Drive Hard: The Maloof Way

Yeah I have seen just about ever car show. But I liked the way this is slightly different in its components. Works for me and the Mrs as we loved Gotham cars gig and the Rust valley restorers. So naturally we wanted to try it out. It's just a bit of fun and not as good as some other shows, but nevertheless entertained us well.

Whilst it might not delve into too much technicality it is still educational in its own way. But I can recommend that you do at least try it out and see what you think of the format as you might dig it.

Plus it helped me to learn more about the US side of drag racing and the elements required to be involved in the area.

My eyes get sore with the constant scene changes, I don't get a chance to focus on anything! Jumps around too quick!

As for some of the mechanical talk, come on! Do these guys really know anything about engines?

Measuring a crankshaft, she says "It's 165 grams out!" What? Which part? How do you weigh one part of a crankshaft by measuring it with a caliper? Then runs some sanding strip on the journal!

Checks gunk attached to sump plug, obviously a magnet at the end nd states "The bearings have been damaged" or something like that... The bearing shells on a crank's big end or under the main caps is not ferrous, so will not cling to magnet for a start.

A whole of jargon is not right. Yeah maybe someone who deals with food mixer or hair curler might be fooled, but... I can't see a season 2 happening!

Car Masters, now this..

Over-edited, over-scripted, and cheesy all around. What's the point of including several drone shots of a 50 km/h race? Everything is so slow and predictable...

The show follows Sammy Maloof (father and "leader" of the family) the most. You can take what he says in the trailer and that's pretty much what he will have to say for the entire season. Then Netflix decides to edit every sentence to have control on meaning and rythme. It makes it so unnatural, you wonder what's true and what isn't.

It feels like those cheap movies with trending actors. Why is Netflix producing all these "fast-food" shows?

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.

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.