Drive Hard: The Maloof Way

I spent the majority of the time watching this show analysing how it got to air...

The conclusion I invariably came to was that the big guy (Sam) actually paid for the show to launch the careers of his daughters seeing that he'd been a stuntman in Hollywood for decades.

There were a few things that led me to that conclusion:

1. The format of the show isn't really 'connected'. Or rather, the only connection between parts of the show - stunts, race prep and racing - is that big guy has a daughter (or two) in each part.

2. In the stunt parts, the two daughters who apparently do that work in real life, are filmed standing still most of the time preening themselves doing little hair flicks in front of the camera. Also the stunt work they're doing doesn't really look like stunts to be honest. Big man seems to have that covered to be honest.

3. The eldest daughter and her love for cars and racing is obvious and she seems very talented. The family members she's got supporting her however look like they've been roped into it and are in real life completely inexperienced. This is evidenced by the fact that one of them is asked to get 'balanced' parts delivered and completely fails to do so even though that's a basic task within the race parts industry. In fact, it's not just weight but also after an engine has heated up that much, blueprinting is also another method I would have thought was used to check for heat warping but it wasn't mentioned. So that didn't quite make sense to me.

It's trying really hard to be something but ultimately falls short. Not for a lack of effort mind you. More like they just rolled the dice with this show and didn't quite make it.

And I binge watched this while my husband sat on his phone constantly showing me videos of real races. He claims this show is fake and staged.... Not even intrigued with the cars.

I thought he would like this show since he owns a Scat Pack, but he ended up nitpicking it.

The twins made me laugh, they were always dolled up for the camera! And the oldest daughter was always a cute hot mess working in the garage. It's a cute family dynamic they have going on in this show.... No matter how "fake" it may be.

But again, I'm a woman with no knowledge of cars and I found this interesting. My husband with lots of knowledge wasn't a fan.

Remember when Megan Fox leaned over Bumblebee in Transformers and spewed some nonsense car jargon? That's this entire show. I have no doubt the father is legit but unfortunately it's so over scripted it's incredibly painful to watch for any person that has any mechanic knowledge whatsoever. Watching the one kid eyeball that air filter like he was shopping for lumber at Lowes bout made me spit out my coffee. I usually give these shows a couple episodes but I couldn't even finish the first episode. Watching a bunch of kids pretend to work on cars reminded me of my 3 year old nephew using his play tools on his toy car. It was borderline adorable.

Watched one episode, kids who you don't really see doing anything meaningful to the cars they're working on. Pretty vague mechanical explanations. Over scripted racing scenes (couldn't be bothered finishing the episode to watch some stunt thing) Unless I'm pretty desperate to watch something it'll be my one and only episode. You'd be better of watching other motor shows with a bit more depth. Now I have to keep writing stuff until I get to 600 characters. Nice weather we've been having lately. My tomatoes have been cracking this year but my peppers not so much they're getting eaten by something not sure what.

It would be great to see a show filmed and edited for real gear heads, even a scripted one, but this ain't it. All kinds of nonsensical commentary from the daughter just for sound bytes. Things like tuning the distributor in a late model production car instantly turns off anyone who knows anything about them.

The stunt stuff is overly dramatized and looks like a weak attempt to launch careers of the daughters. Two episodes was enough to see its just generic product placement fodder and vroom vroom porn for people who pretend to know the difference between blinker fluid and wiper blades. CG is essentially rendering stunt driving obsolete, might as well aim for modeling careers right?

We all know you didn't have 5 days to get a car ready for a race, nobody does that. Production, fpv drone pilots, track time, and a long list of other factors are scheduled well in advance. Why do they even pretend? If you didn't get it done in time, you wouldn't air it.

When are producers going to realize they are being outdone by amateur youtubers? Much better off watching the Hoonigan stuff on youtube, way cooler, better production values and real.