WHITE COLLAR. 9 tonight, USA.
COVERT AFFAIRS. 10 tonight, USA.
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN "Law & Order" and "Lost," there lies a genre I've come to think of as Conspiracy Lite.
You may think of it as simply USA Network, as in the NBC Universal cable channel that's home to shows like "Burn Notice," "Royal Pains," "Psych" and "White Collar," gently serialized fare that mixes mystery and humor with offbeat leads and isn't likely to send anyone back to Philosophy 101 to brush up on Locke, Rousseau and Hume.
Not that there's anything wrong with a show that makes you wish you'd paid more attention in school.
Except that it's summer, "Lost" is truly lost and those of us who stuck with it mostly for its heart-rending characters, not its mind-bending plot lines, may be able to make do for a bit with the only slightly tortured types that USA serves up.
But with the notable exception of "In Plain Sight's" splendidly bitter Deputy U.S. Marshal Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) - who, if we're being honest, seems more like a TNT girl anyway - most of the quirky main characters USA's so eager to welcome to its original series have so far been male.
The gender ratio shifts a bit tonight, as USA launches "Covert Affairs," a stylish spy drama starring Jennifer Garner lookalike Piper Perabo as a CIA newbie who's herself so stylish she wears Christian Louboutin heels and can pass for a high-priced D.C. call girl without so much as refreshing her lipstick.
Which makes "Covert Affairs" the perfect chaser for "White Collar," which returns for Season 2 tonight with well-dressed parolee-about-town Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) back where he started, after the deal that freed him from his ankle bracelet and was to reunite him with his mysterious girlfriend literally blew up in his face in the show's Season 1 finale in March.
We should be sad for Neal, who's supposedly lost the love of his life - I only say supposedly because you can't always believe what you see on "White Collar" - but, hey, he still has Peter Burke (Tim DeKay), and the bro-mance between the art thief and his by-the-book FBI handler is still the best reason to watch this show.
