Leave it to Fox to screw up a tremendous premise for a TV series. I mean, it's THE GUMBALL RALLY, right? Put some appealing actors in cool cars, showcase some exciting stunts and interesting locations, can't miss. Instead, Fox has found some rotten actors, put them in homogenous contemporary vehicles (mostly), filmed the stunts using shaky-cam and blurry closeups (William Wiard directs car chases better than Greg Yaitanes, the presence of ace stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos be damned), and filmed the actors in front of crummy green screens, so it all looks more like the latest GRAND THEFT AUTO game than THE CANNONBALL RUN or even THE ROCKFORD FILES.

The casting is DRIVE's biggest mystery. The irony is that the show underwent major casting revisions between pilot and premiere, yet almost every actor is terrible. Even Dylan Baker, normally an excellent actor, stinks, though nowhere near as badly as Emma Stone playing his daughter, with whom he shares all his scenes (although Baker's "guest star" status means he'll be gone soon). Only Nathan Fillion and Charles Martin Smith, among regulars, acquit themselves well in the acting departments.

The premise is a bit hard to take, as presented here. If someone called you and told you to drop everything, drive to Florida, and get ready to compete in an illegal road race, would you do it? Of course not. You'd think it was a hoax. Even Fillion, whom the series attempts to provide with strong motivation to compete, would never actually do it. He'd demand some sort of proof or he'd just go to the cops and say, "Trace this call." Most of the characters are downright stupid, but it's tough for a viewer to jump that hurdle if the hero is stupid, although Fillion's good nature has us in his corner anyway. For now.

I'll keep watching for a little while, but, so far, the characters are acting too much like the greedy nitwits of SCAVENGER HUNT and not enough like the colorful misfits of THE GUMBALL RALLY. If I wanted to see the worst the human race has to offer, I'd watch ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A 5TH GRADER?

I didn't bother. From the previews, it was too much greenscreen work for me to care. Don't create a show about momentum and then fake it so baldly with process shots, especially when the means to photograph actors and action has never been lighter or more portable.

Poor opening night ratings in a tough timeslot. Still, I'm somewhat surprised, considering the massive promotion this show received, even as far back as last year.

That opening shot flashback to 1980 (in the 2nd episode on Sunday night) featured a pretty killer (literally) shot-from-within-the-car wreck that was pretty rockin', though! Heh!

It's cheesy, silly, and a HELL of a lot better than the 2nd season of PRISON BREAK... so, I'm happy to watch it before "24".

I'll stick with it... but I agree some of the actors leave a lot to be desired.

I thought it was kind of fun, especially towards the end of Monday night when we got a look into the Fillion character's shady past. Sure, it makes no sense at all. But neither do most car chase movies. And it's always good to see Melanie Lynskey get some work.

What? SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT makes perfect sense. Drive to Texarkana, Texas, load a truckful of Coors, bring it back to Atlanta in 28 hours. And the actors are actually riding in real cars on real highways.

It's hard for me to accept Melanie Lynsky entering a room normally after years of watching her climb over Charlie Sheen's seawall.

Drive has its problems but I'm enjoying it so far. With this season of 24 being such a complete disaster it looks like Drive will have to supply my weekly dose of surprising plot twists. I only hope that there's some real payoff instead of continually stringing along mysteries (such as apparently half the people along the way knowing about the race, almost like this was some Philip Dick story). Usually I'm willing to grant a film/show its premise no matter how dumb but there's some stuff in the fourth episode that's really starting to stretch that.

In fairness, virtually everyone they've bumped into along the way that knows about the race appears to be a secret race operative who seeks 'em out. Presumably this is something the impossibly wealthy are betting on behind the scenes, and whoever has his chips on Nathan Fillion's character (whose name I've already forgotten) is sporadically trying to push the odds in his favor.

Not that that's all that much less dumb. I'm in the "stupid fun" camp with Drive, and I'm enjoying it even if I know in the back of my mind that I shouldn't. The ratings are pretty dismal for such an expensive show, and if it limps to the May 7th episode -- the end of this run -- that'll almost certainly be it. (I think Fox ordered scripts for 7 more episodes, but I believe these six are all that have actually been produced.)

...and the word floating around is that it has indeed been canned. The last two episodes are rumored to be burned off on Fridays next month.

I'm ready to give up on it anyway. This week's episode staged the worst auto accident ever. It was straight out of THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE. I guess it never dawned on Tim Minear and the other DRIVE production team members that viewers tuning in to see a show called DRIVE about an illegal cross-country road race might like to see some exciting stunts and crashes.

Indeed, DRIVE has had its license revoked.

http://www.tv.yahoo.com/news/article/urn:n...5IXVY37ZzqAo9EF

Well, nobody will say this is a loss to Western Civilization but now of course we're left with the questions: Who was behind the race? Why? How long? Etc. I don't know how Drive could do this but at least 24's first season wrapped up much of the original story in their initial batch of episodes. The real question though isn't whether the Drive creators thought it through this much but whether they would have been able to balance the show enough to make it watchable or just tapered off into irrelevance like The X-Files and Lost, both of which clearly hadn't been planned.

DRIVE wraps up its run...on July 4!