The Get Down begins with some much-needed scene setting, particularly for those of us who didn’t live through the 1970s and don’t know much about New York City history. Luckily, Baz Luhrmann — The Get Down’s critically acclaimed director — is the right person for the job, capable of weaving a rich visual tapestry that unearths beauty from decay, and glitter from the rubble.
New York is in a bad way in 1977 — but nowhere in the city is that more apparent than the South Bronx, where buildings are being burned left and right for the pittance insurance money and lawlessness seems to rule the land. The infrastructural issues — the housing, the schools, the train platforms — are in shambles; but they also translate to a moral corruptness that has taken root with politicians and the people who make the decisions about what to invest in the community, situated far above Harlem. It’s a figurative world away from the glamour we’ve come to associate with Manhattan.
But the South Bronx has its own gorgeous and rich culture that’s in the midst of a renaissance: Graffiti is becoming an art form, disco culture has hit a fever pitch, and another underground music movement has gained a foothold (more on that later).
I'm spending today full-on binging this series today, in the comfort of my air conditioned apartment. So if you're doing the same (or you just want to play catch up!) read ahead for a recap of every single episode of the season so far. Without further ado...
Episode 1
The Get Down kicked off by introducing us to Ezekiel (Justice Smith) — Zeke — a teenage boy with a talent for poetry and the heart to match. His mother and father are dead; he lives with his aunt and her boyfriend, who seems intent on beating the passion out of the boy. Cockroaches crawl through their apartment, a small place where Zeke sleeps behind a strung up sheet. He’s rushing out of the house before school to go meet a friend: Mylene Cruz (newcomer Herizen F. Guardiola), a Puerto Rican pastor’s daughter with a huge voice, and the girl he loves.
Zeke meets Mylene at the church to play the piano for her while she sings and records the track on a tape. She is incredible, belting out a cover originally popularized by the artist the show calls Misty Holloway. They wrap up and Zeke is clearly in awe of Mylene, who tells her that she’s going to hand the tape off to a popular DJ at a disco later that night. But they get caught playing around in the church by Mylene’s little sister, who blackmails her into handing out pamphlets in exchange for not telling their father that she sang secular music in the space. Mylene agrees, but then she and Zeke head off and talk about the plan for getting her tape into the right hands — and Mylene reminds him, as he tries to kiss her, that she’s not interested in starting anything up with him. She wants to be the next Donna Summer — and nothing is going to get in her way.
At this point, it definitely helps to have a primer on who all the new characters this series has gifted: Mylene and Zeke are accounted for, but they’ve each got their own crews. Mylene is best friends with Yolanda Kipling and Regina Diaz, both of whom are a little more wild than the other member of their trio. Zeke’s squad includes Dizzee, and two brothers named Ronald “Ra-Ra” and Miles “Boo Boo: Kipling (yep, Yolanda’s siblings).
Sidebar on Dizzee: He’s obsessed — in awe of, really— another emerging facet of hip-hop culture: graffiti artists. Dizzee especially worships a street artist who goes by the name of Shaolin Fantastic (Shameik Moore). When Shaolin Fantastic (who appears to be deeply influenced by Kung Fu culture) has laid down new graffiti, Dizzee won’t stop until he goes to see it for himself — and that’s how we wind up in the next scene: The boys are all on their way to the high school when Dizzee gets wind of a new Shaolin Fantastic piece, and drags his friends along with him to see it. They wind up in a burned out building, and are almost immediately surrounded by a gang that patrols the neighborhood. Things get dicey fast, but in the nick of time a community pillar shows up: Francisco “Papa Fuerte” Cruz, the unofficial mayor of this neck of the borough, who is the public face of the community, Mylene’s uncle, and a man who is pulling out all the stops (even the less-than-legal ones) to get money and infrastructure invested by the city of New York into the South Bronx. When Papa Fuerte arrives, the gang quickly scatters, allowing the boys to make their way back to school.
Cut to English class, where Ezekiel finds out that a poem he wrote was the best in the class. It’s clear that he’s deeply talented, but afraid to speak his poems — when the teacher asks him to read the poem aloud to the class, he refuses, going so far as to tell her that he’s not the one who wrote it. On her way out the door after the bell rings, Mylene pointedly tells their teacher that Zeke did write the poem, he’s just being a chicken by not reading it. The teacher goes back to Zeke, and he does end up reading his poem aloud: It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking homage to the community — to the violence, the racism, the struggle — and the teacher weeps. But still, when she tells him that he could really be someone, he shrugs it off and explains that he may not even return to school the following year.
Refusing to read his poem aloud has pushed Mylene away from Zeke, but he still feels like he can win her over if he manages to get into the club she’s going to that night and put the original Misty Holloway record into the set list somehow. But first: He has to track down the record in the first place. He does, to a makeshift shop nearby. Almost as soon as he finds the right record, the gang who accosted him and his friends that morning surround the shop, demanding that the shop owner start paying them weekly protection money. In the scuffle, another person sneaks into the shop: Shaolin Fantastic. Shaolin quietly moves through the back of the store, where Zeke is hiding, and steals the record right out of his hands before darting away on foot.
Zeke tears off after him, and the gang tears off after them both through the street. Shaolin manages to escape by taking a running jump off the top of a building and somehow managing to land on the next; but just when it seems like he’s safe, the cement starts crumbling beneath his feet, and he is suddenly hanging several stories in the air. The record falls from his hands to the street, and Zeke — who has been tailing him — catches it and runs off. Miraculously, Shaolin pulls himself up and escapes.
It might seem like a coincidental encounter, but the truth is, the two are destined to meet. You see, Shaolin is ready to give up the graffiti game. What he wants more than anything is to be a DJ. But Grandmaster Flash — his master and inspiration — tells him that before he can spin, he needs to find a wordsmith. Bingo: That would be Zeke.
Speaking of Zeke: He’s got everything he needs to go out on the town and win Mylene’s heart tonight — except for a fly ensemble. With his friends, he raids their father’s closet and steals his uncle’s boots before heading to the club, Les Infernos, ready to take on the crowd. When he arrives without a girl on his arm, though, he gets turned down, even though he tries to grease the bouncer with cash. No can do: For now, Zeke is stuck on the outside. Mylene and her girlfriends have already made their way downstairs to the disco.
Zeke was right to be concerned about someone trying to take advantage of his girl: Mylene has already caught the attention of Cadillac, a dangerous dude whose mother, Fat Annie, owns the club and the lounge upstairs. Mylene is trying to get her tape to the DJ spinning that night and Cadillac tells her he’ll be more than happy to help if she would consider going back to a hotel with him later that night. She refuses and heads out to the dance floor with her girlfriends, instead. Cadillac isn’t ready to give up: He joins Mylene, apologizing for being forward, and dances alongside her.
Outside, Zeke is recovering from being tossed to the curb just as DJ Malibu arrives for his set, along with Shaolin, who is sort of like a lad-in-waiting. But when Shaolin seeks Zeke, and the record that he’s carrying, he goes after him to get it back. They duke it out in a shadowy building, but in the end, Zeke tells Shaolin that if he’s going to take the record, he might as well kill him, because he’s in love. If he can’t get the record to Mylene and win her affections, he doesn’t want to live. Shaolin comes up with a deal: He’ll get Zeke into the club and get DJ Malibu to play the record. But Zeke needs to let him have the record for good. He agrees and they make their way to the DJ booth.
When they get there, though, they have to convince Malibu to relent on a personal rule he has to never take requests. Zeke dons a fake accent and trades rhymes back and forth with the older man. In the end, however, it’s the promise of plenty of coke that convinces Malibu to play the record.
A perfect little moment unfolds when he finally does: Cadillac is called away from the dance floor to go upstairs and sing “Happy Birthday” to his mom, Fat Annie. Just as that happens, the record hits its groove, the floor parts, and Zeke walks up to Mylene, who — at least for the moment — can’t resist him. They start to dance and kiss. But then, Cadillac sees Zeke cozying up to Mylene and returns to the dance floor, where he starts busting out his best disco. One thing is for sure: Cadillac may be a lech, but he’s got mad moves. It doesn’t take long for him to totally take over the floor.
Upstairs at the birthday party, a massacre is about to unfold: The same gang that chased down Shaolin earlier that day has shown up at Les Infernos — and they’re out for blood. While everyone is singing, the gang opens fire, killing the bartender and plenty of others in the room before making their way downstairs to take out more revelers. For reasons not yet explained, they’re looking for Cadillac. In the meantime, they manage to take out a number of dancers, as well as DJ Malibu.
Zeke and Shaolin manage to usher Mylene and the girls out of the club and into the street, where Zeke tries to comfort Mylene. It’s an emotional moment: Mylene clearly wants to be able to turn to Zeke, who is telling her how much he loves her and how much he wants for them to be together. But in the end, she still says no to a relationship with him, reminding him that she wants to get out of the Bronx — to become something — and that he doesn’t seem as driven to make something of himself. She wants a man, not a kid from her neighborhood. She runs away, leaving Zeke to piece himself together. When she arrives back at home, her father is in a rage and he winds up beating her for disobeying him. Mylene’s mom screams at him and tells her to call her uncle — Papa Fuerte — to come pick her up. When Mylene gets into the car, she breaks down, telling him what happened at Les Infernos and that she wants to be a singer. Papa Fuerte promises to help her in any way he can.
In the midst of all this, Zeke makes his way to the park, crying, but his buddies are hanging out, waiting for him. Shaolin shows up, too, sending Dizzee into a fanboy tizzy. Shaolin tells Zeke that he needs to snap out of it and get over this girl, because crying isn’t going to help anything. To distract him from all this, Shaolin invites Zeke and the guys to a different kind of party, leading them to a decrepit warehouse. When they get there, the crowd is raging and Grandmaster Flash is helming the turntables. Shaolin hands him the Misty Holloway album and the DJ queues it up, finding the “get down” part of the album, which will get layered over a beat. Then, an emcee steps up and starts rhyming to the music. Suddenly, Zeke realizes that this is what he wants to be doing with his poetry, with Shaolin as his DJ.
But it’s not going to be easy: When Zeke winds up with the mic the first time around, he falters and makes a mess of it — proving to the crowd, who is already judging his disco attire, that he’s out of place at this party. But when he sees Shaolin standing up for him (in a break-dance fight, no less), he takes the mic a second time, impresing the naysayers with his rhymes and winning over the crowd.
After the party, the guys all go back to Shao’s pad, which is run-down and has rigged electricity, to check out the future DJ’s record collection and watch the sun come up. It’s there that Shao and Zeke decide they want to be a duo and that Zeke’s buds will be their crew. They want to rule the hip-hop scene. To mark the occasion, Shao gives Dizzee all his graffiti supplies, ready to embark on the next chapter of his life. The guys get to the roof to watch the sun come up just in time to see a train blaze through an otherwise bombed-out skyline.
Stay tuned for more episodes!
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