In 2006, NBC launched it’s brand new show Heroes to much acclaim amongst fans of both television and comic books, finally doing a good job of bringing the gap between those who don’t actively read comics and those that do. While Smallville had been on the air for 2001, it never truly caught on with the wider audience that couldn’t get over the fact it was about Superman. But when Heroes tanked and was ultimately canceled, NBC was left to attempt to figure how to fill this space and market that so clearly could have a good monetary value to the media giant.
This is where the Cape comes in. Telling the story of Vince Farraday, the Cape is about a cop framed for murder by a supervillain named Chess, who is taken in by a Carnival of Crime and trained to fight back against those that took his life from him. Starting with a two hour premiere, this show is NBC’s latest entry into the new bourgeoning market of comic book media, which recently had the bar set with the Walking Dead. With more superhero based shows coming from ABC with Jessica Jones’ show and FX with Powers, the hope here is that NBC’s brand new superhero will capture the audiences early enough to keep them coming back when the more familiar storylines come to air.
However – on a network that has an unfortunate history of meddling, that ultimately resulted in the epic downfall of Heroes, how does the pilot for this new show pan out? Find out after the cut.
As a note, mild spoilers are discussed.
The Cape is an incredibly ambitious project for a network television show, but after two hours (or rather, an hour and a half-ish) of programming I am no further to deciding if I like the show or if I want to spend hours deriding it into a hole. Part of me finds that it is easier to hate against the show as it obviously has a fairly large amount of faults to it, but on the other hand I can’t help but be a little bit excited that someone – anyone is attempting to pull off what is kinda sorta Batman the TV Show for a modern audience. While obviously the Cape is not Batman in any way shape or form, one can’t help but notice a few similarities in characteristics. Both the Bat and the Cape have a strong and unwavering sense of justice that they seek to employ against impossible odds and enemies that outnumber and outrank them in many different facets. While the Cape’s initial motivation is in his own “death” rather than the death of his parent, it offers up a similar thrust into the world of crime as the Cape dons his cloak and takes to the night. We even have some fairly similar tropes to other general story ideas that make the Cape somewhat of a cliche, with the betrayal of his bestfriend and his son being the only one who doesn’t doubt his heroism. While still cliche, it is a time tested story method, and with a show that hopes to effectively resemble a comic book, the inclusion of these elements make it feel a bit more like one.
The villains of the show are also fairly remarkable for the idea of network television. Instead of having the show rely on “powers against powers”, we instead are giving a series of intertwined villains. While Batman has the Joker, the Cape has Chess. Chess’ immediate emergence into the story makes for the perfect foil to the Cape’s situation. Chess is a large and looming figure of power who has every resource available to him, while the Cape has nothing and works from the bottom up with base materials available to him to combat Chess. We’re also given Scale (who is definitely not Killer Croc in any way shape or form), a promised recurring villain who runs a smuggling business for Chess and comes up against the Cape and friends in the first episode. Through the second episode we also learn of Tarot, which offers the show the option of grandiose background villains via a mysterious cabal of suspicious individuals, including the second villain to the show Cain. By giving us this widespread group of antagonists, the show sets itself up have a lot of room to grow in terms of the Cape’s long lasting relevance. It works on the same grounds that NBC’s show Chuck has had Fulcrum, the Ring, and now Volkov, and I would hope that the show doesn’t try and pigeonhole itself in the same way that Heroes refused to go beyond “The Company.”
Continued belowThe Cape also has a strong Orwellian vibe to it that it wears on it’s sleeve. Not only is one of the main characters cloaked in the name Orwell (whose identity will assumedly be elaborated on later in the show in a facet that relates to our main hero’s quest, perhaps as Chess’ long lost daughter), but the show also introduces the ARK Corporation, who seek (with Chess at the helm) to give the city it’s own privatized police force, with an industry run judicial system as well. Both episodes shown dealt with this idea of a unified conglomerate control base, with the first showing how the police system was changed and the second showing ARK’s push to take over the prison system. With Vince’s remaining keycard allowing him access to the entire network that ARK is pushing into the city for a singular control point, it offers up light winks in the nod of 1984 and Big Brother, and even through dialogue the characters reinforce the idea that evil Peter Felming is pushing ARK to be a global entity as opposed to one singularly based in Palm City.
The show also boasts fairly decent visual effects. It somehwat feels similar to the programs shown on SyFy, with the digital city itself mildly having that resonate “glow” present on shows like Caprica. For all intents and purposes though, the fictional locale of Palm City looks real. The main digital effects for the cape itself are pretty impressive, and while rather visually digital, the attached sound design give it a realistic vibe for something that is entirely unrealistic. The show allows itself to take use of digital effects right now, and I would imagine the idea is to use more digital based scenarios in the future, perhaps with more complex villains who require a larger spec. We also have digital chess boards and file systems that make the show a tad goofy but still interesting in that “cutting edge” sense for technology that shouldn’t exist. The show also does what Heroes refused to do, and that’s show us some honest to god superheroic fighting. While it isn’t very large scale at the moment, we still have a man in a cape and hood fighting against a clear cut villain with his own set of “powers”. How wonderful! The Cape is cheesy, but it’s good cheese.
As a side note, I also couldn’t help but laugh at the set used in the second episode for the restaurant, which was a set used in the 2003 film Daredevil.
It’s not all perfect, though. In fact, the show has a lot of rather very gaping faults. The story alone is full of “head tilt” moments of confusion that don’t exactly make sense. Vince Farraday must be some sort of savant, because there’s no feasible way that a war vet/cop could suddenly be an incredible acrobat. We’re given a montage of learning here as the Cape learns how to hypnotize, fight, and use his cape, but the techniques he is shown using during the show seem to be above and beyond. There isn’t a lot of faulty learning for him, and you’d imagine that he would mess up a lot more in the actual practice of fighting villains rather than falling against Scales once and then suddenly being a prodigy. I also find it hard to believe that it can make sense given the lack of time line set up by the show. For all intents and purposes, the Cape learning how to be the Cape should’ve taken at least a month, but in the show it seems like they glossed over that idea to a few days before he’s back on the streets and fighting Chess.
The main issue I see with the show is summed up with a lack of two things: a steady pace, and character/story development. The show rushes along without a lot of room to relax and breathe. Vince is a family man and a good cop in one scene, but despite being the only person to try and save the former police chief, he is thrown to the wolves as Chess without a second thought. Orwell is introduced, but she weaves in and out of the story, giving Vince a set amount of trust that is not earned, with Vince giving her the same inherent belief. Even with the Carnival of Crime, who start off as an antagonist, grow to be a protagonist within the span of twenty minutes despite robbing banks. This isn’t a Robin Hood situation – they’re stealing for themselves, and now they’re allies with our hero simply because he has no one else besides Orwell. We’re given a lot to believe in with Vince, but nothing to really give us any reason to attach to any other characters other than base assumptions “this guy is bad, this guy is good.”
Continued belowThe show also gives itself some place to get lost in. The idea of ARK and Tarot is a good start, but the show could also very easily get lost if it doesn’t allow itself to move beyond that and give the Cape a set of villains. NBC is rather bad at contracting actors to be on the show long past when they’re needed (see: Sylar), and the show sets itself up to have that same downfall with the Cape’s wife Dana. Through her, we’re supposed to see the struggles left behind by Vince after his “death,” but already after the first episode her storyline is useful. It’s not her that we have an interest in – it’s her son. Seeing Dana struggle for a new job in this situation is unneccesary, unless she ends up somehow teaming up with the Cape. ARK’s legal issues aren’t something that matters for the show unless it directly ties into what Cape and Orwell are doing, so wasting a lot of time in that direction weighs the show down to boring subplots.
The Cape is ultimately simple. It wants to be a comic book, and it wants to meet the pace of a comic book. It attempts to be gimmicky at points (introducing new titled stories after each commercial break) in an attempt to try and bring the feel of a comic to the screen. However, what works in a comic does not work in other mediums. The quickened pace of a comic book makes sense in the pages of a serialised story, because that’s how 22 page books are formatted. With a television show, there is more room to grow and elaborate. Take the Walking Dead for example, which read between the lines of MANY scenes in the comic book it took it’s cues from. The Cape wants to be a comic book, but it ignores what makes a television show work. While the Cape is already better than No Ordinary Family and Smallville (which, to be honest, isn’t that hard to do), it’s still not as entertaining as Heroes was in it’s first season. Heroes juggled a huge cast, but it gave us reasons to care about everyone. The Cape wants to tell a story without the character development neccesary, and in that it’s somewhat doomed to fail right from the start. Even the shows of yesteryear that pushed their tales forward without a lot of room to breathe felt more organic than the Cape does (such as Dark Angel), and at the end of the first two episodes I’m left feeling that the people behind the Cape really want to sell this to a specific crowd rather than make a show that will count for the long haul. In a world where viewers crave better entertainment and shows get cancelled rather quickly due to lack of interest, the people behind the Cape are going to have to try a lot harder to make the Cape a character worth following. In a world where a show like Misfits is on the air, “superhero” shows need to try a lot harder to really make the cut.
NBC has a time slot to fill, and for now the Cape fits it. After two episodes, I can’t say that I love or hate the show, because I’m purely on the fence. I have a lot that I dislike about how the show is handled, but I also really want to support it. The show has a lot to work on if it wants me to care about the characters (outside of seeing how the Cape is similar to (insert hero name here) and attach based on that idea alone), but there is no reason there can’t be a good superhero show on network television. NBC already filled it’s nerdy/comic book-y/geeky show quota with Chuck, which gets better every season. What they need to do is look at what works in the large scale of adult viewers and apply that to this show. You know what works? The Dark Knight. I hate to bring Batman into this again, but there is a reason that the new Batman franchise is successful. It’s clear that the Cape wants to be Batman, and it needs to realize the structure of storytelling from that more if it’s going to survive. Right now, it’s just an entertaining show – but it could be more. It’s definitely not a show to watch over any other show, and if you’re looking for an entertaining show about people debating on superheroes, the show you want is Misfits. However, here’s hoping that The Cape understands what it needs to last before it’s too late.
