Image via Complex Original
Netflix has been bombarding the Internet for the last few weeks. They’re taking on Marvel, resurrecting Full House, and producing a sitcom with Aziz Ansari. The New York Times has reported that in 2015 Netflix will have triple the hours of original content from last year.
When Netflix premiered their first exclusive content TV show, Lillyhammer, in 2012, there was worry that the company was starting something creepy. The idea that Netflix could analyze users’ viewing habits and build shows that, if not perfect, were impossible to stop compulsively watching was solidified when House of Cards debuted a year later. Maybe Netflix had uncovered the logarithm to make shows people didn’t know that they wanted to watch, the way Watson, the Jeopardy-winning robot, started making desserts with bacon and dried porcini mushrooms.
Then Hemlock Grove happened and immediately set those suspicions to rest. Two more House of Cards seasons and dozens of original series, documentaries, and stand-up specials have proven that Netflix hasn’t got a skeleton key for viral hits. The company might be teeming with ambition, but it’s not infallible.
So before we declare Netflix the official winner of all television, let’s remember that not everything the company touches is as good as The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Plenty of the company’s original productions aren’t suitable for white noise, let alone binge-watching. And lucky for you, we have the worst of the worst here.
Hemlock Grove
Premiered: April 19, 2013
For their third original series, Netflix failed at nearly every level. In a show that was basically the streaming version of Twin Peaks, a teenage girl is murdered in a small town. Then after two episodes no one cares, and there are werewolves. And vampires. Executive producer Eli Roth, who directed the premiere episode, was supposed to bring his cult horror street cred. Instead Hemlock Grove just inherited the sterile dialogue from Hostel.
Richie Rich
Premiered: Feb. 20, 2015
The Internet loves to hate Richie Rich, and rightly so. The TV show is based on a terrible cartoon that became a terrible movie. We can only be so mean to child actors, but the directors, who seem to have opted for the most severe traits of Disney Channel shows, are fair game. A must-watch for anyone who wants to enter the ethically fraught territory of a preteen owning a sexualized, completely human-looking robot maid.
Marco Polo
Premiered: Dec. 12, 2014
With an epic story, stunning scenery, and a gorgeous Italian explorer in anachronistically tight-fitting clothes, Marco Polo sounds like it should have been a safe bet. But the production crew forgot a crucial element: a script that doesn’t make Charlie Chan look progressive. Or at least one with fewer scenes set in an endless harem.
Arrested Development
Premiered: May 26, 2013
Mitchell Hurwitz and crew deserve some credit. They delivered some solid laughs and a story that was well out of their comfort zones when they revived the crown jewel of cult comedy. But if this had been the first season of Arrested Development, no one would remember it, let alone study the episodes like suras. Gone is the tight pacing, as well as the cartoonish interactions of the Bluths, which have been replaced by ponderous episodes that tease us with one Bluth at a time. As a stand-alone show, the fourth season probably isn’t bad. But by Arrested Development standards, it’s dismal.
Mitt
Premiered: Jan. 24, 2014
I don’t know if any programming executives have had to use this metric before, but if you lose a presidential election by more than 120 electoral college votes, there probably isn’t an audience begging to see a documentary about you. Director Greg Whiteley had an unbelievable six years of access to the Romney family and campaign, and he apparently wanted to use it to make a political Partridge Family Movie. Outside of a few instances of self-doubt, Mitt is a softball doc that doesn’t give any new insight into the man who harnessed Rafalca.