Wanna Go For A Drive?

last night fox premiered the show Drive. the show, about an illegal cross-country road race has been in the works and re-works for over a year now and has finally made it to air. so what do we get for all that waiting and fixing and such? we get a corny, stereotypical, poorly written, fun and kind of exciting show - think of it as the movie Rat Race meets the tv show Fastlane with a Prsion Break mystery of unknown forces thrown in.

so ya, i kind of liked it, but in a guilty pleasure sort of way. some of the dialogue made me groan and the characters all felt like cookie cutter 'screen writing for dummies' creations, but i wanted to see what would happen next.

Now, i try not to judge a show based on the pilot episode because usually they get to wrapped up in giving us information and introducing characters and their characteristics and the episode tends to feel a little forced. as it is now though, i think it is, like i said, an medium range show that i will follow. However, if the poor ratings for last nights premier are any indication, it might be a short lived guilty pleasure. we shall see.

the premise is original at least (meaning it isn't about cops and doesn't take place in a hospital or law firm) and they did set up plenty of mystery and unknowns that will be revealed as the race goes along. all that being said, Drive doesn't yet appear to be more then that. they didn't take this actually could-be-exciting premise and turn it into something smart and really interesting like Lost (i am a little surprised given that one of the show's creators is tim minear, who was one of the guys behind the short lived, but excellent, show Wonderfalls that was on fox a few years back).

instead they created a guilty pleasure and didn't really go beyond that. is that a bad thing? not necessarily. it is what it is, and while it isn't as good as Prison Break or 24 (the two other monday night adrenaline rushes) so far it is a fun enough ride that has intrigued me enough to make me keep watching for now.

p.s. one of my biggest pet peeves in movies and tv is during driving scenes when the character driving is talking to the passenger and spends more time looking at the other person then actually watching the road. given that Drive spends most of its time in cars, that is something they really have to watch out for, cause there have been a few times where it was laughable.

grade: B-