Three strikes and you’re out, or at least banished to the world of the Internet. This week, for the third time, the FOX action drama Drive was pulled from the airwaves, this time for good. After originally being canceled in April, FOX scheduled the final two episodes of the series to air on July 4. Not satisfied with that incredibly poor timeslot, FOX pulled the plug and rescheduled the episodes for Friday, July 13. As if being burned off on a Friday in the summer wasn’t scary enough, FOX pulled the show once again, opting this time for no more promises of ever broadcasting the episodes on television.
Instead, the episodes will be streamed on FOX’s MySpace page, where it has the potential to be seen by tens, maybe hundreds of people. Starting this Monday, myspace.com/fox will play host to the last two of the six total episodes that were ever made. Since the creators had no idea of their show’s staus when making the episodes, it’s probably unlikely that the result of the illegal, cross-country road race depicted in the series will be revealed.
When Drive first premiered, it drew comparisons to Lost not necessarily for content, but for inspiration. In much the same way Lost can be seen as a science fictional adaptation of the reality show Survivor, Drive, with it’s clues, checkpoints and penalties along the way, was like a dramatized version of The Amazing Race.
Despite that tangential connection to a popular reality show and the fact that the show was heavily promoted during the early rounds of competition on American Idol, Drive only averaged about 5.6 million viewers, though the numbers steadily decreased with each of its four airings. The fourth new episode aired on April 23 and earned just 4.6 million viewers. One week later, a repeat of House in the same time slot earned 7.23 million viewers.
Drive centered around a group of strangers all hand-picked to compete in the race. Among the key characters were Alex Tully (Nathan Fillion), whose wife was kidnapped by the race’s evil “sponsors,” Melanie Lynskey as Wendy, a woman trying to keep her baby safe, Kristin Lehman as Corinna, whose parents competed and died in the race when she was a little girl, and the Salazars, Winston (Kevin Alejandro) and Sean (J.D. Pardo), estranged brothers from different sides of the tracks.
To prepare for the final two episodes, the first four are currently available to watch at myspace.com/fox for free.
-John Kubicek, BuddyTV Senior Writer
Source: Zap2It and Entertainment Now
(Image courtesy of FOX)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
