The Cape isn’t so much a superhero TV series as it is a cheap imitation of other comics, using just about every cliché you could possibly employ in one singular plot. Within the first five minutes, we’re told that the main hero, Vince Faraday (David Lyons), is “the only good cop left in Palms City”, and that “the city needs men like him if they’re going to stand a chance”.
Now, these traits are pretty standard for the hero motif, but we don’t need them immediately crammed down our throats within the first four minutes. I think that the American public has reached a point where they can figure out that the guy with the evil mask and diabolical plans is the enemy and the good-looking guy with blinding white-teeth and a Victor Mature demeanor is the hero.
Nevertheless, Vince suspects that something is awry at the commissioner’s speaking engagement. Enter the villain, Chess, a rather non-threatening, pencil-neck dressed up like The Phantom, who we must assume is an evil genius because of his name. Anyway, Chess assassinates the commissioner by throwing a can of CO2 into his car but only after delivering the dumbest kill-line in history, “backstage passes”. Vince then tries to shoot the car doors open (somehow, I think Bruce Wayne could have figured out that that doesn’t work) but the SUV ends up exploding with all the pomp and corny CGI effects found in a SyFy Channel movie.
We later learn that Chess is none other than the CEO of ARK, a privatized security force a la Black Water or OCP in Robocop, that, in an effort to take over the world or something, is quietly trying to overthrow the local police force.
Inevitably, Chess kidnaps Vince and binds his gay, Phantom of the Marilyn Manson Video mask to his face in order to frame him as Chess, the suspected perp in the recent assassination. But Vince, instead of relying on his immaculate police record, doesn’t turn to the cops to straighten out the misunderstanding. No, he runs from the entire police force in a hail of gunfire only to escape underground, narrowly missing another large explosion.
Enter the Carnival of Crime (dear god, shoot the writer who came up with that name), an underground group of bank robber/circus performers lead by Max Malini, played by the once respected Keith David. Max rescues Vince and with the help of shitty dialogue, ends up using his Vince’s police card (that conveniently opens up every door in the city) to rob banks. Smash cut to the next scene at a bank where the group is shooting guns into the air. Did they really need the card?
Though plot holes are expected in this type of action show, the thing that really makes this so craptastic is the origin of our hero’s masked identity. Because Vince is thought to have been killed in the explosion, he decides to dress up as his kid’s favorite comic book hero as a subtle way for his family to know that he’s still alive. So he decides to become The Cape, the comic book he and his son were reading at the beginning of the show-get it? So basically, the fictional super-hero in The Cape is based off another fictional superhero of the same name in the same show. Clearly there’s some brilliant writing going on over at NBC.
My other complaint is that The Cape’s gimmick is seriously lame. The Cape isn’t just his name, it’s also his weapon. Vince digs up the cape from Malini’s trove of illusions and tricks and comes to find out that is has a “weighted hem” and is “as tough as Kevlar but as light as filament”. Then we see the obligatory training montage, which consists of Vince making awkward movements, grabbing a wine glass and blowing out a candle with said cape. So I guess he’s more than ready to foil any criminals who happen to be eating a romantic, candle-lit dinner.
The importance of a superhero is almost always derived from the hero’s origin as it is usually represented by a tragic, life-altering event that then dictates the entire tone and trajectory of the series. Wolverine needed to find out who gave him that ultimately bad-ass skeleton, and Batman embraced the darkness that grew from witnessing his parents’ murder to eventually become Batman. But the complexity of The Cape’s origin is, well, based off a fictional comic book character on a fictional TV show. I give it six episodes at most.
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