The Cape

[Bells]

Anybody caught up with this show yet? I'm trying to follow it...

Now, it's not a bad show. It's a fun to watch Cop show, it's a decent-ish Mistery show... i just can't buy it as a Superhero show.

Now, i can accept that this dude, the cape, is a Noobish hero. He is still learning his stuff. So i'm Ok when he gets easily trapped by the villains... they can't all be Batman. But they show is not selling me on the Hero.... i can buy the villains. Cartoonish as they are, i can accept these Villains...

But there is this "Smallville" vibe out of the show that kinda annoys me y'know?

So, thoughts?

[Seil]

I'm so dissapointed. I thought this was gonna be a thread about capes, and the wearing thereof.

[Aerozord]

in one of my classes I once commented on how I wish capes were in fashion because they are so perfect for cold weather, and how I wanted one, and they all looked at me funny

[P-Sleazy]

SHow got cancelled after the series finale last week.

[Magus]

This show was terrible so I quit watching it. Basically at every step they messed up. Take for example, the locale, which was "Palm City", basically a take on Miami. So they messed up on the basic premise of having a "gritty" setting for their Batman-esque character. It's a bit like how that first Punisher movie with Jane and Travolta was changed from New York to Miami for no real reason.

Then we are shown that the Cape is taught all his tricks by circus freaks and one his main villains is Killer Croc--I mean, Scales. Again, I don't really have a problem with this being a total rip on Batman because I like Batman, but it basically lacked elements that are vital to Batman. Throw in horrible plots and bad acting and you have not a very good show.

I mean, just the main villain was completely ridiculous. I still have no idea how he was a chessmaster villain, since he neither had a penchant for Xanatos Gambits nor did his costume even look like a chess piece to me as I think it was maybe supposed to, but I can maybe put up with that provided you don't go and make his pupils look like chess pieces when he's using his chessmaster power.

Really the show was too goofy and disjointed for my taste.

[Bells]

So, Heroes, The Cape, Smallville, Birds of Prey, that show about Aquaman, that show about Robin ... and i think i'm missing one. All bad.

The only other Superhero Live Action Series i Know is Ordinary Family... Heroes had a 4 million per episode Budget at one point. So money is not really the issue... why can't they make a decent series about Super Powers?!

[The Sevenshot Kid]

So, Heroes, The Cape, Smallville, Birds of Prey, that show about Aquaman, that show about Robin ... and i think i'm missing one. All bad.

The only other Superhero Live Action Series i Know is Ordinary Family... Heroes had a 4 million per episode Budget at one point. So money is not really the issue... why can't they make a decent series about Super Powers?!

Lou Ferrigno would like to have a word with you... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoILzi5thYg)

[Archbio]

Why the cape was terrible, in one lesson: The Cape is infiltrating a criminal gang for reasons I need not get into here,* and there's this one newly introduced gangster (Pokerface) who has this gimmick of never blinking, so that he needs a flunkie to moisten his eyes with serum once in a while. Randomly, the Cape switches that serum with turpentine, so that when Pokerface next gets his eyes humidified, it causes him to scream in pain. When we next see Pokerface, his eyes are "better" and he appears to have no sight impairement at all. That doesn't allow the Cape to arrest any criminals, aid him in arresting any criminals, prevent any criminals from doing crimes and has no impact on The Cape's undercover assignment. That's all there was to that tangent. I've left out no relevant information.

Now why the hell did I watch that?

Magus,

However, while I agree with the sentiment that The Cape is a terrible show, I think all of the specific examples of reasons you give why it's terrible are surprisingly bogus.

Palm City: The Cape not working as a Batman rip-off is probably due to it not really being that much of a Batman rip-off. There are individual elements borrowed from Batman, and the title character has an crimefighting MO that's superficially like Batman's, but everything else is different. It's probably set in Miami because the city has been handing out TV production incentives like it's candy, but I'm glad that it wasn't set in a pseudo-Gotham.

Chess: If the requirement for being a chess themed villain (and I'm not sure on that) is performing Xanatos Gambits then Chess probably passes on account of the first and only true villainous scheme he performs in the show's run involved him using his supervillain persona to terrorize the city into giving his civilian identity the job of running law enforcement (and bringing down "Chess.") That's fairly Xanatos-y.

Also: using his own alter ego like this and using a patsy is not unlike manipulating chess pieces.

I think in the long run they'd have layered the "Chess" theme some more in a situation where his different personas (actually literal split personalities) would continue using each other and be used by a third party (like... pawns!)

And that's the thing: there was some thought put into the characters and the setting of the show. Maybe not a ton, and not necessarily of the highest quality, but it sure as hell beats the other "superhero" television series I've seen in that regard. It was doing it's own thing! And I found that entertaining in a few episodes (at least until the inevitable third act collapse.)

All I'm saying is that it had some bright spots in the writing and the acting, but clearly nobody was interested in reading the scripts a couple more times before filming them in case gross errors or mental aberrations happened to slip through. And they did. On the one hand, Keith David is awesome. On the other, it's a shame that it wasn't more of a Batman rip-off, because then we wouldn't have to endure that excruciating family.

*I didn't really need to get into it when I was actually watching the episode, either, but that's not the point.

[CABAL49]

This show had a lot of potential. It wasn't great, but it held my attention than a lot of shows. I think it was trying to be cheesy, but they took it a bit to far so that when something serious happened you didn't really care.