‘Hollywood’ on Netflix Series Premiere Recap: Dreamland

Hollywood is not Ryan Murphy‘s first television series about Hollywood. It’s not his first series about fame, or performance, or the desire to remake oneself. From American Crime Story to Nip/Tuck, from Glee to Feud, these topics have been the prolific writer/director/producer’s bread and butter since his own Hollywood career began. But this new Netflix miniseries gives him a chance to flex his dream-factory muscles at the absolute apex of the Hollywood studio system, its true Golden Age, and still involve both his bawdiest and most high-minded storytelling obsessions: sex, identity, performance, what stories get to be told and who gets to tell them. And judging from this pilot episode (“Hooray for Hollywood”), it’s Ryan Murphy done right.

David Corenswet, a relatively new member of Murphy’s repertory group (as of the Netflix series The Politician), stars as Hollywood newcomer Jack Castello. Jack’s a fresh-faced veteran of the Anzio campaign in World War II, provided you believe “fresh-faced” and “Anzio veteran” are not mutually exclusive descriptors. He spends his mornings parked outside the gates of Ace Studios, hoping to be tapped as an extra by the studio’s imperious casting guru (The Americans‘ Alison Wright); he spends his afternoons drinking away his inevitable failure in a nearby bar; and he spends his evenings getting rejected by his wife (Maude Apatow), a soda jerk at Schwab’s who appears to resent him for a) not having enough money and b) knocking her up.

But things start to pick up for our hero when he meets Ernie (Dylan McDermott, having a blast in silver-fox mode), the proprietor of a gas station cum brothel for gigolos called the Golden Tip. Customers who drop the password “Dreamland” get to go home with the attendant of their choice for a little extra service. (Signs all over the station say stuff like “USE THE LUBRICATION THAT’S GUARANTEED!”, nudge nudge wink wink say no more.) Desperate for cash and persuaded by Ernie’s silver tongue, if not his foul mouth, Jack gives sex work a try, and after a false start or two it works out rather well for him.

In the course of his rounds he meets a few people who provide us with a further lens into how Hollywood operates. Avis (the great Patti LuPone) is a former movie star who didn’t make the switch from silents to “talkies” because casting directors found her too Jewish, and who no longer gets any action at home from her studio-exec husband because she’s too old. Jack makes her feel wanted again.

Later, when Jack gets tasked with servicing legendary songwriter Cole Porter, he momentarily flips out and quits—but then, possessed with a deeply strange brainwave, he borrows a cop uniform from a costumer, crashes a gay-porn theater, and recruits a young black screenwriter named Archie (Jeremy Pope) to be Ernie’s go-to gay guy. Archie’s first client will go on to be movie star Rock Hudson, just FYI.

And when Jack bangs a comely young casting assistant during the course of his rounds, she speaks up for him at the studio gate, earning him a bit part. Success! At least until an undercover vice cop catches him red-handed. Cut to black.

See how painless that was? If there’s one thing to say about Hollywood it’s that it goes down smooth. (No, that’s not a double entendre, but yes, it can be if you insist.) As directed by Murphy from a script he co-wrote with his Glee co-creator Ian Ian Brennan, this episode has the vibrant, slightly corny energy and easy-to-follow linear plot of a high school musical, albeit an R-rated one. The period costumes look like costumes, the period sets look like sets, the period accents sound like modern day actors doing old-fashioned voices, and somehow the overall effect is charming rather than cheesy.

The most interesting thing about Hollywood, however, doesn’t actually happen in this episode. Promotional material for the show indicates that it will blossom into an alternate-reality story, in which a phalanx of non-straight, non-white, non-male talent will storm the gates of the dream factory and seize the means of production themselves. (I apologize for the cod Marxism, since there’s no indication a meaningful class-politics element will be present in the story, but the phraseology works at any rate.) Right now all the show is doing is setting up its future heroes so we’ll cheer for them when the time comes.

And it’s doing it with wit. LuPone’s character gets off a great line when, as she has a getting-to-know-you chat with Jack, he asks her if she wants an honest answer to one of her questions: “Well, we’re about to get naked and fuck each other, so why not?” McDermott’s Ernie makes a splash by talking, out of nowhere, about the size of his member, then later lambasting Jack for the affront of not “lending a helping hand to national treasure Cole Porter,” like it’s a public service he’d be performing if he jerked the composer off or whatever.

Factor in the series’ seven-episode length and its very manageable episode running times—this thing was designed to be binged in an afternoon—and you have the potential for a real winner, one that doesn’t so much transcend Murphy’s quirks the way his masterpiece American Crime Story has done but simply puts them to good use. Welcome to Dreamland, kids.

READ NEXT: Hollywood Netflix Recap Episode 2: “Hooray For Hollywood Pt 2”

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Hollywood Episode 1 ("Hooray for Hollywood") on Netflix