TV review: "The Cape" (Pilot)

January is a weird time of the year. The excitement of the holidays has faded, it's the month for studios to release their real turds, and it can be cold as balls (depending on where you live, of course). But it's also the return of a number of series, as well as debuts of a few more. NBC is rolling out some new stuff, including the new comedy "Perfect Couples"(review to come next week), and the noir-infused superhero series "The Cape", which premiered this last weekend.

The network is trying to cash in on the new trend of superheros that are darker and more human...did they succeed? Read on to find out!





Our hero is Vince Faraday (played by David Lyons), a brave police officer in the fictional Palm City. He has a wife and son, both of whom he is very close to. He boxes with his son, teaching him to rotate his hips and lean into it. They also read his son's favorite comic book, "The Cape", each night before bed. Basically, he has the ideal suburban home life.

He's also one of the cleaner cops in the city, working on hunting down and exposing corrupt cops as well as the latest news on a masked villain known only as "Chess" with the help of an anonymous blog writer named Orwell (get it?). He attends the naming of a new police chief for Palm City, held by the mayor himself. He tries to keep his eye out for those corrupt cops, seemingly working harder than any of his fellow officers. But to no avail-after a speech, the major gets in his town car and finds his aid dead in the back seat, with Chess seating in the driver's seat. He is left locked in the car with a small explosive device, and despite Vince's best effort, he is killed in an explosion.

Vince can't take it anymore-he's sick of being an officer in a corrupt force. He is given an offer by a company named Arc who intend to privatize police forces, and decides to take it, thinking he can get more done with them. His first assignment is track down the explosive weapon that is being shipped by train into Palm City-but to his surprise, he finds himself set up and is framed for the mayor's murder.

Following the incident, Vince can't go back to his regular life-he is believed to be dead, and if he shows up alive, he will be arrested and convicted for the mayor's murder. His only choice then, it seems, is to fight crime as a masked hero to stop crime and delve out his own form of justice.

The set up is promising...unfortunately, it's not well executed. The pacing of the pilot moves at light speed, never lingering on any key character moments to let us get to know them. When Vince becomes The Cape, then, it doesn't feel powerful or exciting, because we only know him by some seriously cliched writing.

The characters are often absurd, which would be fine--if the show didn't take itself incredibly seriously. For starters, the villain's name is "Chess" and he tries to deliver menacing monologues with lots of puns about the game, but they just come off as silly. And I haven't even mentioned "The Carnival of Crime', a group led by Max Malini (Keith David) that robs banks dressed up as carnies (included in them is Vern Troyer AKA Mini-Me, and the little person jokes are quite eye-rolling).

"Wait...the villain's name is WHAT?!"

The writing is also often cringe-inducing, with awkward dialogue and poor exposition (the phrase "I just wanna be a cop!" is uttered probably 10 times in 15 minutes...WE GET IT. He wants to be a good cop!) The writers seem to break one of the most simple rules for good writing-SHOW not TELL. Let us get to know the characters by their actions, not cheesy dialogue where they say it straight out.

Now, here's the thing. The main issue with "The Cape" is how serious it takes itself. Trying to be a dark, serious crime show with absurd characters, bad dialogue, and bad pacing  is a recipe for disaster. If you're going to do it that way, take it slow, let us get to know the characters and make them more realistic. If the show were to take a camp approach, it would actually be a lot more enjoyable-if it was all crazy/weird characters, cheesy dialogue, and flashy pacing and it was going for that intentionally, it'd be a different story.

I'm not giving up on "The Cape" just yet. Now that the exposition is out of the way, it could very well slow down and get into it's characters more, and I could be more interested. But based on the pilot, I'm not very impressed and quite let down by the show.