we get our case-per-episode setup, which is woven through the ongoing plotty elements of Krause’s career and motivations and his (per TV show rules) inevitable continued entanglement with Enos.

Although the cases are the type of lightweight mystery work one expects from shows of this type, none of the episodes feel particularly dialed in, and the writers do a good job of balancing the tone and characters so we can run the gamut of drama and action and get to “know” the rest of the PI crew.  The story has to necessarily wrap around on itself 100 times, but it’s what we expect, and ‘The Chase’ is adept at straightening itself out before we get too fed up with its fussiness.  The first season also ended smartly, such that it could’ve been a satisfying ending… but is also a fun setup for the signed-on season 2.  Which I’ll also watch.