The Cape - ''Endgame''

Spoiler Level: Medium

Well, this was a pleasant surprise.  Apparently NBC decided to post the last episode online.  I feel kind of foolish now; I stopped checking on this show once they announced no more episodes would be aired.

"Endgame" was filmed before they got the notification that NBC had cut their order down to 10 episodes from 13, so the makers of the show didn't get a chance to wrap it up.  Having said that, "Endgame" is at least more satisfying of an ending than "Razer" was.

The evidence that Vince gathered on Peter Fleming in the previous episode has gone public, so Fleming weasels his way out of it by doing what he does best-- framing someone else to take the fall for him.  In this case it's Marty Voyt, Vince's best friend who helped set him up in the first place.  As I suspected in "The Lich," this is Marty's redemption story, as he comes clean to Vince's wife about what he's done and why he did it-- which is to say, to protect his family from Fleming.  And we did see Fleming threaten Voyt's family in those early epsodes, so that reasoning works.

This is a typical late-season episode, in that big things are starting to happen, and the pieces are all being put into place for the final battle.  Fleming's defenses are starting to unravel, and you can tell that Chess was going to start taking the center stage again very soon.  Vince gets to be with his wife again, albeit as The Cape, and has to be talked out of revealing that he's still alive to her, with reassurances from Orwell and Max that he can tell her very soon.  It's a shame we won't get to see any of that happen now, but at least we have some closure between Vince and Marty, and a feel for the ending that would have been.

As of this writing, this episode is still available to view for free -- with the same one lone commercial played at every single commercial break -- at http://www.nbc.com/the-cape/video/endgame/1313753/.

The Cape - ''Razer''

Spoiler Level: High

The main plot for this episode is kinda' just okay. Where this episode really worked best was in building up for the season finale-- a finale that's now not going to come.

Scales and Fleming make a deal on how to split up the crime in Palm City.  Scales' territory includes Trolley Park, home to the Carnival of Crime, so he starts leaning on Max to cut him in.  As a result, Vince infiltrates Scales' gang to get proof of his involvement with Fleming, and -- after some prompting from Rollo -- to get inside information to make it easier for him to interfere as The Cape with his operations.

But it's the background details that truly make this episode interesting.  Peter Fleming is turning into Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (or more like Dr. Hyde & Mr. Hyde), as Chess becomes his own personality. Orwell is completely cracking up after her ordeal with the Lich.  The Carnival of Crime is starting to lose patience with Max playing mentor-- and Max has revealed that all his training of Vince Faraday in the use of the Cape has been for something called Devereux.

Sadly, according to Entertainment Weekly, this is the final episode.  I know NBC had cut back their order from 13 episodes to 10, but apparently they've decided not to air the tenth episode.  Which is pretty much the last nail in the coffin-- although the show hasn't officially been canceled yet, the ratings have steadily declined each week, and both EW and TV by the Numbers feel that cancelation is a certainty.  I knew the episode reduction was going to mess up the season's story arc as soon as I heard about it, but now that we're actually there and we've been given a taste of where everything's going to go I can't help but still be disappointed.

Ah, well.  The Cape wasn't groundbreaking and it didn't blow me away, and I generally watched it last each week, but it was consistently entertaining with likable characters and I did always enjoy watching it.  Thanks to everyone involved for giving it their best shot, and for entertaining me for nine weeks.

---

As of this writing, this episode is still available to watch for free (with comercials) at nbc.com/the-cape/, or it can be purchased at the links below.

The Cape - ''The Lich, Part 2''

Spoiler Level: High

More of a straight forward story than Part 1, Part 2 follows The Cape in his attempts to rescue Orwell from The Lich and stop The Lich's nefarious plan of gassing the Founder's Day Parade.

Voyt is moved into the background this time, so there's no deeper insights into his motivations here, although we do see him behaving like a good cop for the first time.  When The Cape needs help to get in to jail to see the Linch's captured henchman, going to Voyt again doesn't even occur to Faraday this time; he feels the only person who can accomplish that is his wife.  So at last, they get to see each other again, and I get to see the family reunited.  Kind of.

I suppose I should just accept the conceit that since Vince Faraday is wearing a cape and a mask, no one is going to recognize his voice either.  It's a bit old fashioned, but it's definitely the approach this show is taking.  Now I suppose if I had seen my spouse blown up on TV and I heard a masked vigilante with her voice later, I might just chalk it up to wishful thinking on my part.

And the scenes with the two of them are great, especially their final shot together when The Cape puts his hand on the one-way mirror and it matches up with her hand perfectly.  Dana and Vince both seem to have hope again. The romantic in me is pleased.

Orwell is a major focus of the episode, even though she spends most of it drugged out of her mind.  Her dream sequences are of course revealing; an attraction to Vince, yet knowing it's wrong by its nature and can never be; her father being Peter Fleming; and learning that her real name is Jamie.  It's also great to see her become more deeply acquainted with Max and Rollo.  My only dislike of how she's handled is this episode is the scene where she turns the needle back on Lich's "handmaiden" Netta; wasn't Netta just drugged by the Lich as well?  The drug was said to have a 70% fatality rate; now since she was one of the Lich's zombies, it stands to reason she was one of the surviving 30%, but does that mean she's guaranteed to survive a second dose?  And in Orwell's defense, she was probably drugged up when the Lich mentioned the survival rate and probably didn't hear it.

Rollo's great in this episode, as always.  He gets to kick some serious butt.

And then there's that final scene, where Orwell sees the "escape door" in the Carnival of Crime. This can mean many things...

(1) She's still drugged, or has suffered brain damage, and everything we've seen / will see from this episode on is a delusion;
(2) She's still recovering from the drug, and is just hallucinating;
(3) It's symbolic, implying to her that she needs to leave the Orwell persona and/or The Cape and/or the Carnival of Crime behind her;
(4) Max just likes to keep extra doors lying around;
(5) It's a message from the network, warning the cast to prepare their resumes;
(6) The writers just wanted to be mysterious.

And on a completely different note, this episode was directed by Roxann Dawson, who is known to the fandom community as B'Elanna Torres from Star Trek: Voyager!

Okay, one last nitpick... there's absolutely no mention that the parade is now going to be safe.  It is mentioned that The Lich has been captured and locked up, so presumably they were able to prevent his trucks from getting into the parade.  Still, after all the build-up, a resolution line would have been nice.

Overall, I think the different approaches to parts 1 & 2 make the combined story stronger as a whole.  Even though I wasn't totally keen on last week's episode, I think it compliments this episode well.  The Cape continues to entertain, and I'll be sorry to see it go.

---

This episode will be available to watch for free with limited commercials at NBC's website at http://www.nbc.com/the-cape/video/ until April 2, 2011. It's also available to purchase from Amazon.

The Cape - ''The Lich, Part 1''

Spoiler Level: Medium

I'm with Rollo on this one.  Voodoo is not my speed.

 It's not a bad story, in fact it managed to surprise me a few times, which is always good.  And it's not really Voodoo per se, as there's no real supernatural element to it, which works for me because I'm more into science than magic.  But for me the episode didn't really start getting interesting until the various mysteries started coming together at the end.

And I have to take serious issues with the scenes between The Cape and Voyt.  Voyt was Vince Farady's best friend.  You're telling me Farady is going to talk to Voyt from the back seat of his car and Voyt's not going to recognize his voice?  Or worse yet, over the phone?  And Farady actually gave Voyt his phone number?!?  Perhaps in Part 2 we'll learn that Voyt did recognize his voice, and guilt over what he's done to his best friend is what lead to his change of heart.  It would seem a bit out of character for him, but I always like a good redemption story.

And the scene of  Vince's wife was just heartbreaking.  These family-torn-apart scenes are even tougher for me to watch now that it's unlikely that we'll get a resolution to them.

But on the positive side, Rollo continues to be a cool character, we get a better glimpse into Chess's psychosis, and as I mentioned earlier, the episode did surprise me in spots.  I'm hoping that since all the cards are now out in the open, Part 2 will grab me more.

The Cape - ''Goggles & Hicks''

Spoiler Level: High

First off, it's nice to finally have a title that's not just one word.

Secondly, Goggles & Hicks are very cool villains.  Goggles is the eccentric genius who hunts the victim down, Hicks is the gunman who takes them out.  Goggles is verbose, Hicks is silent.  Goggles enjoys his work and is a kid at heart, Hicks is serious and down-to-business.  And the opening scenes set them up as master assassins.

Too good, actually.  After building them up, it's too unbelievable that they can't take out The Cape given the circumstances they're in.  They're foiled by things like trees, interference from tunnels, and plain old missed shots.  Which would have worked fine if we hadn't already seen them shoot through brick walls from a ridiculously long distance to take out a man hiding in Afghanistan.  Their surprise at their initial failure due to The Cape's cape being bullet-proof is understandable, but after that they should have brought their "A" Game, or been foiled by things that were much more unpredictable.  Really, if you guys are that good, tunnels and trees should not be what stops you.

But as usual, what makes the episode work is the characters.  It's nice to see Trip making a new friend, and being able to do it because in his heart he believes his dad was a good cop.  The cracks in Hoyt's armor are staring to show, and Dana's starting to see him for who he really is.  Each episode she gets closer and closer to the truth.

Sadly, I'm starting to lose hope of getting a pay-off from the series.  According to this report at TV by the Numbers, the ratings have been dropping, and NBC has cut the season down from 13 episodes to 10.  And of course, they just wrapped on episode 10, so unless it's renewed, we probably won't get a conclusion.  And if it is renewed, the odds of this arc being wrapped up in the first few episodes is pretty unlikely, as shows prefer to do season long story-arcs.

This is a real shame.  Sure, this show has its share of angst, yet it's the kind of positive attitude show that we could use more of.  If it could at least be given a chance to wrap this story line up it would have a chance at a second life on DVD, but as it stands now it's more likely to fall into the bin of forgotten shows.

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.

The Cape - ''Scales''

Spoiler Level: High

Bit of a mixed bag this episode.  I thought the elements with the Carnival of Crime going back to actually being a Carnival of Crime were good, and wish there had actually been more of that part of the story.  But I tend to find them to be some of the more interesting characters in the show in general.  I had felt Max's one-eighty degree transition from hardened criminal to super hero mentor was a bit too extreme, and between last episode and this episode it feels more believable that he hasn't completely gone straight.

The main story itself was pretty good; The Cape hoping to drive a wedge between Chess and Scales, in the hope that Scales will expose Chess and clear The Cape's name.  It's a good plan, but if it worked that well the storyline would be over already, so of course it's not that easy.

Which makes me wonder:  if this show lasts long enough, will they have Chess be defeated at the end of the season and then introduce a new villain next year?  Or will they fall into the Heroes trap of feeling you have to always use the same villain?  I hope not-- with only 4 episodes under their belt, they've already built up a good rogue's gallery for The Cape.  I think they could let this story arc with Chess play out, and then next season pick Scales or Greggor the Great to move into the spotlight as the main villain.  Hopefully they'll learn from Heroes' mistakes.

Now for the bad:  I'm pretty easy going when it comes to bad special effects, but wow that fight on the top of the train was pretty poorly green-screened.  And having the ARK Cop that ticked off Scales at the beginning of the episode wind up being unconscious in the caboose with him at the end just felt forced.  Did we even see that there was a cop in there to begin with at all?  I certainly don't remember it.

And lastly, apparently the original title for this episode was "Scales on a Train," which is a bazillion times cooler than just "Scales."  So y'know, minus several points for missing out on a great opportunity there.

So all in all, I'd give this episode a 7.5 out of 10.

The Cape - "Kozmo"

Spoiler Level: High

The back story gets expanded this week as we learn the origin of The Cape's cape.  I had assumed it was just a trick cape for the circus acts; but no, it's actually the cape of Kozmo the Unkillable, a villain who used it for his own nefarious means and passed it on to his successor, who would then take on the role of Kozmo in a cycle that has lasted for generations.  Max had been the latest Kozmo and was training someone else to take over for him; but when he saw just how dark his apprentice was, he sold him out and decided to put Kozmo to rest.  Once Faraday came along, he saw the chance for the cape to be used for something better.  But now Max's apprentice is back, and he wants the cape back as well.

It fits in nicely with what I remember of the pilot episode, and gives Max a little more depth.  And Orwell finally meets up with the rest of the Carnival, so it's nice to see that progressing along.

And then there's the extra digging into Chess's past; the revelation that he has a lost daughter, and the implication that she's Orwell.  This actually comfirms suspicions I started to have last episode.  I usually make a few screen captures before I decided on which one I'm going to use here, and last week's effect of Chess's holographic chess board was pretty cool, so I did a few screen captures of that scene, and I noticed this:

 

See that picture in the lower right hand corner of him with a little girl?  I didn't catch it when I actually watched the episode.  So I saw it here and thought, "Hmm, he has a daughter... that'll probably become important.  Oh wait a minute, I bet that's what Orwell's all about!"  So it was neat to have been given this hint and then have it pretty much confirmed in the next episode.

I also liked that Faraday's wife is starting to piece together how he was framed.  That's got the potential for something good.

The episode did feel like it had a few holes in it from time to time, but nothing bad enough for me to quibble about.  Overall, The Cape continues to entertain.

The Cape - "Tarot"

Spoiler Level: High

Not quite as good as the first episode, but still enjoyable.

This episode starts off with Vince Faraday trying to innocently buy some supplies at an Army/Navy store, and then a couple of crooks attempt to rob it.  So Vince takes the opportunity to don his Cape and kick some badguy butt.  Now as a former small business owner, all I could think of was "Yikes!  He threw him into the vending machine!  Replacing that glass is gonna cost the shop owner at least a hundred bucks!  Oh no, not the display case!!  Those things are like five hundred, easy!!  Geez, it would have cost the poor guy less if he'd just handed over the money in the register!!"  But luckily the shop owner doesn't see it that way and is thrilled to have had The Cape catch the bad guys.  Maybe his insurance covers super hero battles.  And seriously, it is a much more enjoyable and heart-warming scene played this way, with him gushing, "You're a real super hero!"

The second episode is also continues The Cape's origin story, as Faraday learns the need for a mask to go along with the cape and sets up a new headquarters.  I hope this doesn't mean we won't be seeing the circus gang anymore, because they're pretty cool.  As far as helpers go, this episode focuses much more on Summer Glau's character than Keith David's.  I guess that's why NBC chose to run both episodes for their premiere; the first episode may have been The Cape's origin story, but this episode fine-tunes it.  Hopefully Orwell will open up to Max soon, and we'll have more of a team.

As the title suggests, this episode also sets up Tarot, a league of assassins.  It's a good step; while Chess is a good villain, by necessity of the set-up he needs to be playing it low key so everyone still thinks Faraday was Chess.  So this way Chess can be pulling the strings as he sends in his minions.  Or I guess a more accurate metaphor would be sending in his pawns.

The only real complaint I have with the episode (my earlier bit about the damages to shop owner doesn't count; that's a nitpick based on my previous career.  It would be like an airplane pilot going "But that's not how you actually land a plane!!" when he sees it happen on TV.  For the average viewer it's just meant to be drama, so I realize that's just me being picky.  But as I was saying, the only real complaint I have with the episode) is that I don't like how The Cape burned Cain's face against the grill.  Just a few seconds earlier we're shown Cain pushing The Cape's face towards the grill, heat waves rising up off of it, which lead me to think "Wow, what an evil, evil man!  How horrible!"  Then The Cape gets the upper hand and does the exact same thing.  I've said before how I like my heroes to be heroic, and acting the same as the villain doesn't do it.  Now of course we get to see Cain tied up after wards and we see the burns on his face are light, so that's somewhat redeeming; I'm sure Cain would not have been as merciful when the situation had been reversed.  But the entire scene just makes The Cape come across as very unheroic.

And lastly, I have to comment on the commercials that NBC streamed during the episode.  Partially because they don't have very many and I was watching the same commercials over and over during each commercial break.  First off, I'm not a dog person, and it may just be because I had to watch him six times, but the puppy in the Beneful dog food commercial may be the cutest puppy in the world.

And secondly, after seeing the Nicorette commercial about six times, I began to wonder if this is what fanboys use to rate stuff:

(You see that, Warner Brothers and ABC?  Not only am I sitting through the commercials, they made such an impression that I felt I had to mention them.  Those could have been your commercials.  Just pointing it out.)

If you'd like to see these commercials-- oh yeah, and The Cape too-- this episode was still available as of this writing at http://www.nbc.com/the-cape/video/.

The Cape

Spoiler Level: High

As I mentioned a few days ago, I might have missed this series if ABC.com had been streaming Season 2 of V.  But for whatever reasons they aren't, and in the week I was waiting for them to start a friend told me about this show, so I figured I'd give it a try.

It's a very solid pilot.  (I hate when TV shows call the first episode "Pilot."  I mean okay, I realize that's what it is, but now that it's gone to series, can't you give the episode a real title?  Back in the old VHS days, I just called the first episode the name of the series.  The only show where "Pilot" would have worked for the first episode was Farscape, and what do they do, they go and call the first episode "Premiere"!  What a wasted opportunity!  But I digress.)

It's a very solid origin episode.  Vince Faraday, one of the few good cops in Palm City, is framed by a villain named Chess for Chess's crimes, and then believed to have been killed.  He's rescued by the Carnival of Crime, whose leader Max Malini eventually comes around to Vince's way of thinking and decides to help Vince stop Chess and clear his own name.  Vince wants to do it in the guise of his son's hero, the comic book vigilante The Cape, to let him know there are still good people in the world he can look up to. So Max teaches him how to use his cape as a weapon and how to become an escape artist.  And so the battle between The Cape and his arch enemy Chess is on!

When I first heard the hero was actually called "The Cape" I was kind of surprised, because the sentiment ever since the 1989 Batman movie seems to be that capes are a liability more than a benefit, something that the classic heroes are stuck with that no modern super hero would be caught dead with.  So I really, really enjoyed the way this show takes the approach that a cape can be an asset to a crime fighter.  Sure, at times the CGI for the cape in action looks a little obvious, but I'm never one to let an imperfect special effect stand in the way of my enjoyment of something.

David Lyons gives a good performance as Faraday.  He drops his voice as The Cape, but not to the point where it sounds unnatural gravely like Christian Bale's Batman or Michael Shanks' Hawkman.  And Keith David is fantastic as Max Malini, especially in his closing scene.  Martin Klebba plays Rollo, part of Max's Carnival of Crime, and has some pretty cool fight scenes.  I'm hoping he sticks around as a regular.  And of course there's Summer Glau, who's playing the mystery girl like she usually does. Her part is small but crucial in this first episode, and I'm sure she'll be even more important as the series goes on.

Another thing I liked about it was that it was able to be gritty without being gory or ever taking it too far.  We all know that super heroes rise out of tragedy, and seeing Vince so happy with his family in the beginning, reading comic books of The Cape with his son and discussing his career with his wife, I couldn't help but fear he was going to get the Punisher's origin.  And in fact, that's the Chess's main bargaining chip-- he likes to threaten people's families a lot.  But thankfully, since he thinks Vince was killed, his family is safe.  So Vince must keep the fact that he survived a secret from everyone, especially Chess.  The show is violent, and there's some blood but not so much it disturbed me.  With a show like this, it could have easily stepped over that line, and I'm glad it didn't.

And I have to give major kudos to the opening credits.  In an age where opening theme songs are an endangered species, The Cape not only has a full-on opening title sequence, but it's completely comic book oriented!  And I was very surprised to see in the end credits that Bear McCreary does the music.  This is the same guy who did the music for the remake of Battlestar Galactica, which I occasionally found beautiful but more often than not just fell flat with me.  Yet here he creates some great super hero anthems, proving he's got a good range as a composer.

The only real flaw I felt the show had was towards the end, when Chess decides to re-emerge in costume.  Now the fanboy in me is going "Oh yeah, you gotta have everyone in costume for the big throwdown!"  It's a lesson I wish Smallville had learned a little earlier.  Only in this case, it doesn't make sense.  Chess has framed Vince by having Vince be stuck in Chess's outfit and turning the police on him.  The police corner him under a gas tank that goes BOOM, right on TV.  The world thinks Chess is dead but the real Chess gets away, which was all part of his plan.  So why would you go back out in public in costume?  Why throw away your victory where anyone can find out you're really not dead?

One last note... check out the other comic on Vince's son's shelf:

Ultimates 3?  Really? I have to admit I didn't read past Ultimates 2, but for his kid's sake I hope they toned it down some.  Ultimates was most definitely not a kids' book.

[UPDATE: I just checked with my friends at Joy's Japanimation.  They definitely did not tone things down, they ramped it up.  Definitely not a comic for kids!  What was Vince thinking?!?]

NBC did a double premiere, but they're posted as two separate episodes.  As of this writing, you can still watch them at nbc.com for free with limited commercials. I'll definitely be checking out episode 2 in the next few days.