All those dutiful Americans who planned their Fourth of July celebrations around Fox airing the final two episodes of the very, very short-lived series Drive got a rude awakening last week.  The series finale originally scheduled to be burned off tonight was pushed back to Friday, July 13.  In its place, for reasons passing understanding, Fox chose to air the Adam Sandler comedy Anger Management

A show about an illegal, cross-country road race, Drive premiered in April after months of promotion and build-up.  Viewers couldn't sit through an episode of American Idol without an ad hyping the arrival of Drive.  In addition to the promotion, it had many hallmarks of a true cult favorite show.  Co-creator Tim Minear cut his teeth as a producer on the Joss Whedon shows Angel and Firefly, as well as such underground shows as the weird Wonderfalls.  As its star, Drive cast a charming, square-jawed Midwesterner in Nathan Fillion (also from Firefly),


Somewhere, however, it failed miserably.  The first two episodes premiere on Sunday, April 15, setting up for the third episode the next day.  All three did quite poorly in the ratings, progressively losing viewers, and after the fourth episode aired one week later, the show was pulled.  After months of hype, it only took eight days for Fox to replace it with House reruns.

More than two months after that ordeal, Fox still planned to burn off the last two episodes over the summer, when no one really watches TV anyway.  It's unclear why the network suddenly got cold feet about the July 4 decision, but if the tiny fraction of people who still care to watch have waited this long, surely another nine days won't kill them.

This kamikaze programming is nothing new for Fox.  When the much-beloved but very low-rated Arrested Development was ending, Fox had no patience to waste valuable air time with the final four episodes.  Instead, they put them all in a Friday night marathon, up against the ratings behemoth that is the closing ceremonies for the Winter Olympics.

With the disrespect for Drive, Fox once again proves that it only cares about ratings.  That's not entirely a bad thing, but it's shameful when compared to a network like NBC.  Not only did the peacock network air the entire first seasons of low-rated shows that the critics raved about like Friday Night Lights and 30 Rock, but both were renewed for second seasons.

As a refresher course, when Drive last aired, Alex (Nathan Fillion) and Corinna (Kristin Lehman) teamed up with mismatched the mismatched Salazar brothers, bad boy ex-con Winston (Kevin Alejandro, last seen getting shot in the season finale of Ugly Betty) and smart, preppy Sean (JD Pardo, spending his summer as dead Eddie on the CW's Hidden Palms).  They robbed a bank to get the lead in the race, but it resulted in Sean getting shot.  Undoubtedly other things happened, but it was four episodes almost two and a half months ago, so even remembering that this show existed is shocking.  The fact that Fox is even bothering to air these final two episodes is a miracle.


-John Kubicek, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image courtesy of Fox)