The Cape: "Kozmo"

I continue an exercise in television-based masochism started last week, with a review of the third episode of The Cape, after the jump... 

[Disclaimer: The Cape was so bad tonight, I almost couldn't put it into words. So if they following doesn't read as smooth as you expect, that's why.] 

I believe that The Cape's biggest problem isn't that it tells clichéd stories, but rather that it is incapable of telling any kind of story.

Let's just look at all of the elements present in tonight's episode: Vince continues his investigation into Chess; Trip goes to a new school (because he and Dana moved, apparently) and gets bullied; Dana's new job leads her to new information pointing to Vince's innocence; Flemming/Chess tries to track down Orwell AND his daughter; and we get some mythology in the titular cape. Man, just typing all that got me exhausted.

And that of course doesn't include what was supposedly tonight's main plot, that involving Gregor the Great (seriously, that's his name) and his quest to regain the cape. This story was so engaging, due in no small part to all of the distracting subplots listed above, but mainly because we never really got a handle on who Gregor was. He can, apparently, dislocate any joint in his body, and can kill people by flicking playing cards into their jugulars. That's it. That's all we know. I get that Gregor is supposed to represent the dark side of carnival life or whatever, but his loose collection of skills doesn't really congeal into a whole. Nor does it help that he only seems interested in the cape; we don't even know what exactly he would do with the cape if he got it, outside of generally “bad things.”

Wasn't even worse is that we don't know why Vince gets so riled up about this guys, outside of his general sense of do-goodery and the threat that Gregor represent to his new life. So it's a bit odd watching these two men go at each other when the show hasn't really proven that they should hate each as much as they do. Nor does it help anything that most of the Gregor storyline seems like setup, with any real action relegated to only two scenes. If this man was such a threat, Vince should have had a harder time taking him down.

Before I finish, I would like to accuse the show of one last crime against television – misuse of Summer Glau. Her Oracle character continues to be vaguely defined, and in a way that makes me think that show has no idea what it's going to do with her. The argument between her and Vince came up awkwardly – is he really going to be this worried about her mysterious nature at this point? - and her scenes with the circus people didn't seem to serve any purpose either. Now, I believe we are now supposed to know she's Fleming's daughter (that's what that last scene was about, right?) but I figured it out when Fleming was looking for both Orwell AND his daughter. Was I supposed to figure it out then? Was I even supposed to have it figured out at the end of the episode? It's things like this that really raise my disdain for The Cape.

Additional Thoughts: 

-Admittedly, I laughed at the “hey, you clowns, get out of way!” gag

- Those title cards before each act have somehow gotten even more annoying

- Okay, the more people who do that's disappear-in-a-puff-of-smoke trick, the less impressive it becomes

- Why is the show still sticking to having Vince read the comic “The Cape”? Not only is it meta in an awkward sort of way, but it fails to add anything to the show?

- Out of some skewed sense of television critic duty, I will be keeping my eye on this show. I doubt I will blog about every episode, but if something interesting happens, I'll probably do some sort of write-up.