Words by C. Paicely

A year ago, we were watching Heroes crawl to a slow and painful death. Now NBC is once again attempting to use its super powers to find success without the help of SNL, SNL alums or Steve Carrell, but this time there are no powers. Last night, via a special two-hour series premiere, we were introduced to a hero. Former ER Doc David Lyons plays Vince Faraday aka The Cape and while Faraday’s ability to pick an alias is questionable at best, the character has potential to carve out his own Monday night niche.

The Good

The Cape already has potential to be the definitive live-action comic book. More focused than Heroes, and less like family-friendly than No Ordinary Family, The Cape is intentionally over the top, with dialogue that could have been pulled right from the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man. Partially drawn opening credits and foreshadowing chapter titles only add to the ink-like authenticity of the shows narrative. The storyline requires viewers to suspend their sense of disbelief from time to time, but so what? Fox’s 24 required the same and it wasn’t even comic book-inspired.

The driving force of the show is David Lyons, who somehow sells the cornball one-liners he has to deliver and gets us to root for Faraday. Part of it may be that he can be subtlety hilarious, a difficult task. His conversation with Patrick Portman (Richard Schiff) during the second half of the episode is a good example:

Faraday: I’m The Cape

Portman: The Cape? You’re not wearing a cape.

Faraday: I’m aware of that.

Portman: No offense.

Faraday: None taken.

Max (David Keith) also adds a comedic edge to the show as he teaches Faraday how to create illusions. One of the funniest moments in the premiere is a death scene involving Max and Faraday that doesn’t go the way Max thinks it will.

The Bad

So this guy doesn’t have any powers? Grounding The Cape in reality seems like way too big a stretch. We’re expected to believe Faraday can disappear from the middle of a well-lit room, but aren’t shown how he goes about doing this. We only get a montage that essentially says, “He can’t do this. Oh wait. Now he can.”

The writers will also need to tread lightly with the father-abandoning-his-family-but-not-really angle. Faraday is running around fighting bad guys and refusing any other options while his wife has to pick up the pieces with his son, which takes us dangerously close to deadbeat dad territory. I guess it’s somewhat reassuring that The Cape is forming a relationship with Faraday’s son, but still…

The Batman

Faraday’s dark attire isn’t the only thing that likens him to the Caped Crusader. He’s the powerless do-gooder who wants to fight for justice in a city full of corrupt cops. Oh, and he does this with the help of a young woman named Orwell (Summer Glau) who has eyes everywhere. Doesn’t that sound a lot like Batman’s watchdog, Oracle, sans the wheelchair? There’s also a villain named Scales with a back-story and appearance that strangely resemble Killer Croc.

Similar to Mr. Wayne’s methodology, Faraday is also learning more about his own identity by traveling with criminals. Finally, we see The Cape hanging out in a shadowy layer, making use of the police department’s database to track down the bad guys. In the immortal words of Stan Lee, “’Nuff said.”

The Truth

The Cape isn’t spectacular, amazing, incredible or fantastic. At least not yet. But he’s not terrible either, and that counts for a lot in an age of fair-weather fanboys making horrendous movie adaptations. Maybe an over-the-top, sometimes hokey TV show is just what us comic book geeks need. Maybe it’ll be canceled in a week. Either way the two-hour premiere of The Cape is worth a visit to Hulu or NBC.