'The Catch' season 1 episode 1 recap: Elite private investigator’s fiancé is expert conman

The pilot episode of “The Catch” aired on Mar. 24, 2016. The drama focuses on an expert private investigator who became a victim of fraud. Alice Vaughan (Mireille Enos) discovered that her fiancé, Benjamin Jones (Peter Krause) was a conman who stole millions from her then suddenly disappeared. Now, her new life mission is to go after the culprit and the international organization where he belongs.

Alice’s job involves finishing difficult cases that the police have a hard time solving. Mr. X, a special conman, warned Alice that he is about to target another victim. He boasts about being always one step ahead of Alice’s group.

Flashback to a few months back, Alice was seen agreeing to marry Christopher Hall, who in the end we find to actually be Mr. X. The long game between Alice, as an investigator, and Hall, as a conman, caused Hall’s associates to be concerned and told him to withdraw from the relationship and disappear. Hall, it appears, really did care for Alice and was ready to elope with her, although she declined because she needed to focus on catching Mr. X. She assured Hall that eloping would be fine once she gets Mr. X.

Christopher accepted her decision, but then decided to go by his firm’s instructions of disappearing. The problem was that Alice already transferred $1.4 million dollars from her personal savings to him so that they could purchase their new home. By the time Alice realized that her fiancé was actually a conman, Hall had already locked their team out of the supposedly airtight security system.

The team noticed one thing, however. It was that Hall did not take everything, particularly money from the accounts of their clients. Alice and her associates then realized that Christopher, whose real name is Ben, is after tech billionaire Seth Hamilton.

Through another disguise, Ben got himself an invitation to an exclusive launch party, with the goal to steal Seth’s flash drive containing information about the billionaire’s next invention and contract. Ben managed to acquire the flash drive, but later realized that there was no data inside. After Margot (Sonya Walker), Ben’s associate and boss (as it appears), loaded the disk on her computer, Alice and her team emptied all their accounts. She managed to dupe the conmen as payback.

Variety reveals that Jennifer Schuur wrote part of the script that showed Ben’s scam in the pilot episode. Julie Anne Robinson served as director. The first episode delivered sluggish ratings compared to the usual Shondaland premieres on ABC, but observers are optimistic that it will develop a following as the season moves forward. MetaCritic and Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rating of 61 percent.

A new episode of “The Catch” will air on Mar. 31 on ABC.