The Continuing Adventures of NBC’s “The Cape” - The Lich

So far, The Cape has been all over the place, quality wise. It’s run the gamut of “so bad it’s good” “so bad it’s embarrassing” while occasionally dipping into “legitimately entertaining.” I’m a bit behind on my The Cape watching, so today we’ll look at “The Lich” parts one and two, and tomorrow we’ll look at “Razer”

Part 1 begins with a tall, creepy man in a fedora spraying powder on a woman in a truck rental lot. After the credits, Rollo and Max find Faraday to ask him for his detective expertise. Janet, the woman from the rental place and an old friend of Rollo turned up dead, was buried, and her body was exhumed. Faraday inspects the grave and finds that she wasn’t exhumed, she clawed her way out. Zombies? Oh, I hope so.

Meanwhile, Orwell is meeting with Patrick Portman. He’s providing her with information that could thwart Flemming’s plan to turn Palm City ports into a free trade gun-running zone.

In order to keep the ports out of Flemming’s hands, she needs to find the missing heir of the family that owned the land. After receiving a tip from a nurse at The Orchard Sanitarium, Orwell goes to find the missing heir, and falls into a trap set by The Lich.

Max, Rollo and Faraday find a drugged and hypnotized Janet, who after a bit of detoxing and dehypnotizing, directs them to a “staging area for a terrorist attack,” complete with well labelled maps and WHMIS labelled neurotoxin vats. Zombie terrorists? Oh, I hope so.



Faraday meets up with the creepy man in the fedora and takes him out, but it turns out that he’s not The Lich.

In part 2 follows up with Faraday trying to find and rescue Orwell, who spends most of the episode in a drug induced hallucination. I’m not sure which is creepier, the Lich fawning over her:



or her hallucination where she’s engaged to Faraday.



This episode actually had a bit of ground in Haitian voodoo folklore, in which a person would be drugged, kidnapped, brainwashed into believing he or she was a zombie, and then enslaved. It doesn’t make a ton of sense scientifically, but it was cool and creepy in a live action cartoon sort of way. “The Lich” had a great twist, a legitimately unnerving villain, and Rollo kicking guys in the shins. Apparently The Cape only has two episodes to go before season one is complete, so here’s hoping that it maintains this upward direction in quality.