DVD Talk Forum - The Get Down (Netflix) - From EP Baz Luhrmann -- Series Thread -- 8/12/16

Although I watched every episode, I can't say I thought it was a good show. In fact, I thought it was a bad show and a rare misfire for Netflix. Add to that the amount of money spent on it and it becomes a relatively big misfire. Netflix's Heaven's Gate or Ishtar. Luckily Netflix has many other properties to cover this. I doubt many people watched this, and I doubt it brought in many new subscribers. It was a money pit and all that was left for them to do was acknowledge it and cut their losses. I'm actually amazed it's showing 8.2 with 16k votes on IMDB.

Most of the time, this show felt like a story that takes place during the same time as the early days of hip hop rather than a story about the early days of hip hop. I have no problem with a fully fleshed story about the founding fathers, but that's not what we got. We got Giancarlo Esposito and Jimmy Smits, and once you have them, you have to use them. Thus their roles are bigger than the story needs. The two brothers pining for the same woman had little to do with the story of hip hop. And that's just one example. The reach exceeded their grasp. The result was a convoluted mess that seemingly didn't know what it wanted to be and couldn't deliver even if it did. This show couldn't match either the joy of Breakin' nor the gritty reality of Beat Street.

This was supposed to be a Hip Hop Opera. Grand in scope and significance. It rarely had any more substance (or entertainment value) than an average episode of Good Times. What a lost opportunity.