A TV SERIES REVIEW
by Michael Shonk


PUSH, NEVADA. ABC / Touchstone Television / LivePlanet Productions, 2002. Cast: Derek Cecil as James Prufrock, Scarlett Chorvat as Mary, Liz Vassey as Dawn, Melora Walters as Grace, Larry Poindexter as Well Dressed Man #1, Steven Culp as Well Dressed Man #2, James Patrick Stuart as Well Dressed Man #3, Raymond J. Barry as Sloman, and Conchata Ferrell as Martha. Created by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey. Executive Producers: Ben Affleck, Sean Bailey, Matt Damon and Chris Moore. Co-Executive Producer: James Parriott.


***SPOILER WARNING***
All seven episodes are available on YouTube and linked below. You may want to watch the episodes before reading my spoiler filled review. The YouTube copies are not perfect but they are watchable.

   PUSH, NEVADA was an interactive mystery contest meets TWIN PEAKS. Dramatically the series was a conspiracy thriller set in the small town Push, Nevada. As an added gimmick each week the audience could collect clues (one each episode) that would help viewers win over a million dollars.

   In the 5/20/02 issue of “Broadcasting,” their look at the upcoming new fall 2002 season tried to describe the PUSH, NEVADA interactive game, finally writing, “Frankly, ABC couldn’t seem to explain exactly how it works.”

   In the first episode of PUSH, NEVADA co-creator and movie star Ben Affleck spent more time trying to explain the interactive game than the plot of the series. According to Realityworld.com, over 200,000 game players interacted with the series two websites. No links here as the PUSH, NEVADA information is gone from ABC’s website and the pushtimes address is no longer associated with the series.

   If the game didn’t interest the viewer there was the conspiracy thriller, a genre popular at the time with the networks (ALIAS, VERITAS: THE QUEST, and JOHN DOE) but not as much with the mass audience.


“The Amount.”
(9/17/02; rerun 9/19/02.) Written by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey. Directed by John McNaughton. Guest Cast: Jon Polito and Armand Assante. *** IRS agent Jim Prufrock receives a fax from an unknown source revealing there is money missing at a Casino in desert town Push, Nevada. It leads Jim to a shadowy conspiracy and murder.

Episide Clue: 1,045,000. The meaning of the clue was to reveal the amount of the now missing money stolen from the Casino and the amount of the grand prize for the contest.

Ratings: The September 17th showing finished 16th place in the ratings and rerun on September 19th finished 66th.

   It didn’t take long for the series to inspire memories of TWIN PEAKS as we watch the casino vault be robbed by a naked man with a body temperature too low for the thermal camera to see him. But the show lacks the charm and David Lynch to pull such scenes off. Instead PUSH, NEVADA settles for a mix of bizarre characters and a plot that settles into a mystery procedural. While the series mystery is who is behind the corruption in Push, it is the odd characters and their secrets that receive most of the attention.

   There are an endless number of eccentric characters with a secret, but let’s start with the hero, small time IRS agent Jim Prufrock. Obsessive over finding answers, Prufrock succeeds because he won’t stop even when others pay the price. It is hard to care about our hero when he is a self-involved, insensitive, morally righteous, naive, clueless idiot.

   The major characters included Mary, the town femme fatale/whore who works at the Slo-Dance Bar run by local crime boss Dwight Sloman. Sloman answers to big evil company Watermark represented by the three Well-Dressed Men. Jim stays at extremely maternal Martha’s boarding house that is hiding something in a forbidden to enter part of the house.

   My favorite character of the series was Grace. Jim’s devoted secretary and expert on all that is IRS. Grace made Della Street look like a slacker. The acting style for these TWIN PEAK-like conspiracy shows can take the reality out of the character leaving a fictional plot device. Melora Walters’ performance was able to keep Grace human but with the secrets and oddness each character in PUSH, NEVADA required.

“The Black Box” (9/17/02) Written by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey. Directed by Charles McDougall. *** Jim reports the murder of Silas to the police who with the help of the Well-Dressed Men rule Silas’s death a suicide. Mary seduces out the location of the money and leaves a man to die. The Well-Dressed Men try to understand why the robbers took only some of the money and a bible.

Episode Clue: television

   This episode aired in the series time slot of Thursday at 9pm. It followed the rerun of episode one and finished 46th in the ratings.


   Episode three has the series settled into it Thursday 9pm time slot opposite its normal competition – CBS’ CSI, NBC’s WILL & GRACE and GOOD MORNING MIAMI, FOX’s movie, UPN’s WWE SMACKDOWN, WB’s JAMIE KENNEDY and OFF CENTRE, and PAX’s DIAGNOSIS MURDER.

“The Color Of…” (9/26/02) Written by James Parriott. Directed by Davis Guggenheim. *** Grace discovers no one in Push has filed taxes since the casino was bought 17 years ago. Jim confronts Casino Middle Management Guy with the fact the Casino is paying out 62% of the time. Jim finds the dead body of the man who killed Silas and is arrested for murder.

Episode Clue: orange

Ratings fall to disastrous levels with this episode finishing 83rd.


“Storybook Hero.” (10/3/02) Written by Tom Garrigus. Directed by John Patterson. *** Jim is in jail for murder until someone unknown pays his bail. Sloman learns Mary was involved in the Casino robbery and wants his money back. Grace is suspended for the help she did for Jim. The Well-Dressed Men hunt for the missing bible.

Episode clue: peter pan

Ratings continued down with this episode finishing in 91st place.


   Disney had just bought ABC and ESPN, and they had a plan for quirky PUSH, NEVADA. Broadcast networks were starting to use their cable networks to help market the broadcast network shows. Fox had used FX to rerun 24 and increase viewers’ awareness of the series, something many believed was the reason for 24’s success.

   In “Broadcasting” (10/7/02) Disney head Michael Eisner explained how they wanted to do the same with PUSH, NEVADA by rerunning it on ABC Family. Some of the ABC affiliates objected and with the collapsing ratings it surprised no one when PUSH, NEVADA was cancelled (“Broadcasting” 10/14/02).

   This was an era when it was common for TV series to end without answers or closure for the audience. But there was a twist that made PUSH different – it was a game and legally the game had to finish and award its promised prizes. PUSH, NEVADA and ABC used their websites to help set up the game’s quick ending.

“The Letter of the Law.” (10/10/02) Written by John Serge. Directed by Lisa Cholodenko. *** Grace discovers who bailed out Jim – evil Watermark’s competition. Jim continues to endanger others as he blunders into discovering the secret purpose of the Casino. Clueless Jim is unaware of the missing bible, its apparent importance to some, or that it is now hidden in his room. Mary gives Sloman the money back but Daddy wants more.

Episode clue: g

This episode was 93rd in ratings.


“…….” (10/17/02) Written by Joan Rater and Tony Phelan. Directed by Rodman Flender. *** How Jim’s Dad died and the effect it had on Jim is revealed. Mary has the Bible. The Treasury’s sting to nail Sloman is threatened when Sloman decides to kill Jim. Watermark’s faces exposure by Jim’s relentless efforts.

Episode clue: morse code

Ratings: 100th.


“Jim’s Domain.” (10/24/02) Written by Joan Rater and Tony Phelan. Directed by Nick Gomez. *** Bad guys in Push defeated, Jim returns home a hero but still a naïve idiot. He is surprised to find himself promoted and his wife begging for another chance. But something still haunts him, a question unanswered – who sent him the fax that started all of this?

Episode clue: www.toyota18.com

Ratings for this final episode to air proved relatively few people cared as it finished 90th.

   In the final minute of the last episode the series made a horrible dramatic choice. The fourth wall was broken and Derek Cecil told the audience that what he and the producers thought was just a story for a TV show had turned real and now Watermark was after everyone connected to the PUSH, NEVADA TV series. He claimed he was on the run and gave the clues from the last unaired six episodes. Written on a piece of paper were the words:

FIVE

LONGITUDE

UNDERWEAR

SOUTHEAST

BODNICK

ELIOT


   The final instructions on how to put the clues together appeared October 28th on ABC’s MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL at halftime.

   The instructions were: spaces and punctuation count. Don’t count the first episode. Then 5th place, 1st, 9th, 1st, 5th, 7th, 4th, 1st, 2nd, 7th, 5th, and 2nd in that order. Actor Derek Cecil says, “I am going to have to disappear for awhile. We are being manipulated. Keep up the fight. Good luck.”

   If you take the correct letter from each clue it forms a word. For example the fifth letter from second episode’s clue “television” gives you the letter V. Putting the letters together spelled VONGEYELNAIL. Replace the EYE with I as the sign in MONDAY NIGHT FOOTALL clip’s background suggested and you have VONGILNAIL or phone number 866-445-6245. First to call that number won the million and forty-five thousand dollars prize.

   It took two minutes for the prize to be won. According to RealityWorld.com over 10,000 people solved the puzzle within 24 hours.

   The story’s fourth wall destroying ending betrayed loyal viewers with a cheap gimmick that left unanswered most of the questions and failed to resolve many of the characters’ secrets. But one can forgive the writers who had the impossible task of jamming six episodes of twists, discoveries and surprises into the last moments of the seventh episode and a minute during halftime on MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL.

   Today, loyal viewers are being treated with more respect. Shows such as FOX’s FRINGE, NBC’s CHUCK and CBS’ PERSON OF INTEREST are given a short extra season to bring closure to the series. But this was 2002. It took two minutes for someone to solve the puzzle but those watching PUSH, NEVADA for the story are still waiting for some answers.

FINAL NOTES:

All ratings information came from “Broadcasting”:

http://www.americanradiohistory.co/Broadcasting_Individual_Issues_Guide.htm