In episode 2, we move from the pilot’s initial plot introduction and quickly met some more characters that I assume will be critical to the storyline. Now that he has control of the Palm City Police Dept. our psycho friend Peter Fleming is looking to gain control of the prisons as well. However, there is one person who is against that idea. Patrick Portman (Richard Schiff) is the Secretary for the Bureau of Prisons who is vocal about Fleming not reaching his latest take-over-the-world idea. He also knows that because of this, he needs extra security detail because someone is trying to kill him. Gee, I wonder who?
Our friend Vince breaks into Fleming’s home (Good idea) and it for a split second appears he got the drop on our killer. Until he gets stabbed and poisoned by Fleming’s newest weapon – a creepy long-haired French chef named Cain (Raza Jaffrey). To get himself out of there, Vince flings himself out of the window and lands on a car. Luckily, Orwell is a pretty effective follower and saves the day, him driving away in her $300K Mercedes, not before noticing Cain’s tattoo of The Tower tarot card. She brings Vince to the Circus of Friends and high tails it out of there. Max is able to heal Vince using leeches and another poison.
When Vince wakes up from his leechy sleep, Max tells him that he is not giving him back the cape because he is crazy and is trying to get himself killed by not being more careful. Well fine, Vince says– I’ll find a run-down hole in the wall and make my own lair. He then proceeds to start his cause – make a mask, pin up photos and articles to the wall, drink numerous poisons to become immune to them, dodge knives thrown out of a baseball pitching machine, stuff like that.
In the meantime, Dana and Trip are having a rough time with Vince’s “death”. Tripp is camping out on the roof waiting for The Cape to return, and Dana needs to get a job. She gets one too, as a defense attorney. One of her cases is for a man who was arrested at the rail yard (luckily) at the time all the shit went down. He tells Dana that the guy they said was Chess was not Chess. Dana, who still trusts asshole Marty, tells him what she found. Yeah, because that will help you. I can’t wait for this guy to get it.
Vince goes to Patrick Portman and says he will watch his back, but he must vote no to Fleming’s plan, which he ultimately does.
Cain does try to poison him prior to the vote in a restaurant, but Orwell is able to stop it, and Vince saves her. He leaves Cain hog-tied in the restaurant’s kitchen, where Fleming finds him. That’s all we see of them this episode. An important note however, is that Orwell figured out that the tattoo Cain has probably means there is a secret society of villains all waiting to jump out of the woodwork. Oh, great news!!
The episode ends with Vince standing on a rooftop as The Cape. I didn’t know I was watching Smallville.
I feel that this Tarot was pretty good coming off of the pilot. We got a lot more set-up of the hinges of the arc, which is key to getting people invested in a show. However, I was still left with some unanswered questions. What happened to Cain after getting hog-tied by our caped crusader? Have we seen the last of him? Probably not. I feel we needed just a little more ending to that chapter of the episode.
