TV is the New Reading

‘White Collar’ pilot episode leaves a few character issues open

I was so impressed with the fall season finale of “Psych” -- fake psychic Shawn Spencer got kidnapped and led his friends on a mighty chase -- and so bummed about the fact that it won’t be returning until the new year -- and then so blown away by the reappearance of Bitty Schram on “Monk” -- that I could barely focus on the eight or nine times USA premiered new comic crime series “White Collar.”

“White Collar” opens simply enough with a prison break by blithe bond-forger Neal Caffrey, played by Matthew Bomer. In terms of criminal cool, think Leo DiCaprio’s character in “Catch Me If You Can.” Playing the Tom Hanks opposite from that matchup is Tim Dekay as Peter Burke, white-collar crime investigator for the FBI.

Caffrey’s prison break wasn’t terribly complicated, and neither were his reasons. His girlfriend left him five months out from the end of his sentence so he escaped to run after her. Burke catches him in his apartment, desolate and abandoned by his lost love.

Burke doesn’t have time to fuss with a heartbroken escaped con -- even one who took him three years to track down the first time. He’s got a counterfeiter nicknamed “The Dutchman” to track down. This elusive character -- nicknamed for disappearing the moment Burke gets close -- is fussing with Canadian bills as well as half a gross of not-remotely interesting 1940s editions of a Spanish version of Snow White.

It just so happens that that each copy of that particular edition has a blank page of parchment the Dutchman can use for $1,000 bonds, rumored to have been lost after the war. They determine that if he can complete the forgery he can recover face value plus interest of more than $1 million.

Fortunately the art thief Dutch is working with for the Goya print on each bond is narcissistic enough to sign his forgery, and Caffrey knows how he’s doing it. So Burke works a deal to get Caffrey released into his custody with an ankle monitor.

At first, Caffrey isn’t any better off than he was in prison. But through a breathtakingly fortuitous connection with the widow of another con artist, he ends up living the good life.

Meanwhile, Burke is doggedly pursuing whatever leads Caffrey is able to uncover and comes up against a brick wall -- or more to the point, a warehouse he   doesn’t have a warrant to search. Despite his preoccupation with tracking down his girlfriend, it is once again Caffrey to the rescue with a surprising twist that ultimately cements the partnership.

Partners?

At first I was having a lot of trouble with Burke, or more to the point, Dekay. I was no instant fan of Bomer, either, who it would seem is far too tall and pretty to vanish into a crowd the way con artists occasionally must. But Dekay was bothering me, and then I realized what it was.

When I was a child, there was a show on NBC called “Quincy, M.E.,” starring Jack Klugman. Dekay’s gruffish attitude reminds me quite a lot of Klugman’s curmudgeonly coroner, although if I’m remembering correctly, Quincy was always between marriages, while Burke is a relatively devoted husband -- the work comes first quite a lot of the time and Burke’s wife, Elizabeth, has made a restive peace with that. In fact, she’s a little bit jealous of Caffrey himself, with Burke having devoted three years in putting him behind bars.

In the end, Caffrey is even able to help the Burkes out domestically, which closes out the pilot episode on a high note.

Right now I remain hopeful and generally supportive of this show, which hasn’t won me over straight out the gate. I think they need to rely a lot less on coincidences, a lot more on the sharpish brain trust they’re trying to convince us of, and establish the presently uneasy chemistry between these guys.

See, they’re not supposed to be best friends by any stretch of the imagination. But in a three-year cat-and-mouse chess match they’d have felt each other out a lot more than what seems to be playing out between them on screen. I mean on one level, as devoted to the job as Burke is, Caffrey was for a time almost a third member in his marriage. So my hope is that we’ll see a lot more of that kind of intuitive partnership as the show continues.

“White Collar” airs at 9 p.m. Fridays on USA.