Fastest Car (Netflix Series): dumb car series - very skippable

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It seems like as soon as there is one successful series or feature on Netflix there are dozens of clones that pop up almost immediately. This is one of the clones and not a good one at that.

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I really enjoyed a couple of the Netflix car-oriented series that recently popped up. One was a series about building cars named Rust Valley Restorers which was decent although a bit staged and another was about racing cars (which by the way is the most entertaining thing I have seen in a while) named Hyperdrive.

I don't know if it is because Netflix is reading what i choose and then suggesting things for me accordingly but now there are just a TON of car shows coming up on my screen. This one is presented in such a fashion that it actually makes me mad that it exists.

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The premise is simple: Find a bunch of car owners from very different walks of life and then pit them against one another in a drag race... If you don't know what drag racing is it is simply a car driving as fast as it can in a straight line to determine a winner. There is some skill involved in determining a winner, but honestly, most of it is left up to the engine, tires, nitrous, etc.

The show will feature "built from the ground up cars" made by car enthusiasts and also supercars that some rich person simply bought off the Lamborghini lot. It sounds interesting enough and certainly capitalizes off the Fast and Furious franchise because.... why not?

The problem is that a drag race lasts about 15 seconds at best and each of these episodes are friggin 45 minutes long. Therefore we get 44 minutes of backstory into each competitor and their car rather than actually focusing on what the show is meant to be about: racing.


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Don't get me wrong: I like the idea of a home-made hot rod going up against a brand new $700,000 McLaren also, but i don't need 40 minutes of backstory to get there. They pull out all the stops and everyone's story is a sad one too. We have a guy who was friends with Paul Walker, there is a guy in a wheelchair, we have multiple people who work several jobs in order to be able to participate in street racing as it is their passion..... and then we have lawyers and property moguls who have fast as S**T supercars that cost near a million dollars.

I'm not saying the backstory of the drivers isn't interesting, but the show is supposed to be about racing primarily and unfortunately, very little of it actually is about that. Most of the show is about "lets get to know this NYC lawyer who owns a Ferrari!" and maybe it's just me, but I don't care.

This is just another example of a series, that very well could have been a single feature but instead goes on for 8 forty-five minute episodes mostly filled with backstory about the drivers. The final is particularly infuriating because if you bothered to watch the other 7 episodes you get to hear the full backstory of all the finalists a second time.

A series that was designed to be skipped up until the last 5 minutes of each episode, this show is not worth watching because it isn't about racing or even about the cars. It is unnecessarily long and it begs for the (ironically) fast-forward button after about 10 minutes from the start. Basically, there are much better ways to spend your time and i recommend you watch really anything else on Netflix than this.

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By the way, the supercars win. Who would have ever imagined that a car that was built by engineers at some of the most exclusive motor companies in the world and costs near a million dollars (or more) would be capable of beating Bubba's hot rod that he and team of pals built in their spare time.... shocking!



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5 comments
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I think I would skip it too. If I wanted to see this kind of thing I would have went with my buddy to Thunder on the Strip this past weekend. It is basically a small festival in a town near where I live and they take over the airport for a weekend. They do drag races on the runways and you can bring whatever car you want and have a go at racing. My buddy has a V12 Mercedes that he bought a couple of years back and he takes that to race people. I think he did pretty well against some corvettes and his brother in laws Nova.

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yeah, but before they let him race did the entire crowd get to know about his upbringing? maybe the amount of disposable income he spends on his car? How about the trials and tribulations that he faces in his non-racing life? Because that is what racing fans really want to know :P

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Well, he does have rheumatoid arthritis. It was a painful road for him to get there, literally! :)

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he should sign up for season 2 (if they get one)

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I will skip. As usual will follow your advise. I do not think we need another drag race movie

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