It looks like the Cape’s crime fighting days are going to be over shorter than he had originally imagined.
According to a report from Deadline, the Cape has been cut back from a 13 episode season to a 10 episode season due to the increasingly low ratings. The show hit a new low this week as people just lose interest in the character and his adventures, and this is ultimately taking it’s toll against him, with NBC quickly cutting the show (assumedly to avoid the embarassment that was the later seasons of Heroes).
It’s a shame that the first superhero on a major network after Heroes and Smallville is getting the shaft, but I suppose that the low ratings have shown that people a) aren’t ready for a superhero in a cape on TV and b) just generally want a better show. When you look at the success of Heroes and Smallville, it’s noticable that the characters don’t wear costumes, and the reason people continue to watch is the drama. The teams behind both shows both obviously loved comics, and the storytelling techniques flowed from the comic to the teleplay to the show. With The Cape, it tries too hard to emulate something that it’s not from people that don’t seem to have a true love for comics at all, but rather a group who wants to hit a niche and failed. Hell, the OC clearly had more of a love for comics than the Cape did. What we were ultimately left with was a cast putting on rather bland performances and no real draw to the trials that the Cape was going through.
To prove the point even further, the first thing I saw when I did a Google search for an image for this article was, “I don’t understand why the cape is trying to save the life of the man who killed him. Seems that the writers are out of ideas.” – and that’s a quote that is coming off the main NBC.com page in regards to the fourth episode:
Audiences are clearly ready for comic-based entertainment. The success of the Walking Dead, Scott Pilgrim, Iron Man, and the Dark Knight have proven that you can take properties from the Big Two or a creator owned series and have something that will resonate with audiences on a larger scale. However, what the Cape has shown us thus far that if you’re going to try to get a brand new character off the ground, you need to set the standards much higher.
(via source)
