I didn’t know what I expected when I ordered Season One of the television show White Collar from the library, but I didn’t expect what I got. It wasn’t unwatchable, but if I’d had anything else of greater intrigue on hand last week, I probably wouldn’t have watched it.

I found White Collar searching through the Amazon TV on DVD Bestsellers, as I often do when looking for new shows to order from the library. I guess I didn’t read the description, because I had some expectation that it would be a sort of general cutting-edge drama about high class people of dubious morals or white collar crime. Something in the vein of Burn Notice or Leverage. I was disappointed to read the back of the DVD box and discover that it was, in fact, a procedural crime drama.

Sigh… aren’t there enough procedural crime dramas already?

The premise of this one requires a bit more suspension of disbelief than a supposedly “realistic” show (i.e. not scif-fi or fantasy) ought. FBI Agent Peter Burke, working for the white collar crime division, catches notorious criminal mastermind Neal Caffrey for a second time when he breaks out of prison four months before his scheduled release (it was for a girl, of course; what else would prompt such a stupid move from a notorious criminal mastermind). Alas, he misses the girl by a day, and in a ludicrous turn of events somehow manages to convince Burke to bring him on as an FBI consultant (complete with super high-tech tracking anklet that even Caffrey can’t outsmart) rather than send him back to prison, paving the way to these two formerly mortal adversaries become partners in a “buddy” crime drama setup.

As if that weren’t a hard enough premise to swallow… Neal Caffrey is a super duper good-looking 20-something criminal mastermind. I know that people are supposed to be better looking on TV than they’d be in real life, but Caffrey’s casting (Matt Bomer) is extra preposterous. Yes, he looks awesome stylish in his retro-chic suits and narrow ties (apparently they’re all the rage), but wouldn’t it have made more sense to have the 40-something Tim McKay (Burke) play the seasoned criminal mastermind brought into advise the FBI, and maybe the role of somewhat square Agent Burke would have provided a nice contrast to Matt Bomer’s unreal good looks? I warmed up to Bomer a little bit more when I read on his Wikipedia entry that he went to Carnegie Mellon around the same time I was at Pitt (if only I had been single at the time!) and played the role of Ben Reade on the ill-fated soap Guiding Light, which Saundra and I used to follow in our younger days.

The more I watched this show, however, the more I realized that Bomer isn’t the only thing that’s “too cute” about it. The relationship that develops between Burke and Caffrey is just too friendly to be believed. If Burke is supposedly the one who tracked Caffrey down and put him in prison the first time, is he really going to become bestest friends with Caffrey now? They try to plant some seeds of doubt in their relationship mid-season, but it only lasts for about one and a half episodes, and not long after Caffrey is declaring in a drug-induced stupor that Burke is the only person he can really trust. Not even to mention the episode where they become roommates.

Adding to the list “too cute” items in this show is Tiffani-Amber Thiessen in the throw-away role of Burke’s wife. It’s not that she treats the role lightly or plays it in a way that you can’t take her seriously. She does a fine enough job with what she’s given, but the wife character just doesn’t do much. She just adds to the home-y scenery of Burke’s house, giving the boys a cozy place to go where they can talk about cases and use her for a sounding board. Otherwise she provides a marital relationship for Caffrey to admire (he’s still after the girl, remember), and sweet moments of marital support for Burke in bookend scenes. It’s a regular gig for Thiessen, I guess, but she doesn’t do much of consequence for being billed as a main character.

This show tries its darnedest to be better than a typical procedural, weaving an overarching plot of Caffrey’s search for his mysteriously estranged love (the plot thickens as we learn she is not estranged by choice) into the episodic weekly crime stories, but given the rest of my take on this show, I can’t really bring myself to care much. The effort at characterization is appreciated, but not terribly successful due to its unbelievability. If you’re looking for something light and you love crime drama, you may enjoy this series, but it was all “too cute” for me.