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Date Posted: 08:53:33 04/19/07 Thu
Author: cjl
Subject: Vroooooom.....vrooooooom.........VROOOOOOM! ("Drive" episodes 1-3; spoilers, of course)

I liked it.

We taped the first three episodes and went through them all in a blur last night, boiling three hours of FOX network shilling into two hours of turbo-charged action. I have absolutely no doubt that eliminating the commercials helped with the pacing, and glossed over some of the weaknesses of the writing.

Let's start with what a number of people regard as one of the series' weaknesses: the premise.

I have no problem with the premise. I know it's farfetched and outlandish, but I consider those virtues. (In fact, I love it when the racers continually recite the premise to each other, as if the concept somehow gains credibility by saying it rather than by participating in it: "It's a secret, illegal cross-country road race.")

Yes, it's a fictionalized version of The Amazing Race, but The Race (capital T, capital R) has something more of an edge. Remember, in the Amazing Race, post-elimination contestants go home or appear on the Early Show the next day (and even come back on other reality shows). In The Race, last place finishers are often Eliminated (capital E).

The Sponsors of The Race are like a nightmare version of the corporations who sponsor the reality show counterpart. There's a lot of cruelty in the concept, of omnipotent, uncaring wealth manipulating the lives of the lesser beings. In fact, my big complaint with the first three eps is I wish Tim Minear and co-creator Ben Queen had emphasized the cruelty. I would have liked to have seen a spectacular car crash eliminating one of the more likeable teams in a fountain of gore, followed by Charles Martin Smith chipperly telling the other racers, "Good news, folks--that means the next leg is a non-elimination round!"

If DRIVE were a little nastier and, paradoxically, a little funnier, it could be a snide satire of American society, with our obsession with cool cars, big bucks, and an adrenalized lifestyle. The rat race on steroids. But right now, Minear and Queen are going for something different.

By channeling the series through the viewpoint of Nathan Fillion's Alex Tully, ANGEL fans are back in familiar territory. If you wonder why Minear took such a shine to Queen's initial concept, think about it: a former criminal (and technically, a murderer) regains his soul, and with the help of a good woman, removes himself from the evils of his past. Now, manipulated by unseen PTB, he is forced to revisit and come to terms with his sins. Will Alex ever find redemption? Will the pressures of The Race turn him into Alex-us? Is there a shanshu in his future?

But even if Alex is an echo of Angel, Fillion is no mere echo of David Boreanaz. He's the best thing in this series, and every time he's on screen, the fanciful concept of the Race is grounded in cold reality. Alex has lost his wife and the peaceful life he fought so hard to build; he's sick of being pushed around by functionaries of the Sponsors, and all along the first three hours, we see his responses grow more aggressive and brutal. Fillion sells all of the emotions with ease, and we root for Alex to overturn the chess board and find his way back to Fred.....um, Kathryn.

The slow smile on Alex's face when he blows by the other Racers was pure gold.

I've loved Melanie Lynskey since "Heavenly Creatures" and there's no way I'm going to stop loving her here. There's obviously a lot more to Wendy than the meek, slightly scattered housewife we saw at the start of the Pilot. Motherhood seems to have awakened something in Wendy, something she lost when she was beaten down by her marriage to Richard, and I'm looking forward to seeing that woman re-emerge.

I also like the relationship between the astrophysicist father and his teen daughter (even though I suspect he's going to die long before the season is over). The rest of the Racers--the soldier and his bride, the half-brothers,
and the Katrina survivors--are almost all-cardboard (doesn't help that the guy who plays the soldier is named "Riley") and kill off the story's momentum.

All in all, an entertaining start. Minear's solo series tend to take a while to gear up (both The Inside and Wonderfalls really hit their stride at around ep 6 or 7), so I can be patient if there are a few....bumps on the road at the start of the Race.

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