The Term "Screeching Halt" Comes To Mind
Well, that was fast.
With three series in a row now cancelled in six episodes or less, I think that officially makes the Fox network Ike, and poor Tim Minear Tina.
April 2007 Archives
Hurry Up and Catch It
For those of you in a hurry — say, because you’re involved in an illegal cross-country road race with $32 million at stake, and you need to burn rubber to your next checkpoint, or face a sinister penalty — here’s a two-word review of Fox’s new series Drive: Watch it.
From three-time Fox victim Tim Minear, veteran of such excellent short-run DVD box sets as Firefly, Wonderfalls, and hopefully The Inside, at some point, and unsuspecting newcomer Ben Queen, Drive is pretty much everything you could want from a weekly hybrid of Lost and Cannonball Run — or, for the baggy-pants and angst-rock set, The Fast and the Furious. It blends the compelling characters and solid acting of Lost with the fun, fast-paced intrigue of Heroes. Then it adds a bunch of really cool-looking cars (and, OK, a minivan and a Taurus) going impressively fast in a highly exciting fashion. What’s not to love?
Big Damn Hero Nathan Fillion, best known as Captain Mal Reynolds from Minear and Joss Whedon’s Firefly, keeps a steady hand on the series’ steering wheel as Alex Tully, a nice guy with a nasty past and a desperate need to find his kidnapped wife. Watching him rediscover his long-suppressed inner badass is genuinely awesome — and more than a little bit scary. Kristin Lehman is also good, if somewhat eclipsed in the awesomeness department, as his uneasy partner, a woman with a well-justified grudge against the mysterious people controlling the race.
The core cast of racers — 42 teams in all, six of whom we’ve seen thus far, five of whom seem to be the regulars — are an interesting and highly watchable bunch. They include a terminally ill astrophysicist and his unsuspecting teen daughter; a pair of Katrina refugees (the only really underdeveloped characters in the first three hours); a twitchy new mom who’s abandoned her infant son to flee from her abusive husband; an AWOL soldier and his preposterously hot wife (who is anything but underdeveloped); and a thuggish ex-con, paired up with the affluent, surprisingly gutsy half-brother he’s only just met.
Peter Jackson vet Melanie Lynskey’s particularly good as the minivan-driving mom, lending both sweetness and shadow to a character who seems to have scary, unplumbed depths. Dylan Baker and Emma Stone are also superb and charming as the father and daughter; it’s unfortunate, given Baker’s guest-star status and his character’s condition, that he doesn’t seem likely to stick around for the long haul (assuming the series gets one).
Heck, even the minor, one-off characters are a treat. Minear and Queen smartly pack just about every speaking role with top-flight actors, including Wonderfalls alum Katie Finneran as Fillion’s sister, Kingpin star Yancey Arias, Paul Ben-Victor, Amy Acker as Fillion’s kidnapped wife, and the wonderful Richard Brooks — Firefly’s indelibly creepy Jubal Early — as the cop tracking Fillion.
As befits a racing-themed series, the story keeps moving at an enjoyable clip, smoothly shifting gears from one storyline to the next, and adding in enough bumps and sudden twists to keep things interesting. The series’ first three hours have built a real sense of narrative momentum, dropping clever hints that the folks controlling the race may have their own stakes riding on its outcome, and are intervening to help specific drivers win, lose — or die. It’s a great premise, and with Minear and Queen ably behind the wheel, it shows no signs of running out of gas just yet.
Here’s hoping Drive gets to cross any sort of finish line, since ratings for the premiere seemed a bit lacking in horsepower. Of all of Minear’s series to date, this one seems like it should have the best chance of success. It’s got the everyday characters, easily followed storylines, and fast-drivin’ action your typical Red Stater should love, with enough sly wit, self-aware flourishes, and character development to ensnare the average Blue Stater. It’s not the sharpest thing Minear’s ever written, and it’s certainly no Deadwood or Battlestar Galactica. But it’s wry enough to have characters deliver a hokey moral-of-the-episode speech — then berate themselves for saying something so incredibly corny.
So drivers, here’s your next checkpoint: Your couch, next Monday at 8 p.m., with the channel tuned to Fox. If you don’t show up, Drive might get eliminated — and you’ll miss your chance to enjoy what could be the next buzzworthy, immensely fun TV show.
Need catching up? Brave the sordid, pothole-ridden, hillbilly-infested highways of MySpace to see previous episodes in their entirety.
Gosh Darn It! "Barker" Bites the Dust
In retrospect, I should probably review a show before it’s been cancelled. But with these networks and their itchy trigger fingers these days — Black Donnellys has already been hauled off to the Eternal Dumpster of Cancellation, which is probably no great loss — that’s getting harder and harder to accomplish.
I’ve meant to sing the praises of NBC’s Andy Barker, P.I. for a good long while now, but working on the April Fool’s thing and a few other projects kept me sidetracked. Today, news broke that this sweet, whimsical, and entirely welcome series is officially kaput, but I figure it’s not too late to urge you to watch the entire series online while you can. It’s worth your time.
(I’m probably as guilty for poor Mr. Barker’s liquidation as anyone, since I only watched the episodes online, unwilling as I am to be a slave to the increasingly tyrannical-feeling demands of network schedules — and not owning a TiVo, to boot.)
Too many comedies, even enjoyable ones, bludgeon their audience with sledgehammer blows of mirth. That’s not bad, especially when the comedy’s actually funny, but a change of pace can be refreshing, and that’s exactly what Andy Barker provides. It sneaks up and tickles your funnybone with the gentlest of feathers, and if its comedy is largely cumulative in effect, it’s no less potent.
The joys of the series are small but numerous. Andy Richter brings an undoubtable sweetness, and surprising investigative chops, to the doughy title character. Clea Lewis backs him up with a sweetly dotty turn as his equally bland wife, with the tiniest of mad gleams in her eyes. Every line bitten off by Harve Presnell, as the half-senile old tough guy who mentors CPA-turned-private-eye Andy, is a hard-boiled little gem. Tony Hale is basically reprising Buster from Arrested Development as Andy’s geeky video-store-clerk sidekick, but since when was that a bad thing? And there’s some wonderfully subtle satire surrounding Wally, the Afghani immigrant whose kebab shop is a twisted microcosm of post 9-11 America, where the only thing more prevalent than patriotic imagery is intrusive surveillance.
Anyway, this is all moot now. But go, watch while you can. Andy Barker, P.I. is sweet, smart, classy, and very funny, which is almost more than you can ask of TV comedy these days. Alas, given all those qualities, it’s really no mystery why it got cancelled.