Superheroes run wild

A city cowers in the shadow of corporate greed.

With the advent of a privatized police force, justice in Palm City is up for the highest bidder. Billionaire Peter Fleming and his crime boss alter ego, Chess, is manipulating law enforcement to move shipments of L9, an incendiary weapon of mass destruction capable of generating enough heat to vaporize a car.

To throw police off his trail, he sets up David Lyons as Vince Faraday, a good cop brave and true, to take the fall in the guise of Chess, apparently killing him in a showdown at the railyard.

Framed as the supervillain Chess, Faraday can’t resurface until he can clear his name to protect his family. He’s married to Dana, a fierce public defender, and they have a pre-teen son, Trip, who idolizes the action comic book hero “The Cape.”

While on the run from the police he is contacted by Orwell, a mysterious online informant, and encounters Max Malini, ringmaster for the “Carnival of Crime,” a gang of sneak thieves and ne’er-do-wells operating a traveling circus. Despite his natural aversion to helping a cop, Max sympathizes with his situation. He trains him as an illusionist and helps develop his secret identity as “The Cape,” a live-action version of the comic book hero.

Faraday gets to work as a superhero right away. Fleming has contracted the talents of a team of assassins called “Tarot” to bring down Patrick Portman, head of Palm City’s prison system, who refuses to be bought off by Fleming.

He calls in Cain, a poisoner, to target Portman. Cain is a master chef and in a wildly theatrical move takes over the kitchen at a five-star hotel where Portman is meeting with colleagues and sends him a poisoned entree.

Fortunately Faraday has teamed up with Orwell, played by Summer Glau, and together they are able to neutralize Cain and save Portman by whisking the plate away from him untouched.

High camp

Camp? It is high camp. Part of Faraday’s training involved mind-control and hand-to-hand combat with a little person. In his first confrontation with Chess, someone has set up an actual chess board and I didn’t bother to check out the scenario that was laid in but situationwise, to go to the trouble of laying out a chess problem in a boxcar as part of divulging your mu-WHA-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha secret evil scheme is way over the top. And later, when Faraday breaks into Fleming’s home and Cain is there and waiting for him, one wonders what he’d been doing there the rest of the time, and all those other days and nights Faraday hadn’t broken in.

But on some level, “The Cape” is what NBC's canceled project “Heroes” should’ve been from the very beginning -- more dramatic origin stories and less moral ambiguity. While ABC’s “No Ordinary Family” is just too much of a family show for me to put up with it, “The Cape” has family show elements in and among some darker themes and it holds my interest quite a bit more.

Faraday is “The Cape” because he’s got to bring down a billionaire crime boss and clear his name and reunite with his family. He’s got a sidekick, Orwell, with secrets of her own. He’s got a secret lair -- I’m not completely clear on how he came to have a lair, actually -- and he’s got a certain instinct for showmanship.

Other reviewers have panned the heck out of this midseason replacement, but I’ve got to say I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it quite a lot, actually, and look forward to seeing where they’re taking it next.

“The Cape” airs Mondays at 9/8c on NBC.