Push, Nevada

I've watched tonight's show, the pilot, three times already - and not because I'm searching for the clues that Affleck and Bailey have embedded in the film. I love hearing nerdy IRS agent Jim Prufrock's improbably forceful declaration of why he loathes tax cheats. I love the way the Push residents talk about their local "slow-dance bar" as if it were as commonplace as a KFC outlet. I'm curious why all the couples in Push make love every other night at precisely the same time. I admire the creative visual presentation, which rivals that of a good commercial or music video. [17 Sept 2002, p.B03]

The fall season's most beguiling and innovative newcomer, a visually playful and fetching desert noir in which an intrepid IRS agent is actually our hero. Hero!? You bet. [17 Sept 2002]

The characters are quirky, the casting sublime. [17 Sept 2002, p.C01]

It takes a lot to make an I.R.S. agent the good guy in a series -- a lot of nerve, imagination and clever writing, a combination that sets the inspired Push, Nevada apart from every other new show of the season.

The acting is snappy and the characters are funky, while the cinematography is grainy and pleasingly unpretty. [17 Sept 2002, p.D1]

Push is a David Lynchian view of good and evil, avarice and honor. But it's also a game show. [16 Sept 2002, p.32]

Not strange enough to be scary, but probably strange enough to be fun. [17 Sept 2002]

Me, I have enough fun just watching the show, thanks. Interactive is too much work. With so much going on in "Push, Nevada," I'm happy with active.

The fall season's most daring new show. [17 Sept 2002, p.32]

If you can get past the show's visual tricks and excessive self-consciousness, there is some fun to be had here.

The drama itself will look and sound familiar to anyone who remembers "Twin Peaks," ABC's short-lived freakazoid hit of the early 1990s. Weird music, weirder lighting, menacing characters, dark forebodings. Perhaps the biggest mystery is the producers' choice of a hero, an IRS agent, not a figure most dramatists would pick for his sympathetic qualities. [17 Sept 2002, p.E-6]

Push, Nevada is not a terrible series in any way, shape or form. In fact, it's fairly entertaining. But what I absolutely hate about it is how desperately hard it tries to be Twin Peaks. [17 Sept 2002, p.1E]

The reason to stick with it is to see if this ambitious but self-conscious series becomes more than the sum of its affectations--flat line readings, characters with names like Mr. Smooth, precious tilted-camera shots to remind you how weird it all is.

It's nothing David Lynch hasn't crossed out and done better, but at least it's different. Most viewers won't play the game, but if you're interested, write down every number you see, call phone numbers you notice and pay attention to things that mysteriously change.

The significance of naming the hero after T.S. Eliot's famous poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (do you suppose the "J" stood for Jim?) is not readily apparent from the premiere, but then this is a show that doesn't aim to be readily apparent, or even to be reasonably coherent.