‘Neon’ Is Netflix’s Reggaeton Answer to ‘Entourage’

On Entourage, the central tension always involved the question of whether Vince was gonna do the movie. Only there was never really any tension, because of course Vince was gonna do the movie — or, if he didn’t, things would in some other way work out just fine for him, E, Turtle, and even Johnny Drama. Yet for a show with no real stakes and only a modest level of humor (especially if you weren’t amused by Ari screaming actionable insults at Lloyd), it ran for eight seasons. And a movie! A certain generation of guys modeled their entire personalities after it! And it inspired a wave of similarly laid-back successors about trying to make it in various aspects of showbiz.

The latest of these is Netflix‘s Neon. Co-created by Shea Serrano and Max Searle, it follows best friends Santi (Tyler Dean Flores), Ness (Emma Ferreira), and Felix (Jordan Mendoza) as they move to Miami as part of their plan to use the viral success of Santi’s first song to turn him into the biggest reggaeton star in the world. Over the course of the eight-episode first season, they experience extreme highs and lows in their attempt to achieve this dream. In the first episode, they have to sleep in their 2009 Toyota Corolla and wash up in a gas station bathroom before a big meeting with reggaeton label rep Mia (Courtney Taylor). But at various points in the season, they at least briefly have access to expensive cars, private jets, and the phone numbers of real-life reggaeton stars like Daddy Yankee and Jowell. So even when things seem especially perilous, there’s always the sense that, sooner or later, Vince is gonna do the movie Santi is gonna make it big.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Shows like this, or Rap Sh!t, or even Silicon Valley (set in tech rather than entertainment, but with a similar hamster wheel approach to storytelling), don’t care about surprising the audience. They know that you know where everything is going, and worry more about what they specifically have to offer.

Specifics can be a bit challenging at times for Neon, though. In the premiere, Mia meets the trio at a restaurant where one of the waiters was once an aspiring reggaeton star himself, and suggests that every restaurant in Miami employs a guy like that. And when a music journalist asks Ness, who’s functioning as Santi’s manager, what makes him so different from all the other wannabes, the best that a flustered Ness can offer in the moment is, “He is really good at singing.” Even later, after she’s composed herself, she insists that she can’t put it into words, and that what’s special about Santi is only something you can see when he performs. His performances aren’t bad at all, and the two original Santi tracks featured in the season fit into the tradition of plausibly real songs written for fake musical artists. But if Flores is more convincing as a stage presence than Vincent Chase was as an alleged movie star, we never really get a sense of why he’s unique, nor why Ness and Felix are so convinced he’s destined for greatness, other than the fact that they’re all longtime best friends. 

It’s the friendship that best distinguishes Neon. In one episode, Mia finagles Santi a recording session with Jota Rosa, who keeps pressing Santi to reveal his own personality in his music. Finally, the two of them realize that what matters most to Santi is his love for Ness and Felix, which inspires a potential hit song called “Corillo.” Neon has its occasionally inspired moments of humor(*), but it’s certainly not in the league of Silicon Valley, or even of Sherrano’s other 2023 debut, the Freevee family comedy Primo. It’s a vibe more than it is a comedy, but the appealing and palpable chemistry between Flores, Ferreira, and Mendoza makes the vibe work.

(*) Many of these come from a mid-season arc featuring Jordana Brewster as Gina, a wealthy would-be backer of Santi who’s constantly up to shady business that terrifies the group. (Felix: “It’s totally normal to find a single tooth in someone’s car, right?”)

Despite the cameos by Daddy Yankee and other reggaeton stars as themselves, knowledge of the genre isn’t any more essential to appreciating what works about Neon than it was for Entourage fans to know what the real Ari Emanuel was like. As Jota Rosa puts it, “Reggaeton is whatever you want it to be.” Neon treats it as something that matters deeply to Santi and friends, but that could just as easily be a different form of music, or acting, or (as in the short-lived East Coast Entourage companion How to Make It in America) fashion, or any other passion.

Whatever obstacles the show places in his path, Santi’s stardom seems inevitable, in the event Netflix orders enough seasons to get him there. But that’s no longer a safe assumption in a world where even third Netflix seasons have become increasingly rare. Will Neon find enough of an audience to beat that trend? Despite the big names on hand as guest stars, the series feels modest and low-key enough that ongoing success may be much more challenging in the real world than in the fictional one where Santi, Ness, and Felix live.

Season One of Neon is now streaming on Netflix. I’ve seen all eight episodes.