Reviewing ‘The Drive’: Episode 6

After a thoroughly disappointing fifth episode, “The Drive” would need to respond with a strong sixth iteration. Did it? The answer is a resounding … kind of?

The episode of course focuses on UCLA’s first Pac-12 game of the year as the Bruins squared off against Arizona State. As “The Drive” will now be covering intra-conference matchups for the remainder of the regular seasons, it’s fair to expect an overall improvement in the coverage of games as the show should be able to build on a plethora of pre-existing story lines while also devoting more coverage to other teams in the hopes of producing a more compelling and comprehensive coverage of UCLA’s game day.

Did “The Drive” deliver on that expectation? Again, the answer is somewhat. But more on that later.

Now that we are six episodes in it has become abundantly clear that “The Drive” is going to stick to its formula of about 13 minutes of feature story and 13 minutes of game footage. When the show has a strong feature to tell, that much time is quite understandable. However, when the show doesn’t have a piece of much substance it becomes exceedingly clear that such a formula is inherently flawed and rather detrimental to the show.

Such is the case this week.

To be clear, I don’t really have a problem with the direction the show went in with the feature piece. This week’s edition of “The Drive” gives us a glimpse of the off-the-field friendship of roommates redshirt junior quarterback Brett Hundley, redshirt senior Librado Barocio and redshirt freshman receiver Eldridge Massington, with Massington getting most of the attention.

We then see the group cliff-diving at Malibu Canyon Creek. It’s probably the highlight of the piece only because Massington cannot bring himself to make the jump. Girls go, guys go, heck some random man in a suit jumps in with Hundley. And Massington still doesn’t take the plunge, despite the constant urging by nearly everyone.

When Massington finally does jump, Hundley asks him “Why does it take two hours to do that?”.

Hey, good point Brett. Why does it take “The Drive” what feels like two hours to get through a rather light piece?

Like I wrote earlier, I don’t mind the piece, but it is what it is: a lighthearted behind-the-scenes look at three players. Nothing insightful arises out of it, so it’s confusing why the show devoted almost half the episode to it. I mean, I enjoy people slow-motion jumping set to music as much as the next guy, but not 50 seconds of it.

As expected the show devotes more time to Arizona State than any of UCLA’s previous three opponents. We see a bit of a recap of last year’s game at the Rose Bowl, Sun Devils coach Todd Graham going over keys to the game with his players and get a little bit of an interview with offensive coordinator Mike Norvell. The show also touches on the fact that Arizona State would be without quarterback Taylor Kelly.

Interestingly and disappointingly “The Drive” does a poor job of capturing the growing rivalry and animosity between these two teams. The Sun Devils made it obvious from people camping out days before the game and the talk leading up to the matchup that this was a big game for them. And judging how fired up the UCLA players were in post-game interviews following their blowout victory, it’s safe to say they treated it the same way.

Yet, there was no mention of the “UCLA” that was written on Arizona State’s midfield logo prior to kickoff or really anything that clued the audience into how the two teams were approaching the game.

The game footage itself was solid, but not without the same reoccurring issues – a lack of context on plays, clichéd writing among others – that have plagued the show since the Virginia episode.

I thought the show covered both sidelines well, as viewers saw each team’s reactions throughout the game. It also produced this assessment from Graham regarding his team’s play, devoid of irony: “The only thing we’ve done bad is had a few misalignments and we’ve not tackled and we gave up a vertical line there on third down.”

While the “The Drive” is well-produced and the visuals are always strong, the writing and structuring of the game remain glaring weak points. The narration is still heavy-handed and trite at times while the contextualization of plays is either lacking or misleading.

On one Hundley scramble the show makes it appear that his hurdle of a Sun Devil defender came on a run in the red zone when it actually occurred around midfield.

Meanwhile, the show seems to suggest that redshirt senior safety Anthony Jefferson’s outstanding interception comes after junior cornerback Ishmael Adam’s two returns for touchdown, while it actually happened midway through the second quarter, before either of Adams’ touchdowns.

Speaking of Adams, the show failed to capture the importance of his game-changing pick-six late in the second quarter. The takeaway from that play is UCLA was forcing Arizona State quarterback Mike Bercovici to take chances. While that’s true, it’s by far not the most important part of that play.

The game footage still feels a tad rushed, although it’s a little more understandable this week with all of the scoring, but the show needs to absolutely capture the big plays of each game and they failed to do that here.

Final Verdict: Episode six is not a bad episode but it is still weighed down by the same problems previous episodes suffered, which you would have thought “The Drive” would’ve cleaned up by now. The show needs to figure out what it’s strongest part of each episode is and devote the majority of time accordingly. It certainly wasn’t Eldridge Massington jumping off cliffs. I would’ve liked to seen more about the rivalry between the Sun Devils and the Bruins. It’s odd for the Pac-12 Network not to take advantage of such a marquee matchup and overall this episode feels like a missed opportunity.

Grade: 2.5/5