Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Eddy’ On Netflix, Damien Chazelle’s Series About A Dying Paris Jazz Club And A Man Intent On Saving It

Damien Chazelle won an Oscar for directing La La Land three years ago, so his ability to make a modern movie musical is pretty well-established. For his first TV venture, he’s turned to the world of Paris jazz clubs with The Eddy. Will he conjure up the same results he got with La La Land?

THE EDDY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A waiter listens to a rap happening in the background, then he puts ice in a bucket and goes out the kitchen door into the main area of a jazz club. A band is just beginning a song.

The Gist: Elliot Udo (André Holland) is the co-owner of a jazz club in Paris called The Eddy. He was a pretty well-known jazz pianist back in New York, but he seems to have left the performing phase of his career far behind. When we first encounter Elliot, he’s lamenting that the band that is playing is off that night, especially the band’s singer Maja (Joanna Kulig). There is likely a good reason why Maja is off, though; Elliot recently broke off a fling with her, and he’s now there evaluating her performance.

Elliot’s business partner, Farid (Tahar Rahim) has invited the owner of a independent jazz label to see the band, and Elliot chases the guy down when he goes outside for a smoke. He tells the owner that the band can be a lot better, but the owner tells him he just doesn’t have a lot of money to sign new bands right now.

As Elliot closes up for the night, he’s confronted by a group of thugs that are looking for Farid to pay them what he owes them. When Elliot says he doesn’t have the money, the main thug punches him. Elliot finds out from Farid that those guys provided the club with cheap booze and Farid didn’t pay the bill. Elliot is having doubts about that story, but he has other things to worry about; his daughter Julie (Amandla Stenberg) is about to arrive from New York. When his scooter breaks down on the way back from the airport, he asks Maja to let Julie freshen up at her place, to which Maja reluctantly agrees.

The next night, the band is ready to go for another showcase, but Maja is nowhere to be found; Elliot thinks that she’s distraught, but she’s busy having a fling with someone else. Farid says that he and Elliot should go on stage and sing, but Elliot thinks that will tarnish the quality of the entertainment he wants to present. Elliot storms out and Farid goes on stage.

After closing time, however, Farid is attacked in the street outside the club, and dies in the hospital. Instead of staying with Farid’s wife Amira (Leïla Bekhti), he withdraws. Julie tells her father that he should come back to New York with her, but he says he needs to finish what he and Farid started. He decides to keep the club open that night, and the show draws the club’s biggest crowd ever.

Our Take: What strikes me about The Eddy is that it’s a lot like the music it celebrates. Like jazz, it can be fascinating to watch unfold, but it’s also at turns frustratingly opaque, often boring, and the riffing that happens during songs can feel insufferable at times. And this is coming from someone who actually likes jazz.

But I like jazz live, when I’m sitting in a club or a theater watching the expert musicians ply their craft. I’m even OK with listening to some jazz on my stereo or phone. But where I don’t want to hear meandering jazz is in the middle of a drama that’s already boring and tough to get into. Damien Chazelle (La La Land), who is an executive producer and directs the first 2 episodes (Alan Poul and two others direct the other six; Glen Ballard wrote the music), seems to be so in love with the jazz that comes from formerly-smoky Paris jazz clubs that he and creator Jack Thorne forget to even initiate a plot until close to three-quarters of the way through the 69-minute first episode.

Vast chunks of the first episode are dedicated to full songs, whether it’s on stage at the Eddy or even Elliot brings Julie along to scout out a band practicing in a garage. There’s also long stretches of Maja singing, whether it’s with Elliot at the keyboard or just to herself. More vast chunks are dedicated to the Eddy’s house band simply having conversation after their show. Almost none of it moves the plot along. In fact, until Farid gets attacked, we were trying to figure out just what The Eddy is about.

Even though we get some semblance of plot by the time the episode is over, we’re still not sure we care. Why is Elliot so dedicated to this club, and the idea of signing its bands to record contracts that seem like they’ll be worth very little to the band and the club, when his daughter is begging him to come home?

For the most part, it seems that Elliot is kind of an asshole, putting his club before his daughter, being such a perfectionist about the music his club presents that he doesn’t even want to get on stage for fear that he’s rusty, not realizing that his on-and-off with Maja is affecting bother her performance and her emotional well-being, and not being at the side of his partner’s wife when she finds out her husband is gone. Why should we give any shits about whether The Eddy survives or not? The only intriguing part of Elliot’s life we want to find out more about is why he flushed his performing career back in New York.

Throw all of those factors into the mix, and the whole first episode feels like it mumbles and fumbles its way through a story that’s less complex than Chazelle is making it look via his grainy, early-’70s-auteur-style filmmaking and artificial-sounding swings between French and English.

Sex and Skin: Not much in the first episode, aside from Farid and Amira having some post-coital lounging in his office.

Parting Shot: In a song dedicated to Fraid, Maja sings “We’ve all learned to hide/What’s burning inside/A yearning denied just gets stronger.” Elliot stares, enraptured by her performance and occupied with what’s next, and the scene fades to black.

Sleeper Star: Leïla Bekhti is great as Amira, who shows that she’s all in on her husband’s choice in how to make a living, and when she collapses when the doctors tell her about Farid’s death, it’s one of the more emotionally-powerful moments we’ve seen in awhile.

Most Pilot-y Line: There’s naturalistic acting, and then there’s mumbling. And the first episode had a lot of mumbling, especially from André Holland.

Our Call: SKIP IT. The Eddy is a pretentious mess of a show, and even the expert music that is interspersed through the first episode isn’t enough to save it. In fact, it makes things worse.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Eddy On Netflix