This Week in Television - Jan. 10-14, 2011

The Cape
Thought I'd check out the premiere, and while it lacked the cool super powers it was a lot better than No Ordinary Family. I like that Vince was trained by circus people, each of them lending their unique talents. I like that his death was inadvertantly faked, giving him a stronger and more interesting reason to keep his identity a secret than the classic "I don't want to endanger my loved ones" excuse (though that's still a part of it, too). I also like the little chapter titles - something I don't think a show has done since Frasier - and the convenience store robbers calling the clerk "Borat" when he was played by the fat dude who was actually in Borat. Being a comic book type show, it did have some eye-rolling cheesy lines as well, but I suppose that's acceptable if you make sure nothing else is cheesy, and for the most part it was solid. That's how you do it, No Ordinary Family, not with loads of cliches or predictability or Michael Chiklis.

V
The creepiness of Anna eating a rat was nullified (or perhaps intensified, I'm not quite sure which) by the awfully fake-looking special effects. I also laughed a little at the commercial cliffhanger fake-out where they revealed Erica's face in Joshua's memories and then came back and said "he remembers being taken down by Erica Evans, but there's nothing of his collaborators!" I understand Ryan wanting to protect his daughter and everything, but the thing about blackmail is this: when someone is blackmailing you, it means they want something from you. That gives you almost as much power over them as they have over you, because if they do what they're threatening then they won't get what they want from you, and if they can afford that then the threat's probably not that serious. ...But since it's Anna, I wouldn't call her bluff on this one. Oh, and the scene with Erica and Malik in the car didn't quite work for me. I know it was supposed to be all tense and cool as they both had their suspicions about each other, but it seemed really forced and lacked subtlety the way they both just immediately questioned each other about where they were. It felt off to me.