The Cape

Plot

The series, set in fictional Palm City, California, follows Vince Faraday, an honest detective who decides to leave the police force after he witnesses the murder of a new police chief by a mysterious villain known as Chess. Faraday accepts an offer to work for ARK, a private security firm owned and operated by billionaire entrepreneur Peter Fleming. ARK is petitioning Palm City to privatize the police and public safety operations.

A video streamed to Faraday from an investigative blogger known only as Orwell leads him and partner, Marty Voyt, to a cargo train owned by Fleming's firm. They discover the train is smuggling implosive weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) inside children's toys. Voyt is corrupt and delivers Faraday to Chess, who reveals himself as Fleming. Fleming frames Faraday for the police chief's murder. In a news event staged by Fleming, Faraday is "revealed" as Chess as an ARK security team chases him along the city waterfront. A tanker explosion causes Faraday's apparent death.

Faraday is abducted by The Carnival of Crime, a traveling circus turned bank robbery ring, who later accept him as one of their own. Their ring leader, Max Malini, trains Faraday in circuscraft and in the use of a special cape made entirely from spider silk. While there is nothing magical about the cape, Malini shows Faraday how a talented illusionist can use it to simulate superhuman abilities, and promises to show Faraday the 26 unique effects of the cape. Faraday agrees, and commits to grueling physical and mental training required to master the illusions. Additionally, Max convinces Faraday that using a secret identity keeps Faraday's wife and son safe. Faraday decides to fight Palm City's corruption and clear his name by adopting the visage of his son's favorite comic book hero, The Cape.

In the series finale, "Endgame", The Cape exposes ARK's corruption. Fleming asserts that he is innocent. He paints Voyt, now the chief of his private police force, as a corrupting influence who has usurped daily control of ARK. Faraday's wife, Dana, prepares Voyt's legal defense and convinces him to turn state's evidence. Fleming decides to eliminate both families before Voyt can testify. The Cape hides both families with the Circus, but Fleming's assassins find them. During the assault, Voyt sacrifices himself to save The Cape. As Voyt dies in The Cape's arms, Faraday reveals his identity and forgives Voyt's betrayal. The series ends with Fleming still at large; Faraday's family still believes him dead, but Orwell assures Dana that Faraday still loves her, implying that he is still alive.

Cast and characters

Main cast

David Lyons as Vincent "Vince" Faraday / The Cape – A former soldier and an honest cop who is presumed both dead and a murderer by the residents of Palm City. He is constantly trying to prove that Peter Fleming is Chess, and becomes the Cape to help fight crime and corruption throughout the city. Faraday is an excellent investigator, and an above-average fighter before going into hiding, having had years of training and experience during his time in the army, which would later be expanded upon by the circus crafts he later learns from Max Malini during his training by the "Carnival of Crime". He becomes proficient in boxing, wrestling, hypnosis, escapology, tightrope walking, stage illusions, and in some acrobatics, which help him duplicate the extraordinary powers of his comic namesake. He also takes-up mithridatism. These efforts are further aided by a unique cape given to him by Max Malini, which had been specifically designed for these illusions (his training included emphasis on all thirty-seven illusions involving a cape). In addition to his attempts to clear his name, Faraday also uses the persona of "The Cape" to visit his son anonymously for short periods of time and give him hope. According to Faraday, the Faraday family have been in law enforcement for generations.

Keith David as Maxwell "Max" Malini – The ringleader of a gang of circus-performers-turned-bank-robbers known as "The Carnival of Crime". He mentors Vince after saving him and trains him to become the Cape. Despite being a criminal, who is willing to steal from good or bad people, he shows a strong knowledge of right from wrong, and abhors the use of killing, operating on what would appear to be a strong moral code. In "Razer", Max informs Ruvi that the real reason he's training Vince is because of someone called "Deveraux".

Summer Glau as Orwell – An investigative blogger who wages war on the crime and corruption in Palm City, (her blogger moniker is a nod to George Orwell). She becomes Vince's behind-the-scenes ally and helps him, even though she is trying to keep her life and her reasons a secret. She is also a skilled fighter. During a hallucination in the episode "The Lich (Part 2)", it is revealed that Orwell's first name is "Jamie" and that she may harbour secret feelings for Vince. It is confirmed that she is the grown, biological daughter of Peter Fleming, and hinted that he (or she) had done something to her mother. There have been hints in the final episode that she fears she is going down the same dark path as her father, due to his genes, starting with reoccurring migraines, blackouts and hallucinations of an ominous white door; her endgame is likely that she seeks to reveal her father's dark-side to the world before she seeks medical attention for her blackouts. She has not disclosed her true identity to Vince, and uses a number of aliases and disguises, posing as reporters, and continues to elude her father's attempts to find both her, and "Orwell" (believing them to be two separate people).

Recurring cast

Vinnie Jones as Dominic Raoul / Scales – A frightening criminal menace with a freakish skin condition that gives him the appearance of being covered with green and gold scales. His "scales" make him more resistant to damage. He is an enemy of the Cape. It was revealed in the episode "Scales" that he was at one time part of a circus sideshow due to his skin condition.

Richard Schiff as Patrick Portman – Palm City's Commissioner of Prisons, and the sole city leader standing in the way of Peter Fleming/ARK's complete assumption of the city's public safety services. In "Scales", Portman reveals himself as a Cape wannabe, although he is realistic about his actual abilities.

Mather Zickel as Travis Hall – Dana's Boss.

Izabella Miko as Raia – An alluring acrobat in Max's circus and a member of the Carnival of Crime.

Anil Kumar as Ruvi – A hypnotist in Max's circus and a member of the Carnival of Crime. He's constantly reminding Vince not to get cocky, every time Vince slips up. As a mentalist/hypnotist, Ruvi considers himself a 'Surgeon of the Mind', and considers neurotoxins and their use in his line of work as to be no-better than a "blunt tool". He is also only in the "Carnival of Crime" for the gains, and not really open for any noble reasons, like Max. In "Razer", Max informs Ruvi that the real reason he's training Vince is because of someone called "Deveraux", (who Deveraux is has not been revealed).

Elliott Gould as Samuel – Peter Fleming's psychiatrist who has been helping him try to control and ultimately banish Chess from Fleming's mind. He is one of the few people who is not intimidated by Chess' violent outbursts and threats. In one episode, he and Chess seem to be conspiring against Fleming, although this also could be Samuel trying to lull Chess into a false sense of security.

Guest stars

Raza Jaffrey as Raimonde LeFleur / Cain – A French serial killer and master of knife throwing and poison. He is a member known as The Tower in the assassin organization Tarot, as their poisons user. This dangerous mercenary was hired by Chess to kill the Palm City prison commissioner, but failed due to the Cape's interference and was scarred across the face in the ensuing battle.

Thomas Kretschmann as Gregor Molotov – A Russian magician known as "Gregor the Great" who considers himself to be a master illusionist, contortionist, and escape artist extraordinaire. He was the former student of Max, training under the stage name "Kozmo the Unkillable", and was the last owner of the cape before Vince took over. Gregor was imprisoned for 20 years for murdering a woman and was sent to various prisons throughout Russia, each of which he managed to escape. When Vince was given the choice between killing Gregor and sending him to jail, Vince allowed him to live, despite warnings that Gregor would certainly escape and return for the cape.

Mena Suvari as Tracey Jarrod / Dice – A savant who specializes in probabilities by breaking down the world in the language of quantum mechanics. She can predict the future through complex mathematical probability which she can do in her head, (although the Cape represented an anomalous addition to her equations that threw off her predictions), and is the first of her kind, which Peter has studied so they can make T.R.A.C.E., a portable future predictor via data-mining. However, Tracey has a dark side with sociopathic tendencies and connection issues. Tracey is the daughter of research physicist Henry Jerrod, one of Chess' victims, and seeks revenge on Chess, wanting to kill him for her father's death, which she had predicted (but made no attempt to actually stop, save for telling them both it would happen). Her attempts on Peter's life reawaken the Chess persona, who had briefly been under wraps.

Pruitt Taylor Vince and Chad Lindberg as Goggles & Hicks – Brothers, and a high-tech team of professional contract killers, who are the members of Tarot known as The Chariot. The two are hired by Peter Fleming to kill the Cape. They have their subjects down to a science: first they track them, then they study them by getting to know everything about their marks intimately before they kill them when the time is right. Goggles is the techie with his expertise in creating new gadgets (his catch phrase is "you can run, but you can't hide"), while Hicks is the assassin – the only other people he meets are the ones he kills.

Reception

The Cape has generated mixed reviews from critics, scoring a 54 out of 100 on Metacritic. Critic Ken Tucker described the show's premiere as "fun, refreshingly free of irony" with "a sensibility that allowed for a sense of humor without slipping into tiresome campiness." Other proponents of the show have said "if the premise sounds cheesy or busy, the execution is crisp and efficient" and "someone in network land has learned a lesson from Heroes." At the same time, Matt Zoller Seitz criticized the series pilot for failing to develop its narrative effectively. While having no complaints about the premise of the series, he wrote that the pilot "rushes through everything, pulverizing potentially engaging characters and story until the whole production starts to feel like a long trailer for itself." Peter Swanson of Slate wrote that the series "falls into a wasteland of its own making, where neither the stakes nor the jokes can distract one from the thinness of its writing."

The special Sunday two hour debut of the show garnered a 2.6 in the key 18–49 demographic. It placed third overall in terms of top science fiction genre network premieres for the 2010–2011 season, behind fellow NBC show The Event and ABC's No Ordinary Family. For its first non-repeat airing in its official Monday timeslot the show had dropped 31% to a 1.8 rating, and the next two episodes received a 1.6 and a 1.5 respectively.

The Cape was nominated for a 2011 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup for a Series, Limited Series, Movie or Special for the ninth episode, "Razer".

Web comic

As they did earlier with Heroes, NBC released webcomics to supplement The Cape on the official website.

Music

The original music for The Cape was composed by Bear McCreary. In contrast to the brand of music used by Hans Zimmer for Christopher Nolan's Batman films, McCreary's scores for the series were in a more classically heroic mode in the style of Shirley Walker's work on Batman: The Animated Series. On September 27, 2011, La-La Land Records released a two-disc album of McCreary's work on the series, featuring selections from all episodes but "Razer" and "Endgame" (the last two episodes - "The Lich, Part 2" was the final episode to be scored to picture), plus the original song "Let's Just Pretend," which was written by Brendan McCreary and performed by Young Beautiful in a Hurry; the album is dedicated to Walker's memory in honour of her influence on Bear McCreary's music.

Connection to Community

The Cape received minor recognition when the series was continuously mentioned on another NBC show Community. Throughout the episode "Paradigms of Human Memory", the character of Abed voices his love of the show and his disappointment over it getting cancelled. The most notable scene is when Abed fashions a cape for himself and attempts to mimic the show's protagonist only to anger the character of Jeff Winger who yells "Show's gonna last three weeks!" Abed yells back "Six seasons and a movie!" This line was adopted by the Community fanbase when it appeared the show was close to being cancelled. The show would eventually go for an additional sixth and final season while moving to the streaming service Yahoo! Screen, while a movie is currently in development and set to stream on Peacock.

In the episode "Pillows and Blankets", which parodies the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War, Keith David provided the narration. At the end of the episode, Jeff Winger interrupts him and asks if he was on The Cape, to which David responds "No." David would eventually join the cast as Elroy Patashnik in the final season when it was moved to Yahoo! Screen. In "Advanced Introduction to Finality", Abed Nadir meets his evil doppelganger in the darkest timeline and he is informed that The Cape was renewed in their world for a third season, switched to cable, and was retooled, making it better.