Like the quickly forgotten Panic, Motorheads, Amazon's latest attempt at a 10-episode teen soap opera, starts with an unlikely premise: in this case, a group of American teenagers in Ironwood, Pennsylvania, a fictional town an hour's drive from Pittsburgh, aren't primarily concerned with the internet, football, or partying, but with building and racing cars.
Cars are, of course, a fundamental part of many Americans' coming-of-age; drag racing, less so. The idea of Fast & Furious as a quirky local tradition, rather than a group of teenagers raised on the Fast & Furious movies, is the most charming, if implausible and inexplicable, aspect of Motorheads, which can easily be imagined as Dom Toretto and company, but turned into a series about Gen Z youth in a dead-end Rust Belt town.
Creator: John A. Norris
Stars: Ryan Phillippe, Michael Cimino, Melissa Collazo
Created by John A. Norris, Motorheads bears the hallmark of the megacorporation's streaming industry: a roster of musical genres assembled into a skeletal product that feels both cheap and expensive. The pilot featured more Top 40 hits than I've ever heard on a TV show, including supposedly expensive songs by Olivia Rodrigo, Benson Boone, Teddy Swims, and others; the characters talk about "winter break" while the trees remain lush and green.
Motorheads at least knows it's not reinventing the wheel of teen soap operas, sticking to the expected elements. A newcomer to town disrupting the social order? It's about twins Zac (Michael Cimino) and Caitlyn (Melissa Collazo), who, for unknown reasons, have returned from Brooklyn to their mother Sam's (Nathalie Kelley) hometown to live with their uncle Logan (Ryan Phillippe), a former NASCAR mechanic who has retired to his small auto repair shop.
Unresolved daddy issues? The twins' father, Christian Maddox, was a legendary driver who disappeared 17 years ago after a carjacking chase that became a viral YouTube video played on repeat in the series. (Christian is played in flashback by Phillippe's son, Deacon, who looks way too young to be a father of twins, let alone a local legend.) A wealthy villain who secretly overcomes his deep insecurities? That would be Harris (Josh Macqueen), the son of a local tycoon and reigning racing champion, who drives a Porsche and sports a near-permanent sneer.
Love triangle? Not one, but two: Zac falls instantly for Harris's Sandy-esque girlfriend Alicia (Mia Healey); Caitlyn for closeted cool-girl Kiara (Johnna Dias-Watson); and Curtis (Uriah Shelton), an angsty loner who just happens to be a motorcycle enthusiast. Absurdly high and ever-rising stakes? All the parents, who apparently had their kids during their senior year of high school, get caught up in yet another crime chase that inevitably ends in Zac and Harris's ultimate car race. Plus, there's a diner.
"That's literally every high school," one dad jokes when another parent/ex-partner comments on how absurd it is that their kids are fighting over the same girl. It's true, though some play up the ingredients more than others; "The Summer I Became Beautiful," by far Amazon's most successful entry in the YA market, turns an equally ridiculous incestuous drama into a binge-watchable TV series in keeping with the legacy of soap operas like One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl. Motorheads, on the other hand, repeatedly bogs down with laughably bad dialogue ("Tell your lesbian sister to stay away from my girlfriend!"), even clumsier exposition ("I mean, your dad just lost her," Alicia reminds Harris of her dead mother), and mediocre visual effects (an obviously CGI bird foreshadowing, for example). Car racing scenes that should quicken pulses become sluggish, failing to divert attention from the inevitable second screen.
The series' success is thanks to an engaging cast of new faces, particularly Cimino, Collazo, Shelton, and Nicolas Cantu as the nerdy archetype Marcel. While Phillippe Sr. seems to be trying hard to be Logan's jaded and burned-out father figure, the chemistry between the boys feels natural; the series is most enjoyable when it gives them space to joke, argue, hang out, and use mechanics' lingo while fixing Christian's old car.
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