What do you think of Drive's ...
Nathan Fillion, Drive
Question: What do you think of
Drive's unceremonious cancellation? Fox heavily promoted it and was expecting big ratings. But giving a high-concept show like
Drive only a week to catch on, without the benefit of repeats, seems like a complete lack of faith — even if it is a show that can't be cheap to produce. I understand that a Sunday two-hour premiere/Monday regular-time-slot strategy works for an established hit like
24, but why would Fox deny a new show with mostly unknown actors a lead-in like
House or
American Idol? Now
24's sinking ratings are being blamed on
Drive as well, but I'm convinced that's just natural viewer drop-off in a subpar season. I'm not one to swear off any show that doesn't first make it through an entire season, but I can't help ask a few questions: Why wouldn't Fox debut this kind of show in the summer, when it has a greater chance for a slow build, a strategy that worked for
The O.C.? What leads NBC to stick with a ratings-challenged, quality show like
Friday Night Lights, while Fox pursues worthy experiments then drops them like a hot potato? Why does Tim Minear continue to work with Fox, when all of his shows (
Firefly,
Wonderfalls,
The Inside) get such shabby treatment? And is there any chance fans will get to see the unaired episodes of
Drive?
Answer: Sorry, but I'm not going to climb aboard the bash-Fox bandwagon for this failure. The network promoted the hell out of this show, and premiered it as if it were an event, the way it does
24. Most shows would kill for a build-up like that, to be launched with such hype during the network's biggest shows (including
American Idol) and given a three-hour push in its first week.
Drive was a high-concept experiment in junk-food, drive-in-movie action adventure that had the bad luck of premiering during a season that was particularly unforgiving of far-fetched serial thrillers. Putting it where
Prison Break regularly airs, and doing it before summer, when many eyes turn to cable and the show would likely have been paired with some incompatible reality junk (
Hell's Kitchen?), all makes sense to me — if, in fact, it had turned out to be a show people wanted to see. But it wasn't. It didn't open, it didn't grow, and from what I saw (every episode until the cancellation), it was just getting sillier by the mile. I thought it was an interesting swing of the bat by Fox to see if the audience for all those junky high-octane movies that clog the cinemas each weekend would translate to prime time. It didn't. Fox gave it a shot, but it's also true that Fox looks bad for dropping it so fast, once again leaving viewers stranded before a story reaches the finish line. All I can think is that, like CBS with
Smith earlier in the season, they realized this was a loser, and sticking with it through sweeps was not going to work. Still, comparing this situation to NBC standing behind a high-quality underdog like
Friday Night Lights is laughable. One is a noble ratings failure the network still seems to believe in, the other is at best a guilty pleasure that didn't pay off. Fox was probably right to dump it. As for the unseen finished episodes: I don't know why Fox wouldn't put them online, but you'll have to check the network website to be sure. And I do hope Fox, Tim Minear or someone else posts something to tell the show's few viewers how it would have played out.
