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 hip-hop in the Bronx. Certain peripheral figures like Grandmaster Flash are real, while the main protagonists—a group of teenagers, mostly boys—are not. The reviews have been all over the map, but 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 "prestige TV" shows that jerked off onto the corpse of Rolling Stone-brand rock 'n' roll (the largely misunderstood but wholly problematic Vinyl; the truly god-awful Roadies), a show that ventures to tackle the dawn of hip-hop 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 watched things creakily but satisfyingly 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 especially well—it kinds of bobbles all of its historical tie-ins, not just this one—but the event serves as a locus point for its three or so main plotlines to rise to a simultaneous crescendo. That convergence results in the first honest-seeming moment of the series, even as it wallows 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 has to do with the series, which suffered a notoriously troubled production and experienced many series of hands rubbing its graffiti-sprayed finish into the resultantly confusing patina. Luhrmann directed that shitty first episode, and according to Variety, fell into the de facto role of show runner kind of by accident when others fell by the wayside. Likely as a result, the show feels unfocused and wild-growing, as if no firm grip was on the reins. Not to mention it seems like a missed opportunity that Luhrmann, 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-sync-rapping in Madison Square Garden in Nas' voice, and hey did I mention it's clunky and embarrassing—can also be seen as a SUPER inventive approach to what would otherwise be a rote "previously on The Get Down" recap. And the scenes in which the Fantastic Four Plus One/Get Down crew teaches themselves how to DJ are fascinating, even if, in the end, it's a pretty shallow treatment of the subject; I could have watched a lot more info on Grandmaster Flash's turntable technique, 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 all be watching this show 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 hip-hop 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 this show seems to be interested in? Good god, it would be flames—absolutely incredible.