I think they were hoping for another Prison Break. But, that may be me imprinting my wishes on it. Something with enough action to keep you from thinking about the chasm-like plot holes that kept appearing.
While they promoted it enough that I managed to catch it, my husband (who watches the same shows as I do) had never heard of it. Something about the promotion didn’t work.
A two-hour Sunday night premiere for a new one-hour Monday night show is bizarre. We already had multiple Sunday shows, so watching it was tricky.
Midseason launches are also tricky.
The show didn’t strike me as any sillier than 24, though I like Kiefer and didn’t much care for the Drive lead.
The problem I had with it was that it was yet another serial drama. With these, you generally need to catch all of the episodes to keep up and then you’re frustrated if the network ends it early, so I started to watch very few of the serial dramas (Lost, Kidnapped, Heroes and Knights of Prosperity).
“There are FOUR! EPISODES! of “Lost” LEFT! and YOU! CAN’T! MISS! ONE! Next Wednesday on ABC.”
Which is why, as above, I use the TiVo to buffer myself against getting too involved with potentially doomed shows. No sense wasting four or five hours if that’s all you get.
You don’t like Nathan Fillion? You don’t like Mal?? :eek:
I failed to see the “promot[ing] the daylights out of it” that’s been mentioned. I saw one commercial, total, for the series, a couple of months ago. And I have FOX on at least 4 days a week, 6 to 11 pm.
I’m sorry, but I simply don’t believe this. I watch Fox for a grand total of two or three hours a week (American Idol) and I’ve lost count of the commercials I saw for this show. There is no way that you were watching any significant amount of primetime Fox and only saw one commercial for Drive. You were either Tivo’ing and skipping the commercials or you had Fox on, but weren’t looking at the screen.
I Tivo and FF all commercials, and I still felt overexposed to Drive. They were doing promos a month ahead, which was annoying because I kepy trying to set a recording for the premiere.
[hijack] Interestingly, there is no 66666 zip code. But if there was one, it would be in the Topeka area (look here.)
What might have saved Drive? My thoughts:
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As Sam Stone noted, needlessly complex setups by the Race Powers That Be (RPTB), like the phony interrogation room, were pointless and stupid. If that was the best way Tim Minear could think of to get that exposition about Tully out there, then he needs to go back to TV school.
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In a like vein, a few subtle bits here and there would suffice to show us how powerful and well-connected the RPTB are. Having every diner waitress and truck driver (randomly selected by the unwitting racers) turn out to be part of the conspiracy was ridiculous.
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Give us some travelogue appeal. When we see mountains in the background of a wide shot, we know we’re not in Florida. I’ve been to south Georgia, and it doesn’t look like the California desert. The racers could have stopped at a Stuckey’s instead of a “Preston’s.” And I don’t think After Sunset is a real drive-in cinema in Rome; how much would it have cost the producers to look up a real one and send the racers to a mock-up of it?
If this show had caught on, tuning in each week when the racers came through one’s region of the country to see all the local details could have been a real kick, but Drive couldn’t be bothered with this.
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The Overprotective Father. The Very Religious Black Woman. The Latino Gangbanger. The Mousy Housewife. Were there any real characters on this show?
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No magic cellphones! These race accessories did so many things cellphones can’t do, I wondered if they were junior versions of the black monoliths in 2001. A verbal clue and a deadline at each checkpoint should have been all the information the racers needed…otherwise they’re just being led around by the nose.
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I guess I’m devolving into a rant now, but Appomattox is not “Surrender, America.” It’s where the Confederacy surrendered to America. It’s an idiotic clue, and if half the racers go to Yorktown, they’re just as correct as the ones who go to Appomattox. In fact they’d be slightly more so, if you view the terms “Surrender, America” as “Cause, Effect.”
This is exactly the reason that next season, I am not touching ANY new shows. I don’t care how good they look, I am staying the hell away until the season ends or I hear the announcement that it’s getting renewed. I got burned on too many great shows (Smith, Studio 60-which is finally getting its last 6 eps this summer, Six Degrees, Justice, Knights) and I was going to give this a trial run with Drive - wait until the season was over, and I confirmed that the show was safe and would go on, and then have a season 1 marathon. Now that it’s done, rather than waste 4 hours on a show that I know won’t have a conclusion, I can empty my tivo and pretend it next existed. I intend to follow the same plan with Traveller.
The thing I don’t get is how could Drive bring down 24’s ratings?? 24 is a show where if you’re going to tune into it in April, you HAVE been tuning in every single week this season. I agree with what was said above - Drive had nothing to do with people ditching 24 - 24’s poor season (especially since we’re into an even poorer B plot) is causing people to give up.
Yeah I find myself caring less and less about 24 this season.
Can I get a quick show of hands as to who was watching solely for Nathan Fillion? (I cheerfully include myself in this…)
I recall reading that Drive wasn’t doing well, and was second only to The War at Home in lowest ratings on the network. Why Drive was canceled and The War still prevails…well, that’s Fox for you.
Fox Broadcasting Co.
PO Box 900
Beverly Hills, CA 90213
Far be it from me to justify The War’s existance (I caught 5 minutes once - that was enough to declare it the absolute worst show in the history of television), but I’d wager something like that dreck is far cheaper to produce than something like Drive. I’m sure they’ll be able to syndicate it as well.
I think War’ is still on the bubble, isn’t it? But in any case, it’s definitely much cheaper to produce than was Drive. Smaller cast, no location shooting, half an hour.
Hand goes up…
To be fair, they were called the Confederate States of America. So while there may be some ambiguity, one of the Americas did indeed surrender at Appomattox.
Still, it is an idiotic clue.
Right here.
Hmm… okay, yeah, I’ll include myself in this too, tentatively. Ish. (Nothing prurient about it in my particular case of course, just a big fan in a platonic sense 
)
Then again, there was something very familiar and snappy-ish about the dialog in a lot of the plotlines. 
And, speaking of Mister F, did it seem to anyone else like this role was MUCH more Mal-like for him than some of his other gigs? I mean, seriously, sometimes it really seemed as if our good Captain Reynolds had finally made it back to Earth-that-was. 
I really laughed at the beginning of ep 3 where he was telling Corrina ‘I need you up there’ (in the cab of the truck.) Deliberately written that way as an ‘out of gas’ callback maybe?
Per above, I didn’t actually watch the shows that stacked up on the TiVo before the show got canned, but Fillion is the primary reason I set the season pass in the first place.