NBC’s “The Cape”: He vanishes before your very eyes! And so do the last 20 years in scriptwriting!

We couldn't find a still of Summer from the actual episode, but that might be because she because she's only onscreen for about 20 seconds. Here's an overly-airbrushed stretched perspective shot which doesn't have anything to do with the content of the show instead. Copyright NBC.

The Cape is a new TV series from NBC which tries to recapture the atmosphere of pulp comics and mix it with an exciting modern action show. It could be entertaining… if they changed nearly everything about it. (Spoilers follow, but in this reviewer’s opinion you’re not missing much by finding out early).

I don’t mean to be too negative. There is a lot that The Cape does very well, but each good part is immediately contradicted by the next scene, as though they locked twenty writers in a room with some foam rubber baseball bats. Mostly it’s a conflict of tone: there’s a lot of murder and violence, but it then tries to be a sappy ‘father and son’ show or fun-filled comic-book adventure as well two minutes later.

Vince Faraday (played by David Lyons) is one of the last honest policemen in a city where the entire force is about to be owned openly by a private corporation. He is Rugged, and White, and has a Jaw. In fact, he’s so generic and unmemorable that I have problems recalling his face right now.

There’s a problem with needing to cast an actor who has a physique that only a dedicated bodybuilder could ever achieve, and that is that most of your potential candidates are bodybuilder-actors. There is a small subset of these who are great for action films with zero dialogue but actually a hindrance when your story hinges on the hero’s personality, because they have just… too much… testosterone. It’s obvious to everyone that they’re obsessively driven to work out every day, and not very happy because of it. In short, your leading man is always dangerously close to just being a bug-eyed gym bunny. And there’s a hint of that here; the lead is frequently too aggressive or twitchy to be sympathetic.

Black sidekick man is played by Dorian Missick, and I can’t even remember the character’s name – look, he’s practically silent for most of the episode once we’ve established his dynamic with the hero. He seems to be doing a bad impression of the (rather wonderful) Romany Malco from No Ordinary Family (who despite being an assistant District Attorney is still very much a Black Sidekick but does at least make it clear that he’s fanboy-excited to be so, and has real lines). James Frain is the terribly-English bad guy. He was creepy to the point of terrifying in True Blood, mostly because his dialogue was straight from the “abusive relationship” manual to a triggery level, but here he is simply… English.

Sadly, not only is it yet AGAIN all about two white men and the bit-players around them, but the female parts are terrible. It fails Bechdel straight off the bat, as I don’t recall two women even meeting let alone speaking to each other. If they did, it would be about the male lead because everything, even other people getting killed and his family thinking he’s dead, is about the square-jawed male lead.

Geek favourite Summer Glau is surprisingly good, in the minute or so of screentime that she gets. She is in two scenes, one of which involves exchanging two lines with the hero and the other requiring her to peer at a hi-tech computer screen meaningfully while he goes into town to take down the bad guy. She finally seems visibly older than some of us might remember from series like Firefly (and even Terminator: SCC), and it’s given her much more credibility when she plays emotion or urgency.

Summer does have one last moment as he hurries to depart so that he can punch more people, which is this (not exact wording):

Hero McManly: “Who are you?”
Summer: *Quietly, and he’s already left anyway* “Nobody special.”

As a line it’s enigmatic and mysterious, hinting at a possibly tragic past and heroic motivations. She clearly is special, because she is a uniquely powerful name in the background story by that point. However, in this pilot episode her statement is almost true: she gets maybe four lines of dialogue and is put on a shelf marked “to be explored later when we have time, because this pilot is full already”. I have no doubt AT ALL that this is due to time constraints, so I’ll wait to see how she’s treated in episode 2. They have to establish all the characters, set up the audience’s emotional link with the hero as a Family Man who Loves His Son (much less screentime for the wife, but that might change) and also crowbar in an Incredible Eighties Training Montage!

It really is one of the quickest and cheapest training sequences I’ve seen in a while. He is rescued by circus performers (yes, really) and initially loses to them but – HAHA! – eventually beats the various trained specialists at their own games. All of them. In a few weeks or so. Maybe days, who knows.

The leader of the circus troupe is Keith David, and he is the best part of this first episode by a very, very long way. Most widely known as the Imam in Pitch Black and the Chronicles of Riddick, he has the character and likeability that the hero Vince lacks. It’s a shame he’s dropped straight into the “wise black mentor” role but he takes it on with a twinkle in his eye and a little bit of malevolence, and is the only reason I’d watch episode two. (Me saying this about a series with Summer Glau as the lead female is astonishing.) I did enjoy the performance from Martin Klebba as the tough guy of the circus – who happens to be four-foot tall. He is easily the scariest individual in the room and never doubts his ability to take anyone else in a fight (consequently rarely losing). His endless insults and energy are a delight in a show so otherwise character-starved. (Klebba is amazing in real life too, he runs the 100M in 13.84s and the 40 in 6.0.) Lieutenant bad-guy is played by Vinnie Jones, but again while I think he’s been great in the past, he’s just empty and shouty here.

There are still lots of reasons to give The Cape a second chance. It does successfully capture some of the gleeful action of old-school comics, but this is strangely tempered with a very nasty streak when it comes to the violence. No Ordinary Family did this too, with a really horrific shooting early on which sat at complete odds with the rest of the show.

From a feminist perspective, it’s a total fail. With the exception of Keith David and Martin Klebba, this is never in danger of taking the spotlight off The Hero and His Jaw for one second. Blaming the pulp source material just isn’t good enough, there have been many shows now which managed a big dumb superhero revenge story while still acknowledging that half the human race exist and might be good for more than decoration. I actually found myself wanting to use the phrase “Post-Buffy” in an indignant manner. Depending on which era and genre of pulp comics you’re talking about, some of them were incredibly progressive anyway and gave much more respect to minorities and women than this does.

But I suspect it’s because of the time constraints of a pilot ep. The potential is there for Glau to be interesting and not just exist to help the male hero, and all it needs is for the scripts to improve in the coming weeks. Okay, they’d have to improve a lot. You know, your son will recognise you if you are on his balcony in a hood which doesn’t cover your face and using your own voice, with a slightly huskiness to it. And a note to villains: letting the hero escape after telling him your plan went out with the “unnecessarily slow dipping mechanism!” in Austin Powers.

I don’t know why I’m wanting to say in conclusion “just stick with it and see if it improves” – I think it’s because The Cape has so much potential to be better than it currently is. Possibly because the only way is up in terms of script. If there’s no improvement though, follow No Ordinary Family instead: it’s also flawed, but far more interesting.