Max Mitchell is a thief and con artist who got busted in the middle of a job. Cole Ellis is a cop who got banished to the Maritime Unit after an investigation went wrong. When Max feeds Cole a tip about a major ongoing case in the hopes of getting leniency, the police commissioner offers them a deal: work together to solve crimes and in exchange, Max gets probation and Cole gets another shot at working on land.
This series contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: In "Eternal Sunshine of the Therapized Mind", Joan accidentally killed Dr. Fernwood when, during a fight, she threw a book at her head. The book hit her at just the right angle to knock her backwards, causing her to smash her head against the edge of her pool, killing her.
- Action Girl: Cole's ex-girflriend Rachel in "The Accountant of Monte Cristo" is a federal agent and very skilled with a gun, taking on several hitmen alongside him.
- And Starring: Jason Priestley as George, Max's dad who's in prison.
- Bank Robbery: "Inside (Con)Man" has one, as Max is at her bank when it's robbed, which soon turns into a hostage situation too when she alerts Ellis. Then they work together covertly to insure that the hostages (her included) are safe and bust the bank robbers.
- Batman Gambit: In "Inside (Con)Man", as Tracey is taken out of the bank to serve as a human shield for Derek and Ben's getaway, Max advises her to pretend like she's having a contraction and drop to her knees, so that the cops will panic and shoot the robbers. The purpose of this advice is twofold; one, it causes Ben and Derek to be disarmed, but also, because they know Tracey isn't actually pregnant, they'll think that she sold them out and thus testify against her to avoid taking the full rap for the robbery, which was her idea.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: All it takes is Max putting on a pair of glasses, an ID badge, or an accent, and she's instantly accepted as some sort of authority figure to get information.
- Beneath Notice: Invoked in "Dead of Night" by an assistant on a TV show summing up how "I'm everywhere and nowhere, I'm invisible." She even claims that someone recited their credit card number right in front of her with no idea she could use it. This naturally makes her a suspect for being the stalker/murderer of the cast, but she has an alibi: She was using her lack of attention to get photos of the series finale's script and sell them online.
- Boxed Crook: The police commissioner makes an arrangement for Max to work with Cole as a temporary alternative to jail. If she clears a certain number of crimes within two months, she'll get probation, but if she commits any serious crimes during that period, she could be sent to jail.
- Daddy's Girl: Max loves her father more than anything else in the world, and the ending of the premiere suggests that the real reason she's so eager to work with Cole is to somehow arrange for her dad to escape prison.
- Engineered Public Confession:
- In "Show Me the Murder," Max tricks the killer into wearing a wire, fixing the wiring so he thinks it's off and realizing too late he's confessed to murdering his partner to an entire MMA audience.
- "Dead of Night" has the group setting up the cast of the vampire TV show to head to a part of the set and tricked into confessing how they were covering up accidentally killing a woman in a hit and run.
- Fair-Play Whodunnit: The show is pretty good about dropping clues and hints on who the actual perpetrator is for each case of the week.
- False Confession: In "Eternal Sunshine of the Therapized Mind" at the funeral of a famous therapist a former patient spontaneously confesses he'd killed her, and repeats the confession several times at the police station. However, it becomes obvious by the fact he won't give more detail and just says the exact same thing that he's been hypnotized to say this. The actual killer turns out to be another therapist who'd made him do this to throw off the investigators.
- The Family That Slays Together: Max is a con artist and her father turns out to also be a criminal who's in prison. It's strongly implied that she learned from him, and is planning to bust him out. It turns out that she learned grifting from her mom as well.
- Following in Relative's Footsteps: Cole and Max both followed their parents' vocations.
- Max is a con artist who learned it from her mom.
- Cole is a cop like his dad.
- For Your Own Good: In the third episode, Max learns the real reason that Ellis got exiled to the Maritime Unit - he had begun taking too many risks in his investigations after his brother died and Chief Li became worried that he would get himself into trouble if he were left on the beat.
- Freudian Excuse: In "Eternal Sunshine of the Therapized Mind", Ellis is forced to confront why he has so much difficulty giving up his cop habits - his father was a cop, and encouraged him to follow in his footsteps, and thus he learned from an early age to associate his sense of self-worth with his job. For an added kicker, his brother Daniel was born after a heart attack forced his father to take time off from his job, and thus Daniel was not subjected to the same parenting style, becoming more open and sensitive.
- Frame-Up:
- In "Show Me the Murder" Hailey Chen-Lin, one of the suspects, gets framed by the real culprit with the murder weapon planted inside her truck. She's cleared before long though.
- It's revealed Cole was demoted due to being framed for possessing drugs.
- Friendless Background: Neither Cole nor Max have many friends before being paired off together. Max grew up with parents who traveled around a lot and was often kept sheltered and home-schooled to keep her safe from their enemies, while Cole's friends are mostly inherited from his late brother and he doesn't hang out with them much because they just remind him of his brother.
- Good Is Not Nice: Cole is an honest cop, but he's not fun to work with.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- The denouement for the pilot reveals that Max's robbery at the beginning of the episode was not just her trying to rip off a rich lady; Carmen Pallione was holding an immigrant, Maria, hostage by locking up her passport. Max robbed her in order to retrieve the passport, and also to expose a plot by Mrs. Pallione to defraud her insurers by faking the robbery of an expensive piece of jewelry.
- The second episode reveals sports agent and murder victim, Jake Boshep to be this. He's described by many to be a ruthless asshole, but when he learned of Bill's intention to have Summer Lake fight in a MMA bout while hiding her serious heart condition, he is consumed by guilt and remorse due to this happening before with a prior client who died as a result. He apologizes to his ex-wife, transfers money to the family of said late client, and threatens to blow up Bill's plan by telling Summer about her condition, which in turn, gets him killed by Bill.
- Just in Time: Max is saved from imminent murder in "Strangers on a Wave" when the police arrive.
- Karmic Thief: Max only cons rich jerkasses, and in at least some cases does it for altruistic reasons (e.g. to steal back a domestic servant's passport, which had kept her stuck in Canada essentially as a slave).
- Know When to Fold Them: After learning that she has a serious heart condition that could kill her or seriously impair her if she continues to fight in the ring, Summer Lake decides to retire from MMA fighting while she's still able to do something else with her life.
- Last Episode, New Character: The penultimate episode of the first season ends with the introduction of Max's husband.
- Lesbian Jock: A suspect in "Show Me Murder" is a queer female athlete who'd been an equestrian and now races dirt bikes.
- Missing Mom: Max's mom died in a car crash when she was a teenager. Or so Max claims; given that it's Max, this could be a lie.
- New Old Flame: It turns out Cole has an ex-girlfriend, Rachel, who's a federal agent, and they split up over her taking the job. She's introduced in "The Accountant of Monte Cristo" and was never mentioned before. It's clear they still have some feelings for each other. At the end Rachel offers for them to get back together, but he decides against it, liking his job in Vancouver.
- No Social Skills: One of the things preventing Cole from returning to his old beat is the fact that he's awful at dealing with people.
- Odd Couple: Max is an energetic, impulsive, cheerful con artist who gets caught by the police robbing a bank but gets off with a Plea Bargain to help catch other criminals. She and Col, who's a disgraced police detective, are forced to work together. Col is a more laidback, staid and dour man who's often annoyed by Max's antics, but increasingly charmed as well.
- Plea Bargain: Max makes a bargain with the authorities to help solve crimes in exchange for only getting probation over robbing a bank if she abides by its terms.
- Polyamory: In "Howl to Get Away With Murder" it turns out that the victim was seeing two women and a man, while they all knew about each other with them accepting this arrangement. Nonetheless, at first they're suspects because Cole thinks at least one possibly murdered him out of envy since he was going to end the relationship with all his partners and monogamously date another woman. This turns out to not be the case however.
- Queer Establishing Moment:
- In "Howl to Get Away With Murder" before long Cole and Max find out that the victim had seen multiple women, but also a man. His boyfriend turns out to be a man they interviewed, with Max spotting this quickly.
- In "Con With the Wind" JJ is established to be queer early on by Cole. Later it turns out he refused to give an alibi as that would out his boyfriend Vince, who's still in the closet.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Cole was banished to the Maritime Unit after someone put cocaine in the trunk of his car. He's been trying to get back on land for a while.
- Shipper on Deck: Max is very impressed by Cole's ex-girlfriend Rachel in "The Accountant of Monte Cristo", saying she's "the total package" given her skill, beauty and intelligence. She expresses incredulity about Cole letting her go and teases him about it, clearly seeing them as a great couple.
- Smokescreen Crime: In "Inside (Con)Man", Derek and Ben's attempt to rob the bank while taking hostages is actually a distraction to cover Derek's foster sister Tracey accessing the safe deposit boxes to steal her mother's extremely valuable stamp.
- Something Only They Would Say: A variation in "Inside (Con)Man" as Max realized Tracey was in on the robbery when she was getting milk for the robber and somehow knew exactly what kind of milk he wouldn't be allergic to.
- Spanner in the Works: Invoked in "Inside (Con)Man" as Max and Cole's presence threw off the entire bank robbery plan.
- Spotting the Thread: Max's con artist skills allow her to spot details such as how a woman rubbing her hands a certain way is proof she was having an affair with a murder victim.
- Sympathetic Magic: In "Howl to Get Away Murder" as Cole and Max look into a murder within a small town, three suspects steal some clothing they have, then are caught burning it for a ritual to make them leave. They turn out to practice witchcraft together. None are guilty of the murder though.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Cole is really not happy about getting stuck with Max, especially since he might lose his job if she's caught committing any crimes while they're on a case.
- Token Minority:
- Cole's boss Li is Asian Canadian, played by Terry Chen.
- One of Cole's colleagues is Detective Simmons, a black man.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Played with in "Howl to Get Away with Murder", where Cole and Max see various occult paraphernalia around Sanford and find a trio of animal hearts in Lucas Mays' trailer and assume that his death had something to do with the occult. This is false; Sanford actually does have a dark secret, but it's much more mundane - the local wine merchant, Harlan Sanford, has been passing off cheap wines as "lost" vintages in order to charge higher prices, and when Lucas Mays accidentally found out about the fraud, he murdered Mays to cover it up.
- Twofer Token Minority:
- Max is a Black Canadian woman in an otherwise mostly white cast.
- In "Show Me the Murder", one of the suspects in the murder of sports agent Jake Boshep is Hailey Chen-Lin, a queer Chinese-Canadian former equestrian who now races dirt bikes.
- Another of the characters in "Show Me Murder" is Summer Lake, a female MMA fighter who's olive-skinned, though her ethnicity is unclear.
- Working with the Ex: In "The Accountant of Monte Cristo", Cole and Max are recruited by Cole's ex-girlfriend, a federal agent named Rachel Cisco, to help her find a witness who has apparently been kidnapped.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
- "Dead of Night" has the cast of a vampire TV show hunted by a stalker with one getting his arms burned, another nearly dying of an allergic reaction and a third outright murdered. It turns out the four actors accidentally killed a woman and when one wanted to confess, they killed him. The "stalker" was an invention with the other actors deliberately putting themselves in harm's way to make the cops believe this "stalker" was the killer.
- In "Inside (Con)Man", bank robbers Derek and Ben are being aided by Tracy, Derek's foster sister, who nobody watches too carefully because she appears to be pregnant and thus they all assume she can't go very far.
- Wunza Plot: Disgraced, straitlaced police detective Cole works with experienced, freespirited con artist Max to solve cases together (over his reluctance).
