My history teacher in college called bullshit on Marco Polo. After Herodotus was accused of making up his historical works, scholars started to doubt the journals of Polo. Who travels for years in China and never once mentions chopsticks? To be fair, they've been optional at every Panda Express I've been to. But in this day and age when people still manage to plagiarize, even though they know that all we have to do is Google what they said or wrote (helloooo, Dr. Ben Carson), folks still manage to do it. So I completely believe that way back then in the time of zero accountability and few bragging rights, Marco Polo could've used what knowledge he had as a tradesmen and perhaps hearsay from other travelers he met to make it look like he was indeed the first white guy to chronicle the Far East. With this ambiguity it's pretty apt that he has a swimming pool game named after him in which you are blindfolded and your destination keeps changing.
None of these fascinating tidbits has anything to do with the new Netflix series Marco Polo, which might explain why it is the worst-reviewed television program in the last 12 months, beating out Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever. It's certainly not that terrible, imho, but it is beyond derivative, with dialogue like, "The blood of an adventurer courses through your veins," and tired cliches. A champion swordsman bites into a piece of fruit menacingly and then tosses it up into the air so he can quadrisect it with one flick of his saber. A fat, fur-bedecked Kublai Khan sits on a big throne at the end of a vast, dim room with 20-foot doors and chuckles menacingly. His minions line the dark recesses at the sides of his castle, their faces mostly covered but their eyes staring out ... menacingly. Khan does, however, have a Jersey accent at times, which is an interesting twist.
The plot is what you'd expect as well. Young guy with adventure coursing through his veins is abandoned by his father in a strange land where he is taken under the wing of Kublai Khan and witnesses a great many orgies. There are power struggles and awkward cultural run-ins. All that's left is an empress with very long fingernails stroking Foo Dog ... menacingly.
So yes, Marco Polo, presumably Netflix's answer to Game of Thrones, is getting impaled. But I guarantee you one thing: There are folks out there who love it. Love love love it. I've seen a few in my Facebook feed.
"Okay," says one friend, "This Marco Polo show is fucking great."
"Yes!" replies his friend.
"'Alexander, a great conqueror,'" quotes another friend from Kublai Khan's line in the show. "'Twenty cities bear his name. I own all of them.' And then I was like, 'Holy crap! I want to watch this and see what Kublai says next!'"
None of these people are dumb, either, in case you were wondering. But this is the same odd sea of nuts who also likes Once Upon A Time or whatever new Syfy series emerges each season. I made the mistake of asking one of them to tell me what Once Upon A Time was about, and about 45 minutes later her schematic and Venn diagram were completed.
Perhaps people like this cling so strongly to these shows because they think that if they are obsessive and rabid enough that maybe the networks won't cancel them. Well I've got some good news, nerds: Netflix doesn't need to grab the market share of viewers for one hour for one night a week. It can release crap and if only 500,000 of you like it, that's 500,000 more people than it might have reached before. It's not about appealing to the most people at the best time. If Netflix finds a way to be indispensable to every single minute subset of audiences in America, no matter how small, it will remain a billion dollar company.
This is great news, actually, because at some point both you and I will fall under one of those minute subsets and be entertained beyond our wildest dreams. How else would Hemlock Grove have made it to three seasons? What's Hemlock Grove, you ask? That's the Netflix show about werewolves that absolutely no one has ever seen.
This just in: Marco Polo has been renewed for a second season.
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