Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Last summer, Netflix was primed to land its biggest hit. They had slotted an explosive, experimental drama to drop in the middle of the hottest month of the year. The series was set decades in the past and featured a group of boys fighting back against the insidious evils that had latched onto their community. Their greatest ally? A good girl with daddy issues struggling with the darker hungers within.
That show was not Stranger Things. That show was The Get Down and it did not become the big hit it was planned to be.
Netflix clearly had high hopes for The Get Down. It was poised to be Australian auteur Baz Luhrmann’s first foray into television. Netflix excitedly put out casting announcements as early as April 2015 and pushed the young stars on red carpets for splashier productions. Each episode was initially supposed to cost a mere $7.5 million, but a report last fall suggests the budget blew up to $200 million. However, by the time the first half of The Get Down’s first season hit the streaming service in August 2016, the show had been mired by a mass of negative press. Stories had leaked from behind-the-scenes that the production was so mired with setbacks that the cast and crew nicknamed the show “The Shut Down.”
The Get Down did earn a variety of fervent fans (including yours truly), but it never came close to conquering the zeitgeist in the same way that Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, or Making a Murderer did. It sort of just became yet another show in the ever-expanding sea of Netflix originals. I’d argue it’s time to reassess The Get Down‘s worth. Part II of The Get Down‘s first season hit Netflix in the wee small hours of this morning and the new episodes take its characters to darker places than ever before. Zeke, Mylene, and The Get Down Brothers go toe-to-toe with forces scarier than any Demogorgon — they each confront the sinister side of real life.
Part II of The Get Down picks up a year after Part I left off. It is now 1978. Saturday Night Fever has replaced Star Wars as the movie of the moment and Mylene Cruz is now the pious queen of the disco charts. Zeke is capping off a successful year as Mr. Gunn’s favorite intern and is struggling to nail his Yale admissions essay. Meanwhile, hip hop is starting to seethe into the mainstream and The Get Down Brothers are at the top of their game. And yet each main character seems to be on a one-way path to their own kind of ruin. Zeke’s going to have to choose between the yuppie elites and his own family. Mylene is going to have to decide if she’s going to be a puppet for her religious father, her ambitious uncle, or the lascivious disco kings. Shaolin Fantastic has become an even bigger — and badder — drug dealer. And he’s tempting little Boo (“the youngest of the crew!”) to join him in the proverbial underworld.
The Get Down‘s greatest strengths have always been billed as its biggest weaknesses. Like all Baz Luhrmann’s projects, it has a frenetic energy that spins you around like a zero gravity carnival ride. For some, the quick cuts, explosions of sound and color, and almost Shakespearean-like dialogue can be a bit too disorienting. But the style is the substance. The Get Down is an explosive love letter to the larger-than-life energy of hip hop, disco, and 1970s street culture. While the first part felt unevenly paced — it featured thrilling narrative highs and tedious lows — Part II manages to dig in deeper to the emotional core driving the technicolor action. Our characters are no longer innocents dreaming of something better, waiting for their lives to actually begin; They are in the trenches, in the midst of the (sometimes literal) firefight. The Get Down deals with decadence and decay in equal measure. For every glittering look at the “good life,” we get a glimpse of trash heaps and gutter life.
It’s time to give The Get Down another chance. It’s time to binge the 11-part series either from start to finish or to pick it up at the start of Part II.* It’s not a show that will wrap you up in the warm, fuzzy blanket of ’80s nostalgia, nor will it spoon-feed you an easy narrative. Instead, The Get Down is one wild swing for the artistic fences. It stretches the modern TV season past its normal limits. It doesn’t fit the mold and it doesn’t feel familiar. It does feel like like something glorious, though.
*Yes, you can just jump in! Unlike other shows in Peak TV, The Get Down opens Part II with an in-narrative rundown of who’s who and where everyone fits. It’s a helpful refresher for old fans and a primer for new viewers.
