A visceral novelty that commits the cardinal sin of any guilty pleasure action show – it's boring

liquidcelluloid-1

Network: Fox; Genre: Action; Content Rating: TV-14 (for language, violence, nudity, and sexual content); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Season Reviewed: Complete Series (1 season)

After taking a bat to an already 70s TV series with the original "Charlie's Angel's" movie, director McG puts on his creator/producer hat on to, along with John McNamera, bring that chainsaw music video style to the small screen.

"Fastlane" is "Miami Vice" for the MTV generation. Bill Bellamy ("Getting Personal") and Peter Facinelli are our mis-matched partners, Van and Deaqon. Over the course of the series the two trade lame quips and movie references in place of real dialog. Nobody apparently told McG that the hip-hop crowd this show so transparently panders to might not get all the Steve McQueen references. Playing their boss, and the boss we all wish we had, is Tiffani Thiessen (ditching the Amber-). Thiessen jumps right in the middle of this insanity, stripping down to her party clothes in front of the boys and going deep undercover as Jamie Prestley's girlfriend in the show's marquee moments.

I will say this, "Fastlane" is exactly what it intends to be. It does everything with such full-bore gusto that those into this type of stuff should be in hog heaven. The question really is, are you into it? You'll see cars, you'll see motorcycles, you'll see scantly clad women, you'll see bullet-time, you'll see a hyper-active use of split-screen and you'll see entire scenes bathed in a single florescent color like Cartoon Yellow or, my favorite, "Silk Stalkings" Blue – all designed to catch the eye for those passing by with their remotes.

While the show is stock full of hot femme fetal blonds (it is a running gag that Van falls for all of them), it saves up most of its energy to lust over the cars. What "Fastlane" really wants to be is hot-rod street racer wet dream. The camera zooms in and drools over every shiny curve of that week's featured car or motorcycle as warranted by the "plot".

Fortunately, for McG, TV is a medium that we don't have to drive to a theater, pay for, or even pay close attention to for the show to fall ass-backwards into a purpose. For "Fastlane" that purpose would be as a slack-jawed, eyes-glazed over, drool-on-the-chin guilty pleasure. Little more. It is cinematic, only in shallow appearance. An uninspired visceral novelty desperately straining to be hip and cool that gets old very quickly.

This is the type of show that has become critic-proof because critics hate it like clockwork. It's not that I don't like this type of show; but there is an art to constructing a guilty pleasure, a fine balance, and this one just doesn't work. I found it all boring to the point of reaching for the remote and even the promise of more skin, flying bullets and mindless hookups wasn't enough to ever keep me riveted for the full hour.

* ½ / 4

score /10

liquidcelluloid-1 8 January 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1259726/