If you read yesterday's review of Fox's "Drive" in TV Week, then you already know that I loved the pilot episode (the second hour, not available for review when I wrote the TV Week cover, was even better than the pilot). Yes, "Drive" is built from the spare parts of other shows -- It's a scripted "Amazing Race"! With the threat of death looming! -- but that doesn't matter. It's still a rip-roaring good time.

2007 FOX BROADCASTING The ginormous cast of "Drive" includes (from left) Mircea Monroe as Ellie, Riley Smith as Rob, Melanie Lynskey as Wendy, Emma Stone as Violet, Dylan Baker as John, Kristin Lehman as Corinna, Nathan Fillion as Alex, Rochelle Aytes as Leigh, Taryn Manning as Ivy, Michael Hyatt as Susan, Kevin Alejandro as Winston and JD Pardo as Sean. Pictured in rear view mirror: Charles Martin Smith as Mr. Bright.

Tonight's episode (8 p.m.) was directed by Pittsburgh native Marita Grabiak, who worked with executive producer Tim Minear previously on "Wonderfalls." Minear has gained a cult following from working on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Angel," "Firefly" and "Wonderfalls," but "Drive" probably stands the best shot yet at mainstream success, even though the plot -- about an illegal, cross-country road race -- seems finite. How would you do more than a single season?

Minear explained in a recent teleconference with reporters that the 13-episode first season won't actually take the racers to the finish line.

"What we've found is 13 ain't enough to get me to the end of one of these races," Minear said. "So we're going to get you to a natural stopping point at [episode] 13 and when we come back we will finish the first race."

Even at that, it seems like a lot of the cast would change out of necessity for future stories.

"There are ways to roll cast members into another race, give them another function," Minear said. "You find out some people were working for the race."

As for those comparisons to other series, Minear said he's been less concerned about them as time goes on.

"When we started working this out, I said, 'No flashbacks,' because 'Lost' does flashbacks," Minear recalled. "And now I'm saying, 'I will use absolutely any narrative tool that will help me,' so yes, flashbacks, flash forwards. What we won't probably be doing is time travel."

Time travel may be a stretch but no more so, on first glance, than the show Minear cites as inspiration for "Drive": "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," which he credited for its internal exposition.

"You could tune into any episode of that show and understand Mary's relationships in her home life or at the office and you didn't need to see previous episodes to know how those dynamics work," he said. "I always try to do that, no matter what show it is I'm writing. I want you to be able to put in an episode and understand, through the story telling, what the dynamics are and be able to follow the story."