I’ve had a lot of fun with The Cape so far, and not necessarily in the “so bad it’s good” way but in the “so crazy it’s really quite fun” sense. Unfortunately, the fun may soon be ending.
Last week, it was announced NBC cut the freshman series’ episode order from thirteen to ten, which is usually a bad sign. The network’s decision comes just after Monday’s episode earned its lowest rating yet, a 1.5, drawing 5.3 million viewers.
Coincidentally, “Dice” was The Cape’s weakest episode yet, the one that makes you wonder if the writers really know where they’re headed.
One of the defining characteristics of The Cape is that despite the superhero comic aethestics (masks, capes and such), the characters have no actual super powers, grounding it in some degree of realism. “Dice” tries to stretch this pretty far, giving us a character who can instantly calculate probability. As special abilities go, it’s barely plausible, but The Cape is barely plausible most of the time, so it gets some leeway.
We’re shown a flashback to start the episode: ten years ago, Peter Fleming is introduced by one of his scientists (Kevin Kilner, himself an adventure show veteran–Earth: Final Conflict) to the man’s daughter, Tracy, who is described as a “savant” with “sociopathic tendencies.” She can understand “quantum mechanics” in a way that allows her to instantly figure probabilities behind any action and, using that information, predict the future. She instantly hates Fleming, telling him that he’ll kill her father (Fleming’s retort, “Only if he goes over budget,” is excellent) and that she’ll kill him in return.
Flash forward ten years later, and Fleming is introducing ARK’s latest development, a device resembling the iPad called T.R.A.C.E. (pronounced Tracy for obvious reasons, even though it makes little sense otherwise), which basically duplicates the function of that little girl’s mind, allowing users to look into the future. A deeper, more thoughtful series would recognize that an invention like this would turn the world inside out and cause absolute chaos, and explore that to great effect. The Cape, however, just worries that Chess could use the device to figure out his secret identity.
I swear, every episode, this show regresses further and further towards the Silver Age.
At an ARK casino event (between last week’s casino on a train and this week, Fleming seems to really enjoy gambling), a young woman in a red dress catches his attention at the craps table. Every throw she predicts comes to pass, and of course, she’s Mena Suvari wearing a tight red dress. She introduces herself as Dice, then secretly switches his dice with an explosive pair before leaving the table. Fleming survives, and the incident puts Dice on not only his radar, but Vince’s.
Vince is in a pretty bad mood anyway. He just had Orwell retrieve his police file, and those of the Carnival. Vince learned last episode that Max and his band are still dedicated to their life of crime, which will ultimately put them at odds again. He’s not entirely happy with the arrangement, but he has no other choice.
When he and Orwell observe Dice’s attempt at killing Fleming, Vince recognizes her as the daughter of Fleming’s employee. Yes, she was absolutely correct–Fleming killed her dad. Vince thinks they should let her keep trying for revenge, but Orwell gets angry at that idea. She reasons that Dice can finger Fleming as Chess, and that they need both people alive to exonerate Vince. (Or perhaps she doesn’t want to see her father dead?)
This puts Vince in another position he hates to be in: having to help Chess.
Vince and Orwell manage to find Dice, but she escapes after pistol-whipping Orwell, and evades Vince by getting captured by ARK troops. She knows exactly where they’re taking her and how she’ll be able to get Fleming, but what she doesn’t know is how the Cape will factor into things–he’s her one “blind spot.”
This sort of coincides with the theme of this episode’s flashbacks, that the events which led Vince to the train yard that fateful night may have been dictated by a higher hand. Vince leaves Dana for a moment to finish some work, which leads to him being at his computer when Orwell calls. Trip tries to get Vince to stay home and play Monopoly, saying if he can roll a 10, Vince can leave–which is just what happens. And a flashback of Max’s at the end of the episode helps suggest that being the Cape just might be Vince’s destiny.
Of course, the Cape is able to make it to Fleming in time to save him from a convoluted deathtrap at Dice’s hands. And interestingly enough, the billionaire promises him a favor. Is this an offhand joke, or does Fleming have a curious sense of fairness when it comes to his games?
It’s not hard to figure Dice will strike again, and this time, it’s not just at Fleming, but the whole T.R.A.C.E. project. Getting close enough to stop her is an issue for Vince, even though Dice will find a way around ARK’s defenses. So he has Max and company teach him how to walk the high wire. But the carnies realize it’s pretty impossible to teach him how to do that in a couple of days, so they just hypnotize him into being unafraid of heights and teach him as much as possible. It isn’t enough to help him, as he nearly falls to his death in the actual attempt. The montage also fell a bit flat with me–sure, I found a couple of laughs, especially as Vince got uncomfortable around the Carnival’s lovely acrobat, but it felt like a retread of the training montage from the pilot.
Being The Cape, however, all does end well. Vince gets past Fleming’s security and prevents Dice from taking out the villain once again, and then Orwell arrives and punches Dice in the face for that pistol-whipping earlier. But the Cape isn’t so nice a guy that he doesn’t allow Dice’s trap–releasing gas through ARK Tower–to destroy the T.R.A.C.E. project once and for all.
There are elements to this episode I enjoyed, James Frain’s performance chief among them. He gets away with a bit of mustache twirling in episodes such as this, but he also displays the sort of sly humor that shows he’s totally in on the joke. Fleming’s a rather cheerful madman because of it, but the writers throw in another wrinkle by implying (via a wasted Elliot Gould as his doctor) Fleming and Chess are really alternate personalities, or that Fleming does have an alter, but is absolutely worse than Chess could ever be. Let’s be honest, it’s a hackneyed bit of plotting, but Frain sells it at the end of the episode, when his “friend” makes its presence known via–what else–a chessboard.
What didn’t I like, aside from a stilted, pointless appearance from the otherwise great Elliot Gould? Mena Suvari, actually. Hers was a fairly one-dimensional performance, and the “sexual tension” between the two was forced and awkward. Try as he might, Frain was working on his own that time. While she looked pretty good, there was also very little in her performance to suggest her character was isolated, tortured or psychologically unbalanced. She was a passable enough femme fatale, but disappointing after the buildup of her origin tale. What’s worse, the application of her abilities as software could have been fodder for a much more interesting story. But again, this is The Cape, not The Twilight Zone, so exploration of a potentially devastating cultural/technological development is brushed aside in favor of a cat and mouse plot.
The flashbacks were boring as always too, though the idea that Vince was destined to be the Cape spiced up the proceedings for a brief period. Unless it leads to some sort of development between Vince and Max, however, it’s a twist that doesn’t seem particularly twisty.
So now we’re halfway through the run and the show seems to be spinning its wheels…or maybe it’s just that “Dice” was a misstep. We’ll find out with the next one, which sees…more hitmen after Vince. I hope this develops the Tarot, but honestly, it may not even matter in five weeks. Pardon me while I figure out what to mail NBC en masse in our “Save The Cape” campaign.
F13’s rating: 2.5/5
