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In this space, you are accustomed to rage. Fascism, collapse of democracy, the unmasking of American hatred and stupidity. Blah, blah, blah. I suppose you could argue that it’s like Monet painting the Rouen Cathedral 32 times, each canvas a masterpiece in different lights.
But it isn’t that, is it? If only.
So if you have begun to find the endless documentation of depravity tiresome or predictable, today I bring you wonderful news! This dispatch will not be dripping with rage.
It will be dripping with annoyance. I am annoyed AF. Because while in a foreign country on a book project, I am laid up with a bad back and made a careless decision. On Netflix, I watched all six hour-length episodes of Eric.
First, don’t make the same mistake. It is not good. Second, it is not good in the most … well, annoying ways.
Here’s the synopsis: The time period is mid-1980s. Benedict Cumberbatch plays an angry, irritable puppeteer genius who has created a (supposedly) Sesame Street-like morning kids show. He alienates everyone with his bitter sarcasm and tantrums. This includes his wife Cassie and his 9-year-old son Edgar, who is traumatized by the constant parental conflict.
One morning, after a particularly toxic night before, Vincent is so distracted bickering with Cassie that he lets Edgar walk alone three blocks to school. The boy never arrives there. Thus begins the mystery, psychological drama, social-justice screed, police procedural that spares no stereotype or cliche to give Cumberbatch his opportunity to stretch as a performer.
Alas, he does not stretch. He contracts into a boilerplate portrayal of a tortured genius whose rich parents offered him no affection as a child or as an adult.
Vincent’s character is meant to be a portrait of pain. Yes. It’s painful to watch. From the unconvincing guzzles of vodka (complete with the twisted wince at the alcohol’s bite) to the flat “American” accent that sounds traceable to no region of the country, least of all New York City. When he erupts, it’s like listening to Waze lashing out.
Meantime, the other characters are cut and pasted from 1,000 other Hollywood fairy tales of one principled hero (ok, in this case two, because there’s also an honest cop character) taking on The Man. It’s the whole Hollywood Universe of Saints and Villains:
– Dirty cops and politicians who we don’t find out are covering up rampant corruption and murder until the end, although we see the obvious from the first frame.
– Vincent’s immoral, real estate tycoon father who will sacrifice anything — including the homeless population and his own son — for the next deal. Thurston Howell had more complexity. The Monopoly plutocrat, by comparison, was Hamlet.
– Vincent’s condescending, emotionally vacant Park Avenue mom, who cannot summon an ounce of human warmth even when her grandson goes missing.
– The building custodian, played by Clarke Peters, who is preternaturally patient, gentle and wise. He radiates goodness like a heat lamp — altogether the Magical Negro type embodied by Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, Unforgiven and Driving Miss Daisy. Peters is good in the role. The role, though, is patronizing beyond acting redemption.
– Edgar himself, a cherubic, tousle-headed 9-year-old Christ child who is a precocious cartoonist, but displays not one characteristic of being a real, live boy.
Then there’s the hit TV show Good Day, Sunshine, a puppet-centric kid’s program that is supposed to be like Sesame Street, but with none of the charm, wit, personality, inventiveness or educational chops. It’s just puppets espousing saccharine pieties in falsetto.
And that cultural treasure is in jeopardy! Because mercenary network “suits” demand that ratings improve. Of course, in 1985 public television, before advertising swallowed public broadcasting, funding was not contingent on ratings — so their avarice is nonsensical.
The only character displaying any depth or emotional complexity is Cassie, played by Gaby Hoffman, who somehow manages to transcend the ridiculous plot developments (and non-developments) to be as brilliant as she always is and an oasis of authenticity in a desert of tortured contrivance.
I will credit director Lucy Forbes for getting the period wardrobe right, including Vincent’s aviator eyeglasses and sneakers. All she and writer Abi Morgan get wrong is everything else.
There’s the anachronistic use of millennium slang “You got this!” and “You’re gonna crush it!” There are the 15 TV and radio news reports, all read by actors who (as in most movies) don’t even come close to the tone and cadence of broadcast news. There’s the demonstration scene, where the crowd in City Hall Park suddenly materializes 6 miles north in Central Park. There’s the scenography in a sub-subway homeless encampment (why there is explained below), which I’m pretty sure was bought at a Warner Brothers garage sale from the Superman collection.
Then there are the banal exposés of racism, homophobia, human trafficking and capitalist venality, which checks some “meaningful” boxes but are not anything remotely resembling revelations. They expose nothing but virtue signaling.
And then, my word, the plot hole. Hole? Plot CANYON.
The premise — that one morning the asshole dad carelessly, selfishly and tragically lets Edgar walk to school — is not in and of itself ludicrous. It echoes the nightmarish 1979 case of Etan Patz, who was 6 when he was abducted from his SoHo bus stop.
But the entire plot is driven by the fact that the event was an outlier, a lapse; every other day Edgar was escorted to and from school by his protective parents. Yet hours into the series, we discover that Edgar had been regularly spending time in the basement with the custodian and somehow traipsing alone around Manhattan and riding subways at least to midtown, and then exploring the subterranean bowels of the transit system to discover the grimy, drug addled (yet oddly civilized) refuge of homeless vagabonds mentioned above.
So … when? When was he taking these expeditions, and how were his overweening parents none the wiser? The script does not even try to explain the discrepancy. Nor do either of the parents seem to wonder when they discover the map of Edgar’s journeys. It’s like a dream, when the venue and cast of characters abruptly shifts, and the sleeper simply accepts the utterly different everything.
Now, if you’ve seen any promos of Eric, you might wonder why I haven’t mentioned the other main plot element. In his substance-fueled mania, Vincent decides to make a 10-foot-tall puppet — Eric, based on Edgar’s own sketches — a monster who surfaces from underground to confront the world with dark forces at play just out of view. Vincent contrives to add him to the cast of Good Morning, Sunshine to get Edgar's attention and lure him home.
From captivity? From the grave? Lure him exactly how? But Vincent is obsessed. In fact, Vincent is so obsessed that Eric comes to life in his disordered mind. The puppet and his mad creator are in constant arguments, because Eric taunts him mercilessly. Ever seen Harvey, about an imaginary 6-foot-tall rabbit? It’s like that, if Harvey were a dick.
That’s the plot device that is supposed to propel us, or drag us, through the last four insipid hours. It does not do that. Because while Eric is more gruff than the other puppets, he’s witless, too. The whole “inventive” gimmick just compounds the embarrassment.
Look, I know this has been harsh, but I do have some good news. This is a British series. In Europe, I’m pleased to inform Benedict Cumberbatch, the law provides an online “right to be forgotten.” A person can demand that compromising personal information be scrubbed from sites and made invisible to search engines.
If I were he, I’d get busy. Eric has already left a long and cringeworthy trail. Meanwhile, my back still hurts.
Wonderful! But what have you done with Bob Garfield?
"When he erupts, it’s like listening to Waze lashing out." Priceless!
Thanks for the warning. Nothing about this show sounds remotely compelling, rendering it easy to avoid. But hey, it's summer -- which means baseball -- so there isn't much time for idle viewing of bad streaming shows anyway. Your Phillies are having a fun season, but I suppose the time gap between here and there might not work in your favor.
Sorry about the back. As someone who has lived to regret ignoring the "Don't lift that by yourself, kid!" warnings from sage-but-crippled veterans of my chosen industry, I feel your pain. Every day. And it sucks.
Hang tough, Bob. I hope the pain eases soon -- and keep those Future Foreward podcasts coming!
MT
BTW -- you can tell Steve that there is in fact at least one person still clinging to a landline and ancient telephone answering machine. Cell phones are useful only as paperweights out here in the woods, where the Old Ways still reign.