Drive: Are We There Yet?

My column about "Notes From the Underbelly" (short version: I hated it) never made it on-line, but today's review of "Drive" did. A sampler:

With most of the serialized dramas that came and went this season, the nagging question of "What happens after the first 10 or 15 episodes?" proved moot, as almost all of them were canceled long before the writers had to figure out how to keep the story going once all those kidnappings and murders and bank robberies were solved. Fox's new drama "Drive," about the contestants in an illegal, high-stakes road race across America, seems to have less long-term potential than all the other serialized rookies, but that doesn't matter, because it's a Tim Minear show and will probably be canceled in four to five weeks.

Minear's a talented writer and producer, don't get me wrong, and he's been a key backstage figure for some good-to-great TV shows over the last few years: the better seasons of the "Buffy" spin-off "Angel"; the cult classic outer space western "Firefly"; the eccentric do-gooder dramedy "Wonderfalls," and the FBI criminal profiling drama "The Inside."

It's just that he kills shows dead -- or, rather, that Fox does.

For the last few years, Minear has been involved in a financially lucrative but sado-masochistic relationship with Fox, producing these shows, then handing them off to the network, where they'll suffer a quick, ignoble death in an out-of-the-way timeslot.

To read the full thing, click here.