Vince Faraday is an honest cop in Palm City who is retiring. A.R.K. is a private company that is taking over the police force and they want Vince to work for them. But the guy in charge of Ark is really a villain by the name of Chess. Vince discovers that the guy is smuggling explosives in children's toys and is captured. Instead of killing him they dress him up in Chess' costume and have the Ark force pursue him, which is all recorded by the local news. It looks like Vince dies in an explosion but he survives and takes refuge in the sewer tunnels. He eventually ends up at a strange circus, "The Carnival of Crime" and is captured by their leader, Max Malini (Keith David of THEY LIVE). He's an illusionist. Having watched television they believe Faraday to be Chess and demand money for his release. He tells them they are mistaken and it's a while before they believe him. In fact, he gives them an Ark card-key which will open the doors of all the banks they guard. So Malini and his gang begin robbing those banks. But Faraday wants to do something more to mess up Ark's leader. An idea is sparked when he comes across an old cape that Malini owns. Vince will take up the mantle of his son's favorite comic-book superhero, "The Cape", and fight crime. Max trains him so that he's able to perform every illusion there is that involves a cape. This includes disappearing in a puff of smoke to grabbing things with it, like knives and guns. We're also introduced to Orwell (Summer Glau of THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES, DOLLHOUSE), a mysterious blogger who uncovers police corruption. She agrees to help The Cape in his mission to bring down the real Chess. In the second episode there's another villain named Scales (Vinnie Jones of THE BLEEDING), who is, of course, covered in reptile-like scales. The third episode begins with a Russian prisoner escaping after twenty years locked up. He shows up at Max's circus and demands his cape back. This is the very same cape Vince has now adopted. We find out the whole reason Max gave Faraday the cape to begin with is that it has a bad history associated with it and he hoped this would be the beginning of something new and better for its legacy.
As a blatant superhero show this is somewhat lackluster. I only lasted three out of the ten episodes. I found the whole interaction with Vince and his ten-year-old son irritating, especially with the son not recognizing that this mysterious guy in the cape who visits him every night and talks to him is his father. It's just dumb.