Let's face it, even the best actors give a bad performance every now and then.
Whether the result of subpar writing, misguided casting, or just a little good old fashioned
phoning it in, these are some of the worst performances on Netflix's original shows.
After delivering a handful of solid additions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with small-screen
adaptations of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage, Netflix looked to go four for four
with the introduction of the ass-kicking, Kung Fu Zen master known as Iron Fist.
What they got, however, was an absolute snoozer of a series that, short of a few killer action
pieces, pretty much failed on every front.
"This is probably gonna hurt."
Pacing was a big part of the problem with Iron Fist, and it was compounded by the absence
of a star with enough charm or charisma to carry the show through its slower sections.
Through its first 13 painfully slow episodes, lead Finn Jones delivered an agonizingly stilted
performance that wavered between twitchy childish outbursts and super-serious mugging.
Considering this is supposed to be a character who is completely out of touch with the modern
world, you can't help but feel like it might have worked in someone else's hands.
Sadly, Jones just didn't bring quite enough depth or humanity to the character to do that.
The character never feels like the emotionally conflicted hero he should be; instead, he
comes across as a spoiled brat with superpowers.
Throughout his inaugural run, the Immortal Iron Fist is basically the only hero in the
MCU that you don't want to root for.
Netflix looked like they'd pulled off a casting coup when they announced they had green-lit
Gypsy, a psychological, sensual dramatic series starring Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup.
Unfortunately, critics were scathing in their reviews of the show, which wastes not only
an intriguing setup, but also the talents of its highly-accomplished cast.
Most notably, Gypsy found the usually reliable Naomi Watts whiffing in the starring role.
That's a real shame too, since Watts' character is supposed to be driven by the exact same
kind of spirited intellect, effortless magnetism and internalized conflict that served some
of her finest performances.
To her credit, Watts does manage to bring elements of those attributes to her role in
Gypsy, but she never quite finds the right level of balance between them.
In the end, none of the character's struggles ring true, and Watts' increasingly melodramatic
performance prevents the viewer from really connecting with the character, or the series
as a whole.
After his scene-stealing supporting turns on hit live-action comedies including Arrested
Development and 30 Rock, it seemed only a matter of time before Will Arnett found a
starring role to match his talents.
And then Netflix announced Flaked, Arnett and Mark Chappell's comedy about a recovering
alcoholic and self-help guru struggling to keep his life together.
Finally, it looked like he'd found a vehicle worthy of his gifts.
Unfortunately, Flaked instead finds Arnett shamelessly mugging, overplaying punchlines,
and undermining the story's dramatic turns.
What's so confounding about Arnett's work on the show is that it's built around exactly
the character type that's served the actor so well over the years, in shows such as BoJack
Horseman.
Here, however, the in-your-face nature of Arnett's schtick never feels like anything
more than that.
It's a shame, too, since Flaked might have been an intriguing dark comedy in the hands
of a stronger lead performer.
As it stands, the show is all but unwatchable.
Colleen Ballinger's Haters Back Off tells the comedic tale of a talentless wannabe who
stumbles backwards into something resembling fame…and infamy.
Imagine a Pee-Wee Herman movie without the playfulness or Napoleon Dynamite without the
heart, and you're in the ballpark of Haters' general vibe, which is just as grating as
it sounds.
Ballinger's wildly over-the-top performance doesn't exactly help things, either.
Yes, Ballinger is intentionally playing over the top with Haters Back Off, but let's be
honest, just because an actor makes a deliberate choice doesn't mean that choice necessarily
works.
Ballinger's antics may play well for her popular YouTube persona, but they're way too much
to handle in a 30-minute episode.
The show is occasionally funny and has some interesting insight on the nature of fame-lust,
but her one-note act is simply unbearable, and undoes basically all of the show's good
intentions.
"Watch this.
Tah-dah!"
Ever wonder what the world looks like through the eyes of Rob Schneider?
Probably not, but that didn't stop Netflix from greenlighting a Schneider-led Curb Your
Enthusiasm knockoff anyway.
Rather than delivering an insightful, self-effacing portrait of himself, however, Schneider's
Real Rob instead plays as a shamelessly self-indulgent hodgepodge of ideas that worked better on
other, much funnier shows.
It also proves that Schneider's comedic stylings are more than a little outdated.
It's worth noting that Schneider was never much of an actor to begin with.
If you've seen him in lowbrow fare like Deuce Bigalow or The Animal, then you already knew
that, but Schneider's hacky hamming on Real Rob is a new low, even for him.
The only thing less funny than Schneider's performance, however, is his standup act,
which is unhelpfully interspersed throughout the show.
Honestly, the most astonishing thing about his work on Real Rob is that Netflix actually
let him do it for two full seasons.
Britt Robertson, who you may have seen in Tomorrowland or The Space Between Us, is a
hugely talented up-and-coming actor, and she'll almost certainly be a big star in the very
near future.
But her portrayal of self-made millionaire Sophia Amoruso on Girlboss was the most wildly
off-kilter element of a show all but consumed by wildly off-kilter elements.
To be fair, Robertson feels like the victim of bad casting and poor writing more than
anything else.
Still, a more seasoned performer might have found a way to balance out the writing's "warts
and all" approach to the character with some sort of humanizing humility, and Robertson
just wasn't up to the task.
The acerbic coarseness she brought to Girlboss' more biting moments feels a bit too harsh,
and the quieter, humanizing moments come across as soulless plot contrivances.
What makes it so difficult to watch is that you can genuinely see Robertson working.
You can see how hard she's trying to look funky and cool, how hard she's trying to be
tough and mean, and how desperately she wants to appear soulful.
Unfortunately, if you can see an actor acting, that means they aren't doing it very well.
Based on Jay Asher's bestselling book of the same name, 13 Reasons Why arrived on Netflix
with a touch of controversy and a wave of critical praise.
Brought to life by a terrific young cast and a stable of talented filmmakers, the first
season was more or less self-contained, so much so, in fact, that nobody really asked
for a second season.
Still, Netflix went ahead and renewed the show anyway, only to watch it slide right
down to the opposite end of the critical spectrum.
Throughout 13 Reasons Why's woeful second season, the problem areas that were tolerable
in season 1 were thrown into sharp relief.
Most notable of all was the performance of Miles Heizer, whose frustratingly deadpan
emo affectations from the opening season turned downright emotionally vacant in this second
run.
"Yeah, I know.
I get it.
It's probably stupid anyway."
Here, Heizer struggles through dramatic scenes, fumbles awkwardly through lighter scenes,
and generally drains the show of emotional energy.
It's clear this isn't all an acting problem, since Heizer has delivered solid performances
in indie fare such as Rudderless and The Stanford Prison Experiment.
The show's third season unfortunately didn't fare much better with critics.
Altered Carbon might actually be one of the better science fiction shows that Netflix
has produced.
Joel Kinnaman is also a highly intriguing actor, fully capable of bringing calculating
depth and a suave sense of cool to just the right role.
Unfortunately, Kinnaman's work as the re-sleeved Takeshi Kovacs in the first season of Altered
Carbon saw the actor bringing little more to the mix than brute physical force.
Now, that sense of physicality is genuinely quite an impressive part of Kinnaman's run
on Altered Carbon.
In fact, watching him throw down against the bad guys in that first season was actually
a big part of what made the show so much fun to watch.
The problem is that bone-breaking fights and eye-popping set pieces only account for half
of the picture in Altered Carbon.
The other half is broken into a blend of future-noir brooding and deep-rooted emotional turmoil,
both of which fuel the fires of Takeshi Kovacs' every move.
Unfortunately, when it comes to conveying the calculating cool of a private eye, or
the fractured emotional state of a character out of time, Kovacs feels like an empty husk
of a man, and nothing more.
Historically speaking, pop stars have a spotty record when attempting to make the jump from
the sound studio to the cinema, with everyone from Madonna to Janet Jackson failing to find
success in their cinematic endeavors.
And when R&B icon Mary J. Blige threw her hat into the big screen ring, people weren't
expecting much.
Blige spent the better part of the 2000s delivering memorable if slight supporting turns over
a range of film and television projects.
In 2017, however, she left the jaws of movie fans firmly on the floor with a scene-stealing,
Oscar-nominated turn in Netflix's racially charged post-war drama Mudbound.
After Mudbound, the world believed they were witnessing the unexpected transformation of
a pop star into a serious screen talent.
Of course, casting is often the most important factor in the making of a great performance.
And while Mudbound was a pretty great example of perfect casting, Blige's role in the Netflix
superhero series The Umbrella Academy is basically the exact opposite.
Of course, you can't really blame Blige for dodgy casting, and the script isn't great,
either.
But there's not much more to it than that, any way you cut it, Blige's performance as
the time-traveling assassin Cha Cha just didn't bring much to the mix.
Although fans mostly love Haley Atwell for her pitch-perfect work as Peggy Carter in
the MCU, she's great in pretty much every role she's ever played.
Every role, that is, except the one she took in Black Mirror.
If you happened to miss Hayley Atwell on the series, she turned up in the second season
episode titled "Be Right Back," which, we should note, originally aired on Channel 4
in the UK before the show became a Netflix original series.
In this episode, Atwell plays a young woman whose lover is tragically killed in a car
crash.
This being Black Mirror, of course, it's possible to keep in touch with the recently deceased,
and even recreate their physical bodies.
Conceptually speaking, "Be Right Back" is vintage Black Mirror terrain.
But the episode never quite comes together, largely due to an uncharacteristically bland
performance from Atwell.
Of course, that may or may not be the result of her sharing the screen with a character
that's actually supposed to be totally devoid of actual human emotion.
Not even a decade has passed since Netflix changed the face of the streaming industry
by producing its own films and shows.
And while it's had its fair share of runaway hits, Netflix has had just as many failures,
too, if not more.
That was especially true in the early days, when Netflix was still trying to figure out
what did and didn't work on the platform.
And in those early days, few Netflix shows worked less than the supernatural drama Hemlock
Grove.
Set in a small Pennsylvania town, the series followed a pair of nefarious doctors and a
couple of mystery-solving youngsters, who also happen to be werewolves.
Although the show suffered from many problems, chief among all was the underwhelming writing
and the wildly disparate performances delivered by the leading cast.
Truth be told, few among them were any good in the series, but poor not-yet Pennywise
Bill Skarsgård seemed utterly and perpetually lost amid all the Hemlock Grove silliness.
Luckily, it seems the world has already forgotten he was ever in this series.
Here's hoping he has as well.
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