Ah, the Cars. Weren't they a great band? Now there's the New Cars. It's not the same.
This post isn't about them though.
It's about the new Fox series Drive, whose premiere completely blindsided me on Sunday night because I had no idea it was going to be on. Thankfully, I turned on Fox to watch The Simpsons at 8 o'clock or I would have completely missed it. Then there was another episode on Monday night, which is when I was expecting to watch the premiere. I don't know it it was lack of promotion or just me. I record almost everything on DVR now specifically so that I can fast forward through commercials, so I won't complain about Fox's lack of promotion, since I have no evidence to support it. I will say that I didn't see any ads for it on the internet, which seems odd considering one of the show's stars has an immense internet following. It didn't do too well in the ratings on Sunday night though. I have no idea about what Monday's numbers were.
I liked the show. It didn't wow me like the premiere of Prison Break did last year, but then, I quickly lost interest in that show, whereas by the end of the third hour on Monday night, my interest in Drive was still steadily building. I think that it has the potential to have the same problem that Prison Break has though, in that it's a very high concept that can't possibly be sustained for too long. However, it seems far more plausible to me that the creators of this show will be able to find reasons to keep the characters on the road for multiple seasons than it does for the creators of Prison Break to be able to keep up the jail break theme without it making the characters seem like they are in a Wile E. Coyote like cycle. Also, Drive has car chases, ad can have them all the time. That's cool and exciting. There's also a lot more opportunity for product placement, which I am certain makes the network very happy. (That might even be something that could keep this show on the air if ratings don't improve. Profitable shows always last longer than successful shows.)
I was primarily interested in this show because it stars Nathan Fillion, aka Captain Malcolm Reynolds, and executive producer Tim Minear, who previously worked on shows I loved, like Angel, Firefly, and Wonderfalls. And if you watched and loved any of those shows, there's a lot of reason to tune in to Drive. In addition to Fillion and Minear, a few other actors from those shows pop up, including Amy Acker, previously of Angel and most recently Alias, where she played a complete badass. There's also the serialized nature of it and the fact that mst of the characters are more than they seem. Those are things that have proven pretty popular on television of late, and Minear has proven himself to be incredibly adept at those types of stories.
Nathan Fillion is still my primary point of interest for the show, though, and it struck me at first that his character is a lot like Mal, but after getting a bit of background revelation on Alex Tully, I know think he's Mal in reverse. Mal was a good guy who became a bad guy and is always fighting his heroic nature. Tully is a bad guy who became a good guy and is strggling to maintain is heroism. It's too bad he's saddled with the show's blandest actress as his partner. As for the other characters, oddly enough, I think the father daugter team might be my favorite. There's a lot of pathos to be wrug from that situation and there's a lot of warmth and humor in their scenes. The soldier and his wife have the potential to get really annoying very soon, and the long lost brothers team is interesting, but hasn't really caught me on an emotional level. I think that the character that intrigues me most is the moter who is trying to protect her baby. She's a little bit crazy, but she's sweet, and I think there's huge potential for that character. It will be interesting to see what this race drives her to do (no pun intended) and what lines she will cross. Plus, I think Melanie Lynskey is fantastic.
Anyway, I think this show has a lot of potential, and I hope that Fox doesn't pull a Fox and prematurely cancel it. It's deffinitely worth a shot, and if you, like me, missed all the advertising because you hate commercials, but unlike me didn't have the happy accident of fiding it when you were looking for The Simpsons, the episodes are on MySpace. At the very least, watch it for Nathan Fillion, who is awesome and deserves to be a huge star (though it would have been better if he was a huge star because of Firefly, Serenity and Slither, but it has been log established that people do't have nearly as good taste as the should - more on that later.)
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