"The Cape" premiere

Cafe Society
41

I was taking down our faux Christmas tree, putting away ornaments, etc. (long overdue tasks) with the kids and watched the premiere of the show on the DVR. For a background show, it worked ok and my kids (9 and 7) seemed to like it. So, we’ll be tuning in for a few more episodes at least.

Then again, my kids’ taste in TV is questionable at best. My daughter is addicted to the Disney Channel abominations (Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place), and they both liked that Merlin show that was on NBC and is now on the Syfy channel. Maybe their enthusiasm for the show should be a warning sign.

On the plus side though, they also love Psych, so it’s not all bad.

42

I thought it wasn’t half bad. They did one thing that Heroes should have done. They pretty much explicitly said in the opening credits, “This is going to be a comic book. This is not supposed to be like in real life.”

Of course that’s not going to stop the nit pickers and the “This show sucks, and that’s why I tune in every week” crowd.

43

I’m part of the crowd that reads actual comic books. The problem I have with this show (and the reason I won’t be watching it) is because it isn’t like a comic book - at least not a good one. It’s like what a TV writer thinks a comic book is like.

44

Bigger issue…once he handed over the card, why didn’t they just kill him? “You can’t kill me, I have this incredibly useful thing that you want and that is my only bargaining chip. Here, take it.”

Overall, meh. I had such high hopes. Another episode or two, and unless there’s a major change I’ll have to put this in the Heroes post-season 2 pile.

45

Actually I was disappointed by that scene. I thought the direction they were going was that Max was pretending to be a criminal and threatening to kill Vince if he didn’t join them. Vince would refuse and say he’d stick by his principles even in the face of death. And then Max would say something like “Good for you. We’re not actually criminals. We’re the underground. We just wanted to see if we could trust you not to break under threats. You passed the test.”

46

at least one redeeming quality… more has happened in the pilot of this show then has happened all season long so far on “no ordinary family”. Just sayin…

47

Yeah, I dropped them from my record list. It just wasn’t interesting.

48

My wife and I stopped watching less than halfway through. What we saw up to that point was pretty bad. I’ll keep my ear to the ground to see if it gets any better, but I don’t have much hope at this point.

49

Some of the worst hack writing I’ve seen in a long time.

50

The same guy wrote both episiodes. He’s not very good, I agree. Unfortunately he’s also the series creator. He’s also created with the third episode.

At some point during the season other writers will take over. That may help if it lasts that long.

51

I have a question for people who didn’t watch the last two seasons of ER: Is the actor who plays the Cape’s attempt at an American accent driving any of you batty, too? I figure if you didn’t watch the end of ER you might not know he’s Australian, but I’m getting really distracted by how often you can hear hints of his real accent many times.

Other than that, I guess it’s not terrible. Other than the terrible attempt to sound American I like the fellow playing Vince, I like Summer Glau, and it’s nice to see the little guy from Flashforward in something new.

52

An unwatchable mess.

I watch most all superhero stuff, and I’ll watch just about anything with either Summer Glau or Izabella Miko (the circus chick) in it, so I was definitely going to give this one a try. Hell, I stayed with Heroes from the first night until the bitter end, and didn’t even really hate it in the later seasons. (Though to be fair, I was relieved when it was cancelled.)

But this abomination gave me nonstop douche chills for the entire 30 minutes I watched. About 45 minutes into the 2-hour premiere I FFWDed through the rest to see if Miko was actually in the damn thing as opposed to the occasional “He’s cute!” filler line, and was happy that she wasn’t so I could just delete it without guilt.

53

I was rather surprised to discover that Cain is played by the same actor who played upstanding Zafar on MI-5. He sure does look a lot different.

54

Well, I gave it another try - it really isn’t very good. Summer Glau and the guy who plays Max Malini are good, but the rest - well, we were cheering for his wife and kid to get killed, if that tells you anything.

55

I might as well chime in. I watched the first two episodes, and bits and pieces of the third. And I have to say, watching this series really takes me back…in that it feels like something written in 1991.

That wasn’t a compliment.

Anywho…Thomas Kretschmann was the villain in the last episode, right? (I saw about ten non-consecutive minutes) And…[spoiler]apparently he’s some kind of crazed ex-circus performer/spree killer, who used to own the super cape? So at the the end of the episode, he’s already killed some people (recently), he’s fighting with the hero over the cape, and gets defeated. Keith David notes that no prison is going to be able to hold this guy (he’s an escape artist, and he’s broken out from super hellhole prisons before); when he gets out, he’s certain to go after the cape again, and they should probably just kill him right there. The hero says that that’s the difference between him and the bad guy, and that he’s not a murderer, so they just haul him off to jail.

Okay, standard by the (comic) book spiel, ignoring both a) yeah, hero, when this psycho escapes and murders again because of you, I think that does make you a bit of a murderer, but more importantly b) in the pilot, the hero was perfectly willing to go kill the main villain of the series, and was only dissuaded because “Chess” was just one part of a major organization.[/spoiler]

Okay, maybe I missed a major plot development somewhere along the way. Although the preview for next week showed The Cape™ trying to keep his circus friend from robbing a train…the friend who he’d helped rob a bunch of banks the first day he met him. Yeah. I have a wild guess that I’m not entirely at fault for overlooking the story premise, here.

The thing is, though, it’s not a bad premise. An OCP/Blackwater basically run by the Joker? The hero’s something between the Punisher and Houdini, aided and equipped by a gang of circus freaks? I mean, it’s silly as hell. But the thing is, you can pull off silly as hell something close to playing it straight, without making it a brainless cliche. The Cape doesn’t do that, and I don’t think it really tried. It’s not unwatchable, but it’s just disappointing more than anything else. :frowning:

56

Well, they’ve lost me.
I gave 'em four hours, and they spent more than half of that, it seems, on pointless flashbacks to show ‘what a poor tortured soul’ Mr. Cape is.

yawn
Pass me the clicker - we’re outta here.

57

Yup - that’s where I am, too. It just isn’t keeping my interest.

58

Why did it take me this long to get Orwell = Oracle?

59

Nice that they actually remembered that the Carnival of Crime was a Carnival OF CRIME after the pilot, and that it gave them some conflict with Mr. Cape.

I’ve about had it with the sappy kid and wife stuff, though.

60

This show isn’t actually based on anything, is it? If not, does it bug anyone else that Orwell is just a female version of Logan Cale and his guerrilla broadcast Eyes Only? Blogger, Cyber Journalist, same difference.