What's 'The Catch'?: Shondaland's latest might not be its smartest

The Catch
10 p.m. Thursday on 6ABC

You can always tell a Shondaland heroine.

But you can't tell her much.

The women of producer Shonda Rhimes' Shondaland - from Grey's Anatomy to Scandal to How to Get Away With Murder - are all so good at their jobs that Donald Trump himself doesn't have enough adjectives to describe their abilities.

I mean, they're excellent. Really high-quality. The gold-plated faucets of whatever field they're in.

So when things go badly for them, as they often seem to, it can't be their fault.

Can it?

That's the question I kept asking myself about The Catch, which starts at 10 p.m. Thursday, moving into ABC's (and Rhimes') TGIT lineup that was recently vacated by How to Get Away with Murder.

Mireille Enos (The Killing) stars as Alice Vaughan, Los Angeles' top private investigator. She's the co-owner with business partner Valerie Anderson (Rose Rollins) of a security firm that appears to be the better lighted, if not necessarily brighter, equivalent of Scandal's company of gladiator fixers.

It's L.A., not D.C., so the sun streams in through the windows and even through Alice's notes, which are scrawled not on a whiteboard but on a clear pane of glass.

Beyond the glass, of course, things may be murkier.

As Danny Yoon (Jay Hayden), one of their associates, puts it, "Clients only come to us when the cops and the feds can't help them."

Their no doubt superior, if occasionally extralegal, business plan appears to have been going well until Alice meets a man named Christopher Hall (Peter Krause, Parenthood). He wormed his way into her heart (and her life savings) before executing a disappearing act just before their wedding that gives new meaning to the term "ghosting."

Men often trouble Shondaland heroines, but Christopher Not-His-Real-Name hits Alice not only where she lives but also where she works - because how could a security expert be so easily conned? - and that can't be allowed.

Fans of USA's White Collar might enjoy the cat-and-mouse game that ensues, though I'd argue that the relationship between its con artist, Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer), and FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) was (in a totally bro way) a more compelling romance than this one.

Fans of the U.S. version of The Killing may barely recognize Enos, who has traded in Detective Sarah Linden's oversize sweaters, straggly ponytail, and haunted eyes for a sleek wardrobe, hair out of a shampoo commercial, and lashes long enough to merit a separate credit.

Krause, who looks the way he always does, even when his character's trying to look different, isn't all that convincing a con man, but maybe that's exactly what's required of a con man.

Everything about The Catch suggests that getting even beats moping, that sunlight beats gloom and doom, and that some girls just want to have fun on Thursday nights.

Color me a tad skeptical. Because someone has to be.

graye@phillynews.com
215-854-5950