I'm 24 minutes in, and fucking loving it. The concept is brilliant. It's basically "Catch me if you can" but with the mastermind (who was also Bryce Fucking Larkin) working with The Man from the outset. I love the idea of the guy who is just barely caught working with authorities to bring down his own ilk. USA strikes again with fantastic original programming. Focus: Discuss the show.
It's okay. It's like other USA shows in that the concept is better than the execution of trying to give the characters some season long character arcs that seem to depend on a lot of much weaker supporting characters. This was evident in Burn Notice, where I could give fuck all about his relationship with his mother. Same thing here, I don't care about the FBI guy's relationship with his wife, I don't care about the guy looking for his girlfriend who just broke up with him. These things will be drawn out to the point of tedium in a 13 episode series and frankly I'll get bored by them. In the end I want to see a criminal fuck shit up for other criminals, I don't care about filler to round out the character in a lame USA Series sort of way. It's fairly smart as far as procedural crime dramas go, although nowhere near as intricate as some other, better produced shows. I'll probably watch the next episode or two.
Hey, don't worry about pulling punches. I'm not done with the ep yet (got pulled into an hour long convo with an ex, fucking bitch) but so far, I see the main character paying off what he's built as, the pro/antagonist agent being a real human (with the wife, as you mentioned, though you failed to mention it's motherfucking TIFFANY AMBER THEISON), and a good setup for future eps. Smart guy catches slightly less smart guy. This is the formula for every goddamned procedural on television. I submit that USA does it in style. On Psych, James Roday is funny as fuck. On Burn Notice, Michael Weston is the smooth spy we've all always wanted to be. With White Collar, they're giving us the rebel we all want to be combined with the smart guy, and the ladies man, and the success. If this show follows it's format... On USA it will be a success. It wouldn't survive a network, but then, neither would Burn Notice, and that's a great fucking show.
I enjoyed the first episode. The woman giving him her husband's clothes, inviting him to stay at her house, etc. was wildly unbelievable. But he wasn't exactly "white collar" living in that motel, so something like that was bound to happen. Glad they got it out of the way. I agree about the long character arcs. This isn't Lost, it's Law and Order. They should stick with episodes that can be watched with no prior knowledge of the show. Of course that won't happen, and in three or four episodes they're going to have a case take them out to San Diego and Neal is going to get more advice of the "don't throw your life away after some skirt" variety from his FBI older brother. Oh well.
I watched a few other episodes. This show isn't very good. It's certainly not in Burn Notice country. It's not entirely unwatchable but it's kind of boring. Matt Bomer just doesn't sell me on the main character. Nothing about him says "criminal mastermind", mostly it says "soap opera actor getting big break". He's about as convincing of a con man as Tara Reid is as a scientist (see, she's a scientist now, can't you tell because she's wearing glasses). Bad casting on that round. Plus I could care less about the other characters at all or their problems. None of them seem to tie together neatly into the overall plot of the show. If the FBI guy got killed in the next episode nobody would care because he's a weak character with even weaker subplots that add nothing to the show.
I saw it coming but not because of any direct clues given by the writers in the plot (I don't think). Mostly because Tiffani Theissan's* character's relationship with her husband -- including the fact that she weirdly refers to him as "my husband" instead of "Peter". I had to pick: their union is the most unbelievable, stale television marriage ever created or there was something more going on. *I'm awful with character names.
Just call her Kelly Kapowksi, we all do. I figured it out via process of elimination, once the internal FBI douche was ruled out, the only thing shocking would have been Peter running her. That aside I'll be tuning in when it returns.
Entirely true. I think everyone that watches this show figured it out at that point. Problem for me was, I accidentally watched the last show before the penultimate show. That gave a lot away. But I gotta give credit. The dude playing Peter Burke was either at least as surprised as we were, or he's a VERY talented actor.