The Cape


JackFetch

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"The Cape," from "Empire" creator Tom Wheeler, is a light drama with a comic book sensibility. Set in a fictionalized version of Los Angeles, it centers on a former cop framed for a crime who becomes the Cape, a masked hero, to clear his name and reunite with his son.

The project, from UMS and BermanBraun, was set up at NBC in the fall with a premium script commitment.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3i662cd5cc93e7334305a575b04489867d

Damn you NBC. I'm trying to hate you right now, and you go and pull a masked vigilante show out of your hat.

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  • 1 month later...
We're always sorry to see a Summer Glau TV show end: Angel, Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, even Dollhouse. So it's nice there's always another one around the bend: The super-hot, ass-kicking Glau is set to star in NBC's upcoming superhero pilot The Cape.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news:

In the pilot, directed by Simon West, a former cop (David Lyons) is set up as a criminal and becomes a masked hero, the Cape, to clear his name.

Glau will play Orwell, a cute and intrepid investigative blogger who fearlessly goes after corrupt cops and costumed bad guys.

For those of us accustomed to Glau kicking butt and taking names, we're assured there'll be plenty of that as well.

http://scifiwire.com/2010/03/terminators-summer-glau-j.php

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We're always sorry to see a Summer Glau TV show end: Angel, Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, even Dollhouse. So it's nice there's always another one around the bend: The super-hot, ass-kicking Glau is set to star in NBC's upcoming superhero pilot The Cape.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news:

In the pilot, directed by Simon West, a former cop (David Lyons) is set up as a criminal and becomes a masked hero, the Cape, to clear his name.

Glau will play Orwell, a cute and intrepid investigative blogger who fearlessly goes after corrupt cops and costumed bad guys.

For those of us accustomed to Glau kicking butt and taking names, we're assured there'll be plenty of that as well.

http://scifiwire.com/2010/03/terminators-summer-glau-j.php

She wasn't on Angel.

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  • 2 months later...

NBC has picked it up. Here is the official description:

The Cape is a one-hour drama series starring David Lyons (ER) as Vince Faraday, an honest cop on a corrupt police force, who finds himself framed for a series of murders and presumed dead. He is forced into hiding, leaving behind his wife, Dana (Jennifer Ferrin, Life on Mars) and son, Trip (Ryan Wynott, Flash Forward). Fueled by a desire to reunite with his family and to battle the criminal forces that have overtaken Palm City, Faraday becomes The Cape his son's favorite comic book superhero—and takes the law into his own hands. Rounding out the cast are James Frain (The Tudors) as billionaire Peter Fleming—The Cape's nemesis—who moonlights as the twisted killer: Chess; Keith David (Death at a Funeral) as Max Malini, the ringleader of a circus gang of bank robbers who mentors Vince Faraday and trains him to be The Cape; Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) as Orwell, an investigative blogger who wages war on crime and corruption in Palm City; and Dorian Missick (Six Degrees) as Marty Voyt, a former police detective and friend to Faraday.

It sounds more Punisher than Batman to me.

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  • 7 months later...

I was very underwhelmed by it. Summer Glau was terrible and her Oracle ripoff character isn't needed. It was edited weird. You can tell they cut certain things out but left things in pertaining to what they cut. When he asked Orwell who she is, she obviously looks at a picture that they were supposed to cut to but they didn't so she just stares off screen and says "no one". It was just weird. Also, when he first meets her he says "what are you thirteen", which would have been funny a few years ago but she's aged a lot and actually looks thirty now so the joke doesn't work.

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I think you just have to supsend your disbelief a little bit more, as he is supposed to be just a talented fighter and police officer, but still a regular guy. I don't want to get into the whole argument with stuff like, "Well, ya know Superman has all those powers and you don't have a problem with it," and going back and forth because he's an alien and Batman is human, but that's getting off track.

I thought the first two episodes were okay. I felt they had some really spectacular moments and some good comedy here and there, but the overall a rollercoaster quality, just a lot of ups and downs. Not consistently good NOR consistently bad.

A friend sent me this article on it though:

If The Cape is really our new hero, then America is doomed

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I'm still enjoying the premise of this show, but the execution leaves much to be desired. Whether due to the editing, direction, or writing this can get hard to follow. The show jumps all over the place, I can't get a sense of the passage of time at all. I also want to see more practical effects. I can understand needing CGI to do some stunts with the cape, but do we really the CGI smoke-poof?

(Who thinks this would make a cool Assassin's Creed/Spider-Man 2 style game?)

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

It's pretty much done. When the network isn't going to air the finale it's a given you aren't coming back.

It looks like The Cape is done. After struggling in the ratings since it premiered, and NBC cutting the show's episode order from 13 to 10 episodes, the network has decided to run The Cape's final original episode only online sometime later this month.

NBC had planned to air the last two episodes, nine and 10, of the comic-book-inspired series last Monday, after postponing the relaunch of The Event to March 7. However, the network decided instead to air an original Chuck in its normal timeslot and finish off The Cape's on-air run with episode nine, "Razor."

This decision certainly comes about due to the falling ratings The Cape has suffered since the series premiered. On Monday, the show could only manage 4.09 million viewers with 1.2 ratings for adults 18-40. That made it one of the lowest-rated network shows still on the air.

Regarding the move to show the final episode online only, NBC announced on its website, "Flash: The creators of The Cape are prepping an exclusive episode just for online fans! Keep watching this site in the days ahead to see a full-length special episode."

Makes it almost sound like "the creators" planned that all along.

In "Razor," we were left with a major Orwell cliffhanger, and several continuing storylines. However, with one episode to go, it seems unlikely there is any real shot shot at creating any kind of satisfying ending for The Cape.

In an exclusive interview with creator and executive producer Tom Wheeler earlier this season, he gave me a hint at what he planned for the series before he knew NBC would cut The Cape's run short.

"The second half of the season, things definitely take off in a slightly more serialized way," said Wheeler. "A lot of storylines are going to unfold over time. I mean, I love serialized storytelling."

And it's likely we'll never get the real scoop on Summer Glau's character, Orwell. "There will be a huge developments for Orwell's character nearing the end of the first 13," he said.

As far as the Cape himself, "in Fugitive-like fashion, Vince is going to be trying to get back to his family. He'll be learning much more about this criminal underworld of Palm City and how difficult it is going to get back. ... Vince is, in a strange way, becoming a ghost in his own life, and there's a lot of different ways to go there and explore that," said Wheeler.

"There's a lot of big stories that we'll start to plant that would play out in subsequent seasons, and I'm definitely building a mythology around the Cape itself and a sense of destiny that we might not realize at first. But there will be greater connectiveness to things than we initially realize.

"For those who really want to pop on for the long ride, I approach this thing as a novel, and so I think a lot about the end and a lot about where The Cape ends up. I'm imagining a pretty sweeping, epic storyline that still sticks emotionally to its starting point," said Wheeler.

While The Cape hasn't been officially canceled, my crystal ball tells me that we'll never get to see the way Wheeler's vision plays out.

http://blastr.com/2011/03/bye-the-cape-its-final-ep.php

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