Netflix's late-summer dominance of TV culture continues after the huge success of their Stranger Things, when last Friday the ubiquitous streaming service debuted The Get Down. It's the much-hyped and rather expensive series from Ken-Russell-ripoff-artist Baz Luhrmann that documents a theoretical version of the beginnings of hiphop in the Bronx. Certain peripheral like Grandmaster Flash are real, while the main protagonists—a group of teenagers, mostly boys—are not. Reviews are all over the map, while even the negative ones express some degree of admiration for the show, which is a sloppily beautiful, ungainly mess with occasional morsels of wonderfulness. It's like a bad pizza with great toppings.

I've only watched the first three episodes in this current batch of six (another batch of six will turn up on Netflix in the future) and I frankly don't know what to make of this thing. The first episode is downright wretched. It's overlong, confusing, chintzy, and full of hot, stinky air.

And yet with the failure of recent shows that jerked off to the Rolling Stone version of rock 'n' roll's past (the largely misunderstood but wholly problematic Vinyl; the truly god-awful Roadies), a show that ventures to tackle the dawn of hiphop seems like a canvas well worth exploring. I stuck with The Get Down for Episode Two, which was a notch better (or at least easier to swallow), and then felt things creakily wrench into place toward the end of Episode Three, which takes place during the July 1977 blackout of New York City. The Get Down doesn't handle the actual blackout particularly well (it kinds of bobbles all of its historical tie-ins, not just this one), but the event serves as a focus point for its three or so main plotlines to rise to a simultaneous crescendo. It became the first honest-seeming moment of the series, even as it wallowed in artifice, spectacle, and melodrama.

I should say that I've never seen a Baz Luhrmann movie I liked, or even finished. I hated the portions of Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby, and, yes, the hugely annoying Romeo + Juliet that I managed to sit through. So from that comparison point, The Get Down is a relative triumph. It's impossible to quantify precisely how much Luhrmann had to do with the series, which had a notoriously troubled production and many series of hands rubbing its graffiti-sprayed finish into a confusing patina. Luhrmann directed that shitty first episode, and according to Variety, fell into the de facto role of show runner sort of by accident when others fell by the wayside. Perhaps as a result, the show feels unfocused and wild-growing, as if no firm grip was on the reins. Also, it seems like a missed opportunity that a white Australian is telling this particular story, which is rooted in the African American and Latino communities of the Bronx in the late '70s.

And yet it's an interesting watch, for the most part. Every bad element in the show is counteracted by something creative and worthwhile. For instance, the super-clunky and embarrassing framing device that kicks off each episode—which features Hamilton's Daveed Diggs lip-synch-rapping in Madison Square Garden using Nas' voice, and hey did I mention it's clunky and embarrassing—can also be seen as a SUPER creative approach to what would otherwise be a rote "previously on The Get Down" recap. And the scenes in which the crew teaches themselves how to DJ are fascinating, even as they offer a pretty shallow treatment of the subject; I could have watched a lot more info on Grandmaster Flash's turntable technique as the main characters learn it, but what's there is pretty damn cool. Furthermore, part of me wants to complain that this thing isn't an outright musical (weird, because I hate musicals), but it has the woozy, reeling feel of one, if not the density of songs. And while some—not all—of the show's visual elements are overambitious and don't really land successfully, the sound design is insane. The way the dialogue, music, and background city noises are integrated is masterful, practically operatic. Maybe we should be watching it with the picture off.

So I'm on the fence with The Get Down. My gut tells me it's an interesting failure along the lines of Vinyl—in fact, the two shows become identical twins for a hot minute with the introduction of Eric Bogosian's character (in a scene that's utterly baffling in its reversal midway through) and its dumb-dumb depiction of the coke-inhaling habits of Kevin Corrigan's character (Corrigan, otherwise, is pretty terrific in this). I don't think it handles the origins of hiphop authoritatively or even particularly well*, but the smaller, soap-opera stories it does depict are suitable foils for the show's heightened, pageant-like technique. I'll stick with it for three more episodes (I hear there's a great rap battle in Episode Six), and maybe even check out the second batch when that goes up next year. The Get Down's not great, but it'll do as a diversion from these overheated dog days of summer.

*Can you imagine if someone spent the time and resources at The Get Down's disposal to make a definitive O.J.: Made in America-style multi-part documentary on this topic, instead of the chalky, crumbly, retrofitted mythos that this show seems to be interested in? Good god, it would be flames—absolutely incredible.