YMMV / The Cape

• Awesome Music:
  • Bear McCreary, duh. And a two-disc soundtrack album to boot!
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Scales is only in half of the episodes, but is one of the best-liked villains due to Vinnie Jones making him a coarse, snarky Genius Bruiser who has a Dark and Troubled Past and comes across as A Lighter Shade of Black than Chess.
  • Raia appears in barely half of the episodes, but rivals some of the main characters in popularity due to her sunny disposition, acrobatic chops, and being a Ms. Fanservice.
  • Villain of the Week characters Goggles, Hicks, and Dice are major fan favorites, who are well-liked even by people who don't like the show as a whole. Dice is well-liked for her Awesome by Analysis abilities and her vendetta against the Big Bad, while Siblings in Crime Goggles and Hicks have an enjoyable amount of flair and depth.
  • Recurring characters Secretary of Prisons Patrick Portman and head public defender Travis Hall are well-liked for being reasonable authority figures who don't kowtow to Fleming and having some pleasant Hidden Depths. Portman being played by Richard Schiff also helps.
• Friendly Fandoms: There is some overlap between the fandoms of No Ordinary Family and The Cape, as both are Short-Runner Reconstruction superhero shows that debuted around the same time and star some notable geekdom cult actors. They also balance each other out some in that No Ordinary Family has characters with real powers but no costumes or codenames, while the characters in The Cape (save perhaps Dice and Scales) have codenames but no powers and rely on technology or hard-learned fighting skills.
• He Really Can Act: Dorian Missick (Voyt), who isn't known for meaty, dramatic roles and seems like a Flat Character in several episodes, gets to display an impressive amount of emotional range and torment in the finale. The same might be said for Jennifer Ferrin (Dana), who had only ever starred in one show prior's to the release of The Cape.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • The titular character in the Lich, who was abandoned at birth and mistreated in an asylum but who is a pitiless nut job unafraid of causing collateral damage in the present.
  • Also from that episode, the head asylum doctor, who was behind that mistreatment but after being drugged into serving the Lich, had his wife and daughter buried alive, and not dug up, with him seeming to remember that and break down during his interrogation.
  • Tracey Jerrods/Dice displays a Lack of Empathy, and perhaps a case of He Who Fights Monsters, but she got treated like an experimental test subject as a child, and Fleming did kill her father and is preparing to market something she was responsible for as his own.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Peter Fleming/Chess is a self-made billionaire who supplies vital services to Palm city, eventually including its police. He is also the psychopathic crime lord named Chess, who is a manifestation of Fleming's darker split personality, although his normal side also seems conniving and amoral. He claims that he wants good things for Palm City, but even if he is sincere, he runs illegal arms, murders honest city officials, scapegoats loyal subordinates and innocent family men, and threatens people's families. Fleming seeks to suppress his Chess persona for unclear reasons, and also is looking for his missing daughter, unaware that she is working with The Cape. Fleming redirects military satellites to see out his enemies. He forms a brief Enemy Mine moment with the Cape to personally navigate the underbelly of a moving train that he's a passenger on to keep it from crashing. He claims to know the value of I Owe You My Life, but will make exceptions and try to kill the Cape to eliminate the obstacle to his empire. Fleming ends the series with his power and reputation cracked, but still intact.
  • Max Malini is the showy but introspective bank-robbing magician and circus owner who forms an alliance of mutual convenience with Vince (whom he initially contemplates killing for being useless to him) to hurt Fleming by stealing his money. Max gives Vince the eponymous cape and teaches him how to use it. A bond develops between the two, and Max seems to get more invested in Vince's crusade. Nonetheless, he won't abandon a lucrative heist to help Vince and the two sadly agree that one day they may become enemies. Nonetheless, they continue to work together and show concern for each other. Max also claims to have fallen out with the cape's murderous previous wearer due to the man getting Drunk on the Dark Side enough to scare Max and make him regret his own darkest deeds. However, there are hints that Max has engineered Vince into using the cape for some mysterious, greater plan of his own. While the series resolves without revealing the good or evil nature of Max's ultimate goal, and whether it will ever succeed, he remains composed, intelligent, and encouraging even in the last moments of the show.
  • "Kozmo": Gregor Molotov is a ruthless killer and estranged student of Max's in the art of crime, illusions, and escapes. He is a master of Death Dealer-styled murders, contortion, and seemingly vanishing into thin air. Gregor spent twenty years of harsh incarceration repeatedly escaping and dreaming of reclaiming his prized cape, even though he recognizes that it brought out the worst in him. After finally successfully escaping, Gregor tries to reclaim the cape, first with polite but steely requests, and then through force. He attempts to brutally kill Max and his lieutenants after managing to ambush and defeat all of them offscreen and briefly reclaims the cape before Vince overpowers him after a closely matched battle. He is last seen being taken away to prison, although Max grimly states that Gregor's talents as an escapist means they haven't heard the last of him.
  • "Dice": Tracey Jerrod is a mathematical savant who is able to use numbers to predict the future. She knows exactly when to walk past security guards so that they'll be too busy to notice, can predict the exact results of rolling a quarter into a room (setting off a Rube Goldberg Device Disaster Dominoes trap), and more. She struggles with A God Am I feelings but is amused to encounter a Spanner in the Works that reminds her she's human and fallible. Fleming kills her father, something Tracey predicated from a young age, and appropriates the work he modeled after Tracey to patent computers which can predict the future. Tracey sets out to kill Fleming in revenge and vows to kill anyone who stands in her way, although she doesn't always try to follow through with those threats. Tracey has no unsavory plans beyond killing Fleming and halting his product's production and only fails at her goals due to Vince's reluctant interference.
  • "Goggles & Hicks";
    • Goggles is one half of the Sibling Team of hired assassins known as “The Chariot.” He is a wheelchair-bound hacker and gadgeteer with a fondness for superhero fiction and is intrigued to find himself pursuing a real-life costumes vigilante on Fleming's behalf. He is resolute in getting inside his targets heads and learning about them before his brother Hicks makes the kills. He arranges a fake underworld meeting to draw out the Cape and put a tracker on him and through this, quickly discovers Vince's true identity and who his family is. He decides to keep Vince's secret but still is intent on killing him, and almost succeeds in helping his brother corner and kill Vince. Goggles never loses his cheery confidence except when he thinks his brother is in danger and then is left lying helpless on his back during a fight.
    • Hicks is the brother and partner of Goggles, acting as the duo's sniper, drone controller, and close quarters combatant. Hicks lacks Goggle's affability and spends most of the episode acting as a quiet observer or The Heavy, although he isn't quite skilled enough to beat Vince. Contrary to others opinions, Hicks is a formidable force even without Goggles once his brother is captured. A distraught Hicks goes to Fleming for help, intending to offer him a thread from the cape that is stuck to his knife and the information about the Cape's identity. Before he can mention the later, Fleming fires him, so Hicks instead approaches Orwell and Vince. He makes it clear that he could bring down Vince with the digital file Goggles made about him. Instead, he trades it, and a promise of silence, to Vince for the location of Goggles so he can break his brother out of jail. He then calmly departs after saying they may cross paths again if anyone else pays the brothers to go after Vince.
• Moe: Raia has her moments due to her constant smiling, being a Friend to All Living Things (although she rarely interacts with animals onscreen) and showing more sensitivity and compassion toward Vince than the other Carnival of Crime members.
• No Yay: Fleming flirting with Tracey/Dice can feel more uncomfortable than the show runners intended, considering how she's younger than his daughter and he killed Tracey's father, and he keeps it up even after she makes her distaste for him clear.
• Retroactive Recognition: David Lyons, who played The Hero, later played General Monroe.
• So Bad, It's Good: The show has its share of Camp, true. But the premise and characters are so much fun, and anyone who likes Reconstruction is sure to love it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Granted, Dice and Vince were too different to have made good allies, but the fact that he never even tries to convince her to pull an Enemy Mine after seeing her trying to kill Fleming is disappointing.

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