Push, Nevada

I taped both the series premier and second episode on Thursday and watched them this morning. I am hooked. I will definitely be watching this show every Thursday. I've always loved a good mystery and this promises to be a good one. I love the lead actor, Derek Cecil. He's good-looking without being too good-looking. It also doesn't hurt that he went to Taft High School, which is near San Antonio, my hometown. The fact that his character is an IRS agent (one of the few people hated more than lawyers) is funny. I had to laugh when at first he would only tell people he worked for the government. You could tell he knew what kind of response he would get if he told people right off that he worked for the IRS. This series promises to be full of mystery, intrigue, and action. Way to go Ben and Sean!

I watched episode two just this evening and I was astounded at how brilliant and original this show is. It borrows some of its feel from things like Tales From The Darkside, The X Files and Twin Peaks, with weird opening theme music (similar to that of the movie "Seven").

Making the "hero"/protagonist an IRS agent was utterly brilliant.

I'll be watching this every Thursday night.

While I realize that this show is trying to be more than it is, I can't help but be addicted to it. It's definitely missing the mark if it's trying to be Twin Peaks, X-Files, etc., but it's still entertaining! The similarities between Push and Twin Peaks are just too many to be considered a "coincidence." The straight-laced government agent in from out of town, the sultry girl in town, the "inept" town police, the quirkiness of the people of Push, etc. I don't care about winning the million dollars, I just want to know what's going on in the town. And that alone will keep me hooked to this show.

It has a lot of Twin Peaks/David Lynch feel to it. And I love that about it. The actors are great, the script seems very well written, and for all the greedy money loving people out there (which would be me, if I wan't Canadian) you have a chance to win the million dollar jackpot.

All in all a great new series.

No one could ever be deluded into thinking that `Push, Nevada' was going to be a mass-market success. To appreciate the series, a potential viewer has to watch every second of every episode; an easily bored viewer wouldn't have had the patience to do this. I suppose ABC's gimmick of embedded clues leading to a $1 million prize was an attempt to garner additional viewer patience, but obviously it didn't work. In contrast, Fox's functionally similar `24' has been able to consistently engage the average viewer to watch every episode, but only by making the conspiracy utterly simplistic and the thrills quick, cheap, and gratuitous. What made `Push, Nevada' great also made it a commercial failure. Only those who enjoyed sifting through the show's clever and quirky minutiae appreciated how truly great the series was.