The Cape

Shuhan

http://www.nbc.com/the-cape/

Imagine you are a cop that has just watched your new boss blow up on your watch. Next, you are framed for an illegal weapons shipment by a mass murderer that is only known as "Chess". You are ripped from your family and forced to live on, while your family believes you are dead. You then fall into the care of well meaning carneys that also happen to be bankrobbers… What would you do?

Become your son's favorite comic superhero and stop at nothing to bring Chess to justice. Your weapon? Just a cape, and an escape artists prowess, oh and martial arts help too...

The show is three episodes deep, but is a great dose of hero badassery.

Hiroy

Seen the pilot eps and the third ep. I find the whole premise incredibly awful, cliche and boring. The main character isn't all that interesting. The moment I saw him laying in bed with his son with a comic book, I knew his entire future right off the bat. "The perfect family. The perfect life. That's until an evil villain takes that all away. It's up to this douchebag x family man x cop to put on an embarassing masked persona to protect his family and clear his name, while placing symbolic meaning in his actions from a children's comic book" This was me thinking 5 minutes into the first episode.

The only thing I liked was the intro the the circus. They had this Joker vibe going until that disappeared later in the episode. I'm not looking forward to watching this show ever again.

Smudger

This sounds like a steven seagal movie through and through.

Silence

@Hiroy:

Seen the pilot eps and the third ep. I find the whole premise incredibly awful, cliche and boring. The main character isn't all that interesting. The moment I saw him laying in bed with his son with a comic book, I knew his entire future right off the bat. "The perfect family. The perfect life. That's until an evil villain takes that all away. It's up to this douchebag x family man x cop to put on an embarassing masked persona to protect his family and clear his name, while placing symbolic meaning in his actions from a children's comic book" This was me thinking 5 minutes into the first episode.

The only thing I liked was the intro the the circus. They had this Joker vibe going until that disappeared later in the episode. I'm not looking forward to watching this show ever again.

Basically, this.

I thought it was laughably bad.

At least it has Summer Glau.

Kaiolino

It is so bad that it becomes somewhat amusing.

And Summer Glau.

Shuhan

You all do raise a valid point, the concept has been done before. It is difficult now to come up with an original idea when most of the material has been used up. The thing that attracts me to this story is th fighting technique. It reminds me of the cloth spear technique in Chinese Kung-Fu and it is fresh to me at least.

Conekiller

@Kaiolino:

It is so bad that it becomes somewhat amusing.

And Summer Glau.

And Keith David.

NANLIT

I haven't had a chance to see it, but from the commercials, it just screams "cheese" to me what with names like "The Cape" and "Chess".

Hiroy

There's also a mob boss called "Scales". He's basically a mob boss with scales. The scales do nothing.

Zero Phoenix

I actually liked it. Much better than the crap Smallville is putting out. The Cape doesn't really bring anything new to the table but most superhero shows, movies, comics, don't do anything new either. I rather like the cheesiness of the villains like Chess, Scales, and whoever the other guy was.

It reminds me of The Shadow or Dick Tracy, a throwback to the old days of story-telling. Sure it's a little cliche but what superhero work isn't. The acting could be a lot better though, I'll give you guys that. But all in all it's one of the better shows on NBC.

Although, I have to admit that isn't saying much.

Kaiolino

NBC has the best shows on broadcast TV.

Being better than Smallville doesn't say much either.

Zero Phoenix

@Kaiolino:

NBC has the best shows on broadcast TV.

Why am I constantly running into your bad opinion on every topic.

Hiroy

Well, it's not that hard to top Smallville. The show is pure rubbish compared to rubbish.

I enjoyed Chuck better, even though I'd probally not watch it agian. Cape takes itself too seriously and it's not funny when it's cheesy.

Zero Phoenix

@Hiroy:

Cape takes itself too seriously and it's not funny when it's cheesy.

It has to take itself seriously given the subject matter. The issue with Smallville for example was that it didn't take itself seriously. It was almost a parody of Superman. Rather than deal with him as a character there was zero development in that area. Instead we get an endless chain of Louis and Clark moments while sidekicks like Green Arrow got more action than they should have. On top of that Superman's villains always represented a clear and present danger (no "plug" intended) to the world, to peace itself. Instead Smallville's take on these villains is insulting. Doomsday was a lovestruck alien who just needed a hug? GTF outta here.

The Cape takes itself seriously because it has to take itself seriously. It's a superhero show that deals with issues that a superhero would be faced with. It doesn't parody itself like Smallville because it can't. It chooses not to go that route. Yes the acting ranges from hammy to cheesy but at least the cast is actually trying.

Silence

@Zero:

It has to take itself seriously given the subject matter. The issue with Smallville for example was that it didn't take itself seriously. It was almost a parody of Superman. Rather than deal with him as a character there was zero development in that area. Instead we get an endless chain of Louis and Clark moments while sidekicks like Green Arrow got more action than they should have. On top of that Superman's villains always represented a clear and present danger (no "plug" intended) to the world, to peace itself. Instead Smallville's take on these villains is insulting. Doomsday was a lovestruck alien who just needed a hug? GTF outta here.

The Cape takes itself seriously because it has to take itself seriously. It's a superhero show that deals with issues that a superhero would be faced with. It doesn't parody itself like Smallville because it can't. It chooses not to go that route. Yes the acting ranges from hammy to cheesy but at least the cast is actually trying.

It had circus midget fighting in the first episodes.

Circus.

Midget.

Fighting.

Zero Phoenix

@Silence:

It had circus midget fighting in the first episodes.

Circus.

Midget.

Fighting.

I'm guessing you're a 90s baby. :getlost:

Silence

@Zero:

I'm guessing you're a 90s baby. :getlost:

You'd be guessing far wrong, you condescending prick~

What's the matter, someone disagrees with you on whether an aggressively mediocre and poorly acted Superhero show is good or not and you think they have to be a kid to look at a grown man have a training montage wrestling a midget and think "this show is awful?"

Austin Powers this is not. There's no meta, tongue-in-cheek humor here, perhaps if there was the Cape would have redeeming value. But it does not.

This is neither the Spirit nor Dick Tracey. Scales is not Pruneface, and the Cape is not good.

Rationalize away, though.

Zero Phoenix

@Silence:

You'd be guessing far wrong, you condescending prick~

Thanks for that. Being the nice guy is so overrated.

@Silence:

What's the matter, someone disagrees with you on whether an aggressively mediocre and poorly acted Superhero show is good or not and you think they have to be a kid to look at a grown man have a training montage wrestling a midget and think "this show is awful?"

Not at all. I welcome disagreements and it's actually much more interesting when someone does disagree with me. My issue is that your argument is totally trash. There isn't anything in that shit you call a post that's actually good.

For example, you claim the Cape is aggressively mediocre. Give me one superhero work that isn't nowadays. The last time that DC, Marvel, image, Dark Horse, any company brought something new to the table was probably before either of us were born. What, you think Marvel Zombies was a great idea? The actors on the Cape aren't any worse than the other "actors" on NBC. If NBC didn't have their Thursday night comedy block no one would be watching that crap. Or do you think Law and Order: Los Angeles is going to win an Emmy?

@Silence:

Austin Powers this is not.

Thank goodness.

@Silence:

There's no meta, tongue-in-cheek humor here, perhaps if there was the Cape would have redeeming value. But it does not.

Yeah, cause Austin Powers was full of the stuff right.

@Silence:

This is neither the Spirit nor Dick Tracey. Scales is not Pruneface, and the Cape is not good.

It's not good enough to be Dick Tracy, true. And it isn't nearly bad enough to be the Spirit.

Hiroy

@Zero:

For example, you claim the Cape is aggressively mediocre. Give me one superhero work that isn't nowadays.

Would it really help? Trash is trash.

Zero Phoenix

@Hiroy:

Would it really help? Trash is trash.

See that Silence? That's a real counter-argument. That's an argument worth responding too. Until you learn that maybe you should live up to your namesake.

You make a good point Hiroy. If the entire genre is mediocre do we really need another mediocre hero in a sea of hundreds?

Hiroy

You see, the problem with this show is that the whole hero vs villain thing is obviously pretentious and does not even seem to mesh well within it's own universe. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I can read other hero comics or watch a superhero movie and say ,"this works".

As bad as Smallville is, the idea worked for what it was. We have a farm boy from another planet surrounded by other humans that were affected by meteor rocks. Most of which fell within the bad side or social morality. As seasons went by, we got contact from evil/good that knew of Clark's origins. While the ideas got a bit ridiculous and the fights followed the same exact flow-chart most of the time(someone gets knocked out, hero appears in time not to be seen, uses foreign object to disable foe), it didn't seem like it was obviously "pretending".

It did help that Smallville had source material, but it is indeed posible to make any world with masked heroes believable.

Akumu

So, this latest episode was by far the best.
I'm with this show till it canceled, but only because of Summer.

But, God, I still can't stand the kid who plays the son. He's just awful.

bavolparker

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