"NFL Rush Zone": Micro-Review of Micro-Series

NFL Rush Zone: Guardians of the Core, the new Nicktoons microseries that will run during football season, is an inoffensive bit of wish-fulfillment fluff that should appeal to the network's target boy audience but probably won't offer much to anybody else. It is what it is—an extended ad and a bit of product placement—but there's no reason to despise it on that account.

According to the network press release, the series is about a young boy with football-related superpowers who is tasked with protecting some quasi-mystical "shards" from a bad guy who yada yada yada. The shards are hidden in the NFL teams' stadiums, which will surely provide lots of opportunities for NFL-related cross-promotion. The first episode drops a brief spotlight on the San Diego Chargers.

I have to rely on the network press release for a plot summary, because you won't glean anything about the plot from the first episode, which premieres tomorrow. That's not necessarily bad: the five-minute "Episode 1: A Hero Is Born" efficiently sets things up as it pitches a scrawny little kid named Ish into battle at the local arena with hardly any prep or explanation. It's actually kind of refreshing to get an intro that doesn't waste time on pointless exposition. "There's the bad guy, go tackle him" is about the only direction Ish gets, and the lack of motivation is appropriate, given that it's football and not the drama club that Ish is keen on.

Ish will probably serve well as an audience surrogate, since he is a game fan who is nevertheless the perennial "last to be picked" runt of the litter. Five minutes isn't much time to show off a personality, but the voice actor (who sounds like an authentic ten-year-old) gives him a sweetly winning grace. Animation is perfunctory, though, and there is at least one character design—a person/thing named Bolt—whose proportions look good on Modok but very creepy here.

NFL Rush Zone is aimed at a very young demographic, and it's obviously a rather cynical bit of marketing. But its first episode feels much fresher than it has any right to. And at five minutes it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Rush Zone will debut on Monday, September 6, at 8:00pm (ET) on Nicktoons and regularly air Mondays at 8:00pm during NFL season.