The Cape - ''Dice''

Spoiler Level: High

Peter Fleming looks sincerely into Dice's eyes.  "Yes, Tracey, I killed your father," he concedes.  "How can we move past that?"

You gotta love it.  The sheer audacity of Peter Fleming, a man who enjoys playing his game of manipulations so much and who has had so much success with it, that he genuinely feels that the little annoying detail that he killed the father of the woman he's enamored with is something that can eventually be overlooked.  And major credit has to go to actor James Frain for being able to deliver a line like that so utterly convincingly.

And you know, that's really what makes The Cape work, is the actors.  If you try to describe a lot of this show on its own, it just sounds horrible... but these actors just get it.  They don't play it camp, but it's like they've managed to hit on just the right beat of unreality that you get swept up in it and believe it.

In this episode, Dice is a savant who can see the mathematics of everything around her to the point where she can predict probability right down to what the roll of the dice is going to be.  And of course, she wants revenge on Chess for killing her father.

Funny thing about this episode though, it felt like it should have come earlier.  Little things, like the utter despair of Faraday's family, the look of their apartment, the fact that we're now being coy about the connection between Orwell and Chess again... heck, the idea that after The Cape and the Carnival of Crime were on such opposite sides last episode, that Vince would be willing to hand over their police files to them in the next episode.  And when I went to check out the images on nbc.com, it had this episode listed as 103!  (They also had images from two cut scenes, which was pretty interesting.)  So, if you still haven't watched this series yet and are interested in watching it for free on nbc.com, I recommend watching this episode third.  (And starting soon.  Episode 1 is only going to stay up until February 8.  I like that too, that they let you know how long you have to watch them.  NBC is really doing a great job with their website.)

And lastly, I sincerely hope that Vince is reunited with his family-- for good-- at the end of this season.  Watching them suffer like this over and over is just getting hard to watch.  Seeing the family reunited at the end of this arc would feel rewarding to me as a viewer, and changing the dynamic to have them be in on the secret of him being The Cape could add a whole new dimension to this show for next season.