Has anyone seen The Incredibles? Fantastic movie, possibly my favorite Pixar film. In it, however, they make a very good argument for not wearing a cape when you design a superhero costume. They can get caught on things that you really don't want them to get caught on and are a huge hazard. But, as anyone who's read a comic book or seen a Batman movie knows, it's tough to do-away with capes because they're just so freakin' cool! Seriously. I mean, capes create an allure and make the wearer mysterious and larger than life. Plus, they flow in the wind and look so graceful. Not practical, maybe, but still cool.
NBC knows that, and they've made it a central theme to their new superhero drama The Cape, starring David Lyons as Vince Faraday, an honest cop in a corrupt town, framed for a crime he didn't commit and presumed dead. He returns as the titular costumed hero he and his son used to read about together to take down the head of the private police force (James Frain) now running the city, who's also a masked villain with freaky eyes named Chess, and regain his good name and his family. The Cape is assisted by the investigative blogger Orwell (Summer Glau, putting another notch in her fanboy fantasy belt), and by a circus gang of bank robbers (you read that right). Oh, and he wears a cape, which also acts as a weapon and can retract into his hood, which does away with a lot of the pesky issues the Incredibles mentioned.
So they had the two-hour debut tonight, and so far not bad. The Cape takes a bit of a different direction than the peacock networks last attempt at a genre show, Heroes. With Heroes, the storyline took more of a modern comic book series feel, with ordinary people dealing with extraordinary things; there were no tights involved and, at least in the first season, the characters dealt with their emerging powers and their enemies as realistically as possible, given the subject material. The Cape, however, has a more old school pulp comic feel to it. The villains have creepy eyes, scales or tattoos hinting at larger criminal networks. The Carnival of Crime are experts in escape artistry, fighting, illusions, cape kung fu, etc. and are willing to teach this new crime fighter all they know. It all centers around a good man whose been left with nothing to loose and must now do something really extreme to make it right. Personally, I like this direction. It's been a while since we got back to basics with superhero story lines. Sure they're not very realistic, but who needs realism here? We've got enough of that elsewhere, thank you very much. And while things happened very quickly over these two hours to set things up, and some of the dialogue was a little strained and corny, it stayed entertaining and engaging, plus completely free of irony. There were a few laughs, cool characters, a bunch of action and The Cape's costume is pretty awesome.
There's potential here, and I think I'm going to stick it out and see where it goes for now. I just hope The Cape goes somewhere really good and doesn't suffer the same sad fate as it's predecessor Heroes. Seriously, the less said of that, the better.
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