Sunday Driving

Tonight was the series premiere of the new show Drive on FOX. I'll be direct; my expectations of this show were probably higher than was reasonable.

First of all, it's a mistake to get attached to any new show starting on FOX. They mow down almost everything that's not aimed at a fifth grade level audience (hey, they even put that in the title of one of their latest!), cancelling more good shows that deserve a long life than any other network.

Secondly, the pedigree of this show was setting my hopes too high. It stars Nathan Fillion, who has showed his brilliance in Firefly, the movie Slither, a brief but memorable guest spot on Lost, and that's just to name a few. And it was co-created by Tim Minear, one of the creative forces behind Firefly and Wonderfalls.

So, like I said... expectations way too high for something that's obviously meant to be a more visceral and non-intellectual thrill. Because it seems like this show has aspirations to be only slightly headier than a blending of Death Race 2000 and The Amazing Race. Probably with stronger characterization and emotion, of course, though that is still unfolding as of these first two hours.

I was largely entertained by the premiere tonight. Plenty of great one-liners. Some good action sequences. An interesting set of mysteries to be revealed as the story progresses. And some intriguing characters with clear motivations right out of the gate.

Although there does seem to be a problem baked right into this concept that could really hamper the show after even just a few episodes. There are plenty of characters to present in various relationships -- 10 or 11 just in the opening credits, and a few other recurring ones besides. But they're all in a cross-country car race, paired off and separated from their competition. So it seems to me that in each episode, we're just going to see the same relationships between the same pairs of characters. I mean, I'm sure there can be some depths to mine in the relationships between characters A and B, C and D, E and F, and so forth. But it seems like character A is never going to be able to interact with any character but B, because all those other people are in different cars. So won't the possibilities for great character interaction (a hallmark of those shows I mentioned that pulled me to sample Drive in the first place) be enormously limited?

Of course, that's assuming that Drive even gets to run more than a few episodes, which on FOX....? We'll see. But the first sample tonight was fun enough that I'll check it out again tomorrow before the new hour of 24.