ReCape: Watching The Cape

[SturmDolch]

I saw a bit of it and was astounded at how cheesy it was. I thought it looked ok from the promos, but ouch. Painful to watch.

Maybe I should have looked at it as a comedy, like you said, but considering I'm not a big TV person, I'll give it a pass.

 

[lostlevel]

I found it quite amusing I just hope that the blatant awkward setting the scene for the first couple of episodes is over.

 

[Forktongue]

Wow, this is why I should listen to my gut and just avoid all forums. I'll admit, the show wasn't what I'd hoped it would be but it seemed (to me at least) that the camp was somewhat self-aware.

I have to agree with the majority of the comments here. I think the author pointed out a lot of flaws with the show but also wrote the article with an aggressively negative tone. Although I think its more a sign of the Escapist responding to the general tone of the forums than a sign of the author's writing ability or taste.

That being said, having a long-time contributor swoop in (please say you wore a cape when you started posting, Shamus. PLEASE!) by calling everyone fanboys didn't help. Yes, most of the comments were infantile, but calling everyone fanboys and then defending the accusation by comparing this article to your lampoon of the newest edition to a decades-old franchise is just as infantile.

To the folks angry at this article: Liz is new, give her a chance. She has had hits and misses just like most every contributor to this site.

To Shamus: I'm sure your intentions were good, but you did nothing but fan the flames. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.

 

[Aurgelmir]

ReCape: Watching The Cape

If you think that's a forced joke, you obviously didn't catch The Cape last night.

Read Full Article

I have to question your credentials that allow you to make sweeping judgments like "Poor pacing," and "bad camera work."* I noticed very little of what you play up to be massive faults. Maybe what was skipping around every few seconds was your attention**.

You must admit though there were some poor effects and stuff in the show. Personally think the color grader for the pilot should get fired. In some of the shots the Cape looks green due to green screen glare, which as far as I know is something you should be able to fix in post production.
The Pacing was a bit weird sometimes too.

But I liked the show despite its flaws. And if the show last long enough it will probably iron out some of the bigger flaws.

I hope this show lasts, because TV needs more real heroes.

 

[Mysnomer]

You must admit though there were some poor effects and stuff in the show. Personally think the color grader for the pilot should get fired. In some of the shots the Cape looks green due to green screen glare, which as far as I know is something you should be able to fix in post production.
The Pacing was a bit weird sometimes too.

Actually, pacing was not supposed to be in that post under "technical terms". It went through several revisions and commenting about pacing was sort of an artifact that got left behind. I mostly meant to talk about her discussion of scene composition and camera work. Oh, well (I might edit it later). As for weird coloration, I can't tell that sort of stuff, because the color on my TV's a little wonky. I just sort of mentally filter color discrepancies and ghosting images (this might also be why I had little issue with less than spectacular CGI).

 

[mechanixis]

Umm, yeah, you call people who freak out about those things FANBOYS because those properties have a FANDOM. I seriously doubt that The Cape has anything that could be considered a community at this point. People in this thread aren't complaining about the criticism because they have serious time or energy invested in this series or because they think it's a deep and affecting work. What is fanboy supposed to mean here? Is anyone who says that something is being unfairly criticized a fanboy?

In answer to your query, see below.

she has no taste (as this proves).

I watched it. Keith David was awesome as fuck.

Therefore, the show is awesome as fuck...

Did I mention Keith David was awesome?

"I like X, therefore X is objectively good, therefore I like X." It's a circular argument completely free of skepticism or qualitative judgments.

Liking something and thinking it's good are two independent statements. I like the show Deadliest Warrior because it features a man dressed as a viking and a man dressed as a samurai fighting to the death in a forest. Is it a good show? Hell no! It's tripe; it's cultural refuse. I can still enjoy it, even if, from a critical perspective, it's consumer bullshit.

Like, I can empirically explain to you why The Cape was bad, from a Screenwriting and Directing 101 perspective. The first three pages of this review are about the first twenty-four minutes of the show. That is poor pacing. That is a weak introduction. In this first episode, we have already confronted three villains when it would be much better use of the time given to flesh out the protagonist's origin and develop the characters. You may have liked the show as it stands, but I guarantee you that if they had taken the other route the pilot and subsequent episodes would be a superior product overall.

And the vision behind the show was weak as well - just having a scene where one character reads a comicbook aloud to another gives the strong impression that the people making this show have absolutely no personal experience with comicbooks whatsoever, and that the director has no idea how to convey a father-son relationship without using a bedtime story scene. 'Blogging' is basically presented as a superpower in itself. This shows a disconnect from reality on the part of the creators. This. Isn't. Good. Writing.

And the excuse that the source material is campy and therefore the show can be is pretty flimsy. Comics actually take themselves verrry seriously most of the time. Just look at Watchmen, the Dark Knight, etc. Plus, to paraphrase MovieBob, bad source material doesn't permit bad products. Creative works need to be able to stand by themselves, without the corollary "It's bad because something else is bad." If it's meant to be bad, it isn't going get made in the first place.

What gets under the skin of critical people - i.e. Shamus, myself - is when people who prefer to just view their entertainment without analyzing it seem to think "I like this (due to various reasons that generally go beyond the material itself, such as actors, writers, premises, effects, or my own imaginary extrapolations of it) and therefore, it's Good Television." Completely different things.

All that matters is that if it's entertaining. Fuck if it's creative. Fuck if the writing isn't the best. Fuck all that bloody fucking shit. Entertaining is the only part that matters. Oh, and the reason the first 3 pages are like that IS BECAUSE SHE WROTE THEM LIKE THAT!

See, this is another fanboy mentality: "Everyone who's smarter than me is a nerd! Everyone who's dumber than me is an idiot!" It's like the universe is centered on your initial knee-jerk reaction to anything you see. Can you articulate why you liked it? Because the only reason you've offered so far is that it features actors that were good in other things. That makes as much sense as saying "I like chocolate, therefore chocolate on a hamburger is AWESOME!"

 

[warmonkey]

Stupid? Maybe, but maybe we should applaud them for the ballsy move. Maybe they're going to try and NOT repeat the same shitty-ass tripe that resulted in LOST and BSG. Nothing but daytime soaps in the evening. Garbage.

Any show that requires you to watch every episode in order to understand any episode is a show that I will not watch and will celebrate when it ends.

snip

No, well written shows are good because they are well written and likewise for poorly written ones. There are plenty of procedural or one-off style shows that are horrible. I certainly don't think that the CSI: ~40 minutes of Act 1 - Introduce Problem, Act 2 - Fluff/Drama/Expand Problem, Act 3 - Solve Problem is instantly a more fulfilling entertainment experience because at least everything was resolved in 40 minutes(1 hour sans commercials).

One episode/series narrative structure is no more open to bad writing than another.

No no.. you miss my point. Both are open to the same bad writing, or I suppose good writing.

I'm not saying one style or the other MAKES the writing good or bad.
What I'm saying is the whole serialized set-up is more forgiving to bad episodes.

If a particular episode of CSI:Nome is bad, people will turn it off. It's an irrelevant episode, they'll just skip it, and catch a better episode some other time.
That means people aren't watching that bad episode. That means advertising dollars.

You get something like LOST.. and man. People will suffer through it. Build up a big mystery, and promise a reveal, and who cares what the rest of the episode is like. Seriously, it doesn't matter. People will watch, because they are invested in the story, even if it has devolved to.. well.. look at what became of LOST, BSG, Heroes, SG:U, I could name others. They turn crappy. They turn to daytime soaps, except in the evening, and without being self-aware that they're poorly written camp -- that's replaced by pretentiousness and the smug belief that they're something important.

This also applies to pretty much any of the showtime/hbo/skinemax series that come and go -- only difference is you add strong language and boobies. Suddenly your little daytime soap opera is adult and edgy and well-written, nevermind that the whole shebang really doesn't make a damn bit of sense and isn't any more compelling than Dallas.


I'm really not a fan of this style of television if you haven't caught on. It's the new reality show. I will cop to watching Walking Dead, but I like zombies. It also was only a few episodes long, and while I would say they were good there's no promise they'll continue to be of any quality at all -- all they need is a few well-written episodes full of exciting things people will be excited about seeing and talking about, and after that they can just throw on cruise control and ride the wave out to the end, so long as they've properly set up some important plot points to keep dangling in front of the audience.


Basically if any show is nothing but season after season of "TO BE CONTINUED...", I am probably not a fan and the show will probably turn to shit after they burn their first few decent attention-grabbing episodes. Keep track -- it's often what happens. I mean, hell, Stargate SG:1 was pretty much just a bunch of one-offs. Stargate Atlantis, also one-offs, but a few continuous arcs -- but also regarded as not as good or fun as SG:1. Stargate Universe, nothing but long-arc garbage.. and canceled, finally, mercifully, I don't know how it even ever got a second season.

 

[mechanixis]

Umm, yeah, you call people who freak out about those things FANBOYS because those properties have a FANDOM. I seriously doubt that The Cape has anything that could be considered a community at this point. People in this thread aren't complaining about the criticism because they have serious time or energy invested in this series or because they think it's a deep and affecting work. What is fanboy supposed to mean here? Is anyone who says that something is being unfairly criticized a fanboy?

In answer to your query, see below.

she has no taste (as this proves).

I watched it. Keith David was awesome as fuck.

Therefore, the show is awesome as fuck...

Did I mention Keith David was awesome?

"I like X, therefore X is objectively good, therefore I like X." It's a circular argument completely free of skepticism or qualitative judgments.

Liking something and thinking it's good are two independent statements. I like the show Deadliest Warrior because it features a man dressed as a viking and a man dressed as a samurai fighting to the death in a forest. Is it a good show? Hell no! It's tripe; it's cultural refuse. I can still enjoy it, even if, from a critical perspective, it's consumer bullshit.

Like, I can empirically explain to you why The Cape was bad, from a Screenwriting and Directing 101 perspective. The first three pages of this review are about the first twenty-four minutes of the show. That is poor pacing. That is a weak introduction. In this first episode, we have already confronted three villains when it would be much better use of the time given to flesh out the protagonist's origin and develop the characters. You may have liked the show as it stands, but I guarantee you that if they had taken the other route the pilot and subsequent episodes would be a superior product overall.

And the vision behind the show was weak as well - just having a scene where one character reads a comicbook aloud to another gives the strong impression that the people making this show have absolutely no personal experience with comicbooks whatsoever, and that the director has no idea how to convey a father-son relationship without using a bedtime story scene. 'Blogging' is basically presented as a superpower in itself. This shows a disconnect from reality on the part of the creators. This. Isn't. Good. Writing.

And the excuse that the source material is campy and therefore the show can be is pretty flimsy. Comics actually take themselves verrry seriously most of the time. Just look at Watchmen, the Dark Knight, etc. Plus, to paraphrase MovieBob, bad source material doesn't permit bad products. Creative works need to be able to stand by themselves, without the corollary "It's bad because something else is bad." If it's meant to be bad, it isn't going get made in the first place.

What gets under the skin of critical people - i.e. Shamus, myself - is when people who prefer to just view their entertainment without analyzing it seem to think "I like this (due to various reasons that generally go beyond the material itself, such as actors, writers, premises, effects, or my own imaginary extrapolations of it) and therefore, it's Good Television." Completely different things.

All that matters is that if it's entertaining. Fuck if it's creative. Fuck if the writing isn't the best. Fuck all that bloody fucking shit. Entertaining is the only part that matters. Oh, and the reason the first 3 pages are like that IS BECAUSE SHE WROTE THEM LIKE THAT!

See, this is another fanboy mentality: "Everyone who's smarter than me is a nerd! Everyone who's dumber than me is an idiot!" It's like the universe is centered on your initial knee-jerk reaction to anything you see. Can you articulate why you liked it? Because the only reason you've offered so far is that it features actors that were good in other things. That makes as much sense as saying "I like chocolate, therefore chocolate on a hamburger is AWESOME!"

You know why I liked it? The characters were fun. The villains were the right amount of crazy awesome that they were fun to watch but the heroes were also awesome. Max (Keith David's character) stole the show whenever he showed up, which any Keith David character should do or you aren't using him right. The right amount of angst and humor were used so that it didn't feel like nothing was serious but at the same time it wasn't depressing. Orwell was both mysterious and awesome and the scene where she was yelling at him while he was dying was grade-A funny. They allowed the show to break from reality when it needed to (holographic interface). It was clichéd, but in a good way. One of the corrupt cops looked like a shorter-haired Francis. Summer Glau was, as usual, awesome. The show was fun. I loved it because of all that!

See, that's all fine. Finding something 'fun' is highly subjective, and you're entitled to your opinion; if you enjoyed the show, that's your prerogative. But it's different to say that the show is objectively good and people who didn't like it are objectively wrong. It conjures the image of a fifth-grader arguing how his Pokemon manga is better literature than 'Anna Karenina' because "there's no action in it." Trust me, I really wanted to like this show. I love Keith David, I love Summer Glau, I loved the character designs and the idea of a mature superhero show. But the frantic pacing and tacky writing completely crushed it for me.

 

[Verex]

This breakdown was terrible. The show, however, has some great potential. Loving it so far.

 

[scarab7]

Dear god this show sucks. They don't understand rising action at all. It's like middle school writing has a better grasp of pacing. They jump around way too quickly, characters are so random and try get by with quirks in place of characterization. So many random plot devices that it hurts. If I couldn't laugh then I wouldn't be able to get through the first episode.

 

[Jaeriko]

I didn't particularly like the show (disappointed that a show with Glau in it probably won't last long....again. Goddamn Fox), but I like this "deconstruction" even less.

However, I'll keep reading her articles to see if she can pick it up a bit. This seemed awfully mean spirited, rather like she came into this unable (or unwilling, I don't know) to see any good in the show. She seemed to skip a fair amount of the good things about the show I noticed, but whatever. Everyone has their niche and I see potential in both her writing and the show she wrote about.

I hope both will become better with time.

EDIT: I know I have no place saying this, but I thought Shamus' responses were very poor. No offense meant, but not everyone who disliked the article is a raving fanboy/girl and it was probably a bad idea posting something to that effect.