I fell out of the habit with "The Catch" last season. It had an intriguing hook, security consultant falls for a charming man who turns out to be conning her, which he reveals by stealing all her stuff, except, it turns out, his weakness is her, and they spend the season trying to catch each other. Kind of.
I never deleted the pass on my DVR, so when it restarted I found myself curious enough to try again, and huh. So apparently she (Alice, played by Mireille Enos) teamed up with Interpol to catch Ben (Peter Krause) and then felt bad when he turned out to love her too, so gave him a head start and there were double crosses upon double crosses, and whatever, all this I have gleaned from the previouslies. So, Ben is in jail. Alice's firms computers are all in custody, which, as you might imagine has put a crimp in their business. And Ben's ex Margot (Sonya Walger) is now in charge of the evil crime family. Rhys, Ben's partner in crime is on the outs with the crime family yet not in jail. So, now, Interpol and the FBI (and really it hardly matters, supposed good guys) have offered Ben a deal, where they will reduce his sentence if he does this thing. And Margot, realizing the problem with crime families is that you can trust no one, hires Alice's firm to investigate. Needless to say, Alice and Ben are only telling each other part of what they are up to. Oh and Alice's brother Tommy has shown up totally coincidentally because his former employers are dead, but he has some money is his name, and yeah, absolutely no reason to believe anything shady or underhanded is going on there.
So here's the thing. The cast, including the other three members of Alice's firm (played by Rose Rollins, Jay Hayden, and Elvy Yost) are all wonderful. Gina Torres as our FBI agent learning how charmingly frustrating Ben is, his total inability to do a job within the defined parameters. And T. R. Knight is knocking out of the park as the bumbling but charming and maybe not as bumbling brother.
But here's the thing. The cast is great. The sets are slick. And the plot, is there. Do I care who Tommy's murdered employers really were? No. Do I think if you are chasing an international assassin you should plan an elaborate thing where everyone carries different colored umbrellas the theory being that the assassin will then be forced to shoot at all the umbrellas giving them time to catch him? I mean, spoiler alert it worked, but instead of being impressed, it makes me wonder how this international assassin survived so long. It is the perfect example, they used a visually appealing, but ultimately not super well thought out idea to catch the assassin, turned him over to intended victim Margot, and the episode ended with her hiring them. That is an intriguing double cross, but much like fellow TGIT show "How to Get Away With Murder" the episodes often seem like misdirects leading to a new breadcrumb revealed at the end. So, you could fold laundry or multitask while you watched the show, and look up for the end and get most of what you needed.
There's nothing wrong with any of this, there are plenty of shows that get by more on the charm of the cast, than the plotting. I just find myself hopewatching, because there is such incredible potential there, and I will say that I think HTGAWM does a better job (admittedly over more cumulative episodes at this point) at making me care about the characters, instead of marveling at the visuals, and the acting.
