The fifth episode of “The Drive” opens with a curious line from the show’s narrator: “Going into the bye week there is no game, but still plenty of work to be done.” While this is true for UCLA football, “The Drive” apparently decided to just take the week off too.
Last week, I wrote that the show’s audience pretty much knows what to expect out of each episode. However, there is a little bit more mystery surrounding this week’s episode. With UCLA on a bye week and no game to recap, what would be the episode’s focus?
Would the show deliver an in-depth feature on one a player? Would we get to see how the team spent the week off and get a glimpse into the friendships the players have off of the field? Maybe we would be offered a behind-the-scenes look into what the coaching staff does to prepare for games.
Or maybe the show would smash the previous four episodes together, recycling much of the content it has already shown?
“The Drive” elected to go with option four.
This latest installment is a dismal and underwhelming offering that gives its audience little to no reason to tune in.
The show opens with a cliched message about teamwork and then proceeds to clumsily tie this narrative together using the Bruins’ first three games of the season.
But not before we go all the way back to spring football. Yep, the show uses footage from UCLA’s spring’s practice along with a review of the team’s fall camp in San Bernadino before jumping into the game recaps.
The review of the Virginia game offers nothing new to the audience and relies solely on footage and quotes we saw in the second episode. If “The Drive” is going to go back and recap these games, you would expect that it would at least try and address an angle from the game it didn’t have time for in the initial installment.
Nope.
Once again, the show failed to bring up UCLA’s offensive line play – the key issue of that game – despite having ample opportunity to do so. If the decision to revisit San Bernardino for the umpteenth time didn’t infer that watching this episode would be entirely worthless, then the Virginia coverage certainly did.
The episode’s Memphis recap is no better, as the only really new footage is of Mora speaking to the team before it walks out of the locker room prior to kickoff. There are some new interviews with junior wide receiver Jordan Payton and redshirt sophomore running back Paul Perkins, but nothing too substantive arises out of them.
The segment also features this questionable narration: “No one on this team expected an easy victory.”
Really? Let’s move on.
The one new aspect of the episode’s game coverage of Texas is that it offers a little more about the coin toss. UCLA won the toss and deferred, giving Texas the chance to either receive and start on offense or kick and start on defense. The Longhorns strangely went with the latter, allowing the Bruins to receive the ball at the start of both halves.
Defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich said it might’ve been done to give Texas a “psychological advantage,” but “is not something (he’d) advise.”
The final three minutes are spent covering what amounts to a commercial for the Pac-12 Network, as we witness highlights of Pac-12 teams set to Sylvester Stallone’s speech in “Rocky Balboa.” We also get what I’d assume is recycled footage of other Pac-12 coaches talking to their respective teams.
Final Verdict
This was a profoundly disappointing effort by “The Drive.” The show had a chance to do so many different things with this week’s episode, and instead decided to slap together the previous four episodes plus some spare spring practice footage. The entire thing comes off as lazy and a little insulting to viewers.
Episode 5 grade: 1/5
– Jordan Lee