The first official trailer for Netflix’s The Crew was released on Friday, and man, it looks bad. The show, which debuts on the streaming app on February 15, follows a NASCAR racing team as the team leader retires and puts his daughter in charge of the operation. Obviously, there will be a lot of space in this show for the lowest common denominator humor, including perhaps the scorn of a young woman who worked in an old man’s club.
Clearly, they’re looking for a King of Queens vibe with random NASCAR shit in the background to look semi-interesting. Look at that, an unmounted Goodyear, a Weldy machine and a lifty-majigger engine. Wow, it’s like we’re in a real NASCAR store. Look, it says NASCAR right on the wall!
I don’t want to be upset with Kevin James. After a recurring 8-episode secondary character in Everybody Loves Raymond, he managed to enjoy this tiny character in nine seasons near the top of the CBS sitcom list. It was classified as an affable comedy buffoon, and continues to accept the roles because they pay well. He’s Larry the Cable Guy for the thinking man. Which is a shame, because he was fantastic as a murderous neo-Nazi who takes his head run over by a lawn mower inside the independent film of 2020 Becky.
On the other hand, he has a habit of working on projects that use sexism and homophobia as jokes. Obviously, there’s a much bigger Hollywood-sized problem going on there, but if the shoe fits, I suppose.
The premise of the show, based on the trailer, appears to be that a group of team members have to work together to somehow frustrate the ambitious young woman who is taking over as the team leader. Kevin James’s character is apparently the head of the team or something, making him the figurehead of this apparent riot. The new team leader is coming to a failed team (which does not have the ability to finish the season in the top 20) looking to make changes to make it more successful. For some reason, the people on that team don’t want to be more successful, do they? And for some reason they want to be with a driver who crashed because he was distracted by a cloud that looked like Abraham Lincoln.
With NASCAR working diligently to rehabilitate its old image of hostile to women and minorities, I am curious to see how this show will thwart any of these stereotypes. I fear that this only serves to exacerbate the tropes around NASCAR and its fan base.
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If your hilarious idea is a minority character eating a rock, or a city girl with a fish out of water accidentally shooting a baby deer, or more premature ejaculation jokes, or one of the heads of a major motor sports operation without understanding how technology works, so this show is absolutely for you. If you’re like me and your ears bleed when any show has a damn laugh track, then you might be left out.
Based on the trailer, I can only hope that this show will rank 43rd for the Daytona 500, take three laps behind the pack and head back to the garage to get your participation trophy. It’s the same show that Kevin James has always done, but wrapped in a NASCAR facade. I don’t usually hope for things to fail, but it looks like a destruction on the same level the big one on a restrictive plate track.