The Continuing Adventures of NBC’s “The Cape”

This week we’ll be looking at episode 5 and 6, “Dice” and “Goggles and Hicks.” Overall, these were good episodes, but The Cape is still having problems with scenes and lines that just don’t make any sense.

In Episode 5 “Dice,” Flemming is targeted for assassination by a savant named “Dice,” who calculates probability on the scale of quantum mechanics. Real science is hard, but pseudo science is fun, and easy! This leads to some pretty cool visuals while Dice is analyzing probability.




Orwell points out that if Flemming is dead, Faraday won’t be able to connect the Chess murders to him, and thus will have a lot harder time clearing his name. He’s put in the awkward position of having to protect Flemming against an assassin that can practically see into the future.

In order to sneak into Flemming’s building to protect him, Faraday decides that he needs to learn to tightrope walk. This leads to a montage of circus training where he learns the basics of tightrope walking. I’m all for consistency and themes, but why does he have to tightrope walk? Why can’t he just get the wire across the buildings and then shimmy across? Like, keep his knees around the wire and pull himself with his hands? It doesn’t really make sense.



Episode 6, “Goggles and Hicks” seems promising enough at first. It starts with Flemming meeting up with the two man assassin team of Goggles and Hicks. Flemming presents Goggles with an issue of “The Cape” comic book, which leads to a pretty great line from Goggles: “Ah, the Cape #106. Written by Trevor Pooly, pencils by EJ Chester... you want to kill one of them. Have you seen their work in Retroman? It’s a real crime to lose that talent, but a job is a job, I suppose. Pencil through the eye! Now that would be ironic!” Which leads to this exchange:



More or less. We then meet up with Faraday and go back in time to another tiresome flashback, this time it’s a Saturday morning with Faraday and his wife having a bit of kissy time in the kitchen. Which leads to possibly the worst line in television history:

Faraday: I’d like to start with breakfast.
Dana: How do you want your egg?
Faraday: Fertilized.

NNNNGGGG-WHAT!? Oh god no! Just... no... NO! No... that... no! That’s neither romantic nor sexy nor cute nor... appetizing, that’s just... god, no. The Cape just ruined sex AND breakfast for me.

Urg. Well, Goggles and Hicks take the job to take on the Cape. But these aren’t your average assassins. These guys like to give their opponents every single opportunity to escape, despite their ability to kill a guy from a sniper shot two miles away. Instead of doing that, they send a remote controlled drone.



That doesn’t work because the drone is thwarted by five feet of tunnel. Long story short, Orwell does some computer voodoo, backtracks the signal, and they capture Goggles and send him to prison. Without Goggles, Hicks is just sort of a spazz. So the Cape survives this encounter with assassins because they’re written as the most inept assassins of all time. Go team Faraday. To end things off, Faraday shows up at the Circus, says hi to Max, and leaves. It was supposed to tie into something they said earlier in the episodes but it just came off as clunky and awkward.

As of episode six, The Cape is still enjoyable on a goofy level, and Keith David is still the sexiest, wine swilling carnie on television.