Monday, August 22, 2011

Top Gear USA finally has a flash of genius

I couldn't believe it. Last night, for the first time in a season and a half, Top Gear USA finally got a segment right. They ditched the redneck and the unfunny comedian and let Tanner Foust review the Porsche GT2 RS. That in itself wasn't the redeeming feature. The redeeming feature was that they had the police shut down central LA in the middle of the night so he could race it around the streets. The camerawork was great, the music was great, the post production was great, and they did a full on Fast & Furious light-to-light drag race with a pair of wonderfully turned out American muscle cars; a 500hp '69 Chevy Nova and a Dodge Viper SRT10. The audio in that 15 seconds was worth the entire train wreck of a show to date. The rest of the show was the usual steaming pile, but when they let the actual driver (and the only one who can talk to camera properly) do a segment on his own, they actually figured it out. There's a tiny glimmer of hope.