Faraday accepts an offer to work for ARK, a private security firm owned and operated by billionaire entrepreneur Peter Fleming.

A video streamed to Faraday from an investigative blogger known only as Orwell leads him and partner, Marty Voyt, to a cargo train owned by Fleming's firm.

In a news event staged by Fleming, Faraday is "revealed" as Chess as an ARK security team chases him along the city waterfront.

Faraday decides to fight Palm City's corruption and clear his name by adopting the visage of his son's favorite comic book hero, The Cape.

[14] Critic Ken Tucker described the show's premiere as "fun, refreshingly free of irony" with "a sensibility that allowed for a sense of humor without slipping into tiresome campiness.

"[15] Other proponents of the show have said "if the premise sounds cheesy or busy, the execution is crisp and efficient"[16] and "someone in network land has learned a lesson from Heroes.

While having no complaints about the premise of the series, he wrote that the pilot "rushes through everything, pulverizing potentially engaging characters and story until the whole production starts to feel like a long trailer for itself.

"[18] Peter Swanson of Slate wrote that the series "falls into a wasteland of its own making, where neither the stakes nor the jokes can distract one from the thinness of its writing.

[5] It placed third overall in terms of top science fiction genre network premieres for the 2010–2011 season, behind fellow NBC show The Event and ABC's No Ordinary Family.

[29] In the episode "Pillows and Blankets", which parodies the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War, Keith David provided the narration.

In "Advanced Introduction to Finality", Abed Nadir meets his evil doppelganger in the darkest timeline and he is informed that The Cape was renewed in their world for a third season, switched to cable, and was retooled, making it better.