‘Eric’ Review: Benedict Cumberbatch and His Giant Puppet Have No Business in This Dicey Netflix Drama
No matter how you dress them up, some characters just aren’t compelling enough to carry a story. They can be daring and desperate, kind and cultured, tattooed and full of ticks — heck, they can even be an alien from another planet, but if there’s no depth to their emotional spectrum, no hook to their charming personality, no mystery to their misery that merits its extended unraveling, well, then they’re just an empty suit — even if that suit is a horned, fanged, six-foot-tall puppet monster.
Such a descriptor may seem harsh for the star of “Eric,” a dad by the name of Vincent Anderson (Benedict Cumberbatch), who, on paper, seems like a perfectly suitable lead for a six-episode series. First and foremost, Vincent is the co-creator of a hit “Sesame Street”-like TV show titled “Hello Sunshine.” His staged neighborhood of colorful puppets is as beloved as Vincent himself is reviled. You see, Vincent isn’t a very nice person. He’s the cardboard cut-out of a tortured artist (perhaps his name is a nod to Vincent van Gogh?), angering his co-workers with nonstop complaints about everything from network notes to sloppy puppet construction, and driving loved ones away with his controlling nature, exhausting know-it-all-ness, and excessive drinking.
“Everyone thinks about changing the world and no one thinks about changing themselves,” Vincent says, mid-rant, waiting not-so-patiently for his 9-year-old son, Edgar (Ivan Howe), to identify his statement as a Tolstoy quote. Fun dad, huh? Not so much. But bad dads can make for good characters — there’s another show about a wayward father who also happens to be a famous puppeteer that’s actually worth watching — and perhaps Vincent could have been one, too, if only his central problem wasn’t obvious from the second he obliviously quoted one of Russia’s great writers. Vincent is so busy trying to perfect his kids’ show that he doesn’t realize his awful disposition is alienating his own child — until it’s too late.
Somewhere along his morning walk to school, Edgar disappears. The community goes on high alert. And Vincent flies into action. …kind of. “Eric” is predominantly about the search for Edgar, tracked via two parallel plots: a missing persons detective (played with a stirring mix of anger and poise by McKinley Belcher III) leading the NYPD’s official investigation, and Vincent, off on his own, charging ahead with his own misguided crusade. Because his whole world revolves around the fake sun painted above his pretend TV playground, Vincent can only process what’s happening to his family by convincing himself to build Edgar’s idea for a new puppet named Eric. If he can just get the giant, grumbling creature on TV, Vincent thinks his son will see him and find his way home.
As batshit banana-brained as that sounds, watching Vincent stumble around talking to a yeti-like imaginary monster gets old fast — partly because it’s always unclear whether the plan is actually supposed to work, or if everyone just thinks they’re better off humoring a sad dad who’s been pushed to the brink of sanity. (It stops and starts, its urgency waxing and waning with Vincent’s deteriorating mental state, which makes it difficult to determine if we’re watching a madmen in a death spiral or if we’re really meant to believe he’s on the right track.) But the other, arguably more pressing issue is that the cop’s grim investigation doesn’t gel with Vincent’s fantasy-land adventure. While Vincent is downing vodka all morning and dancing with a furry blue Sully substitute all night, Detective Ledroit (Belcher) is hunting down pedophile rings and staking out nightclub restrooms where sexually insecure men threaten to cut off each other’s balls.
The whiplash between the two stories is slightly stabilized by their shared setting: a beautifully gritty vision of 1980s Manhattan courtesy of production designer Alex Holmes. Rarely has New York City felt as full and filthy [complimentary] as it does here, and director Lucy Forbes uses the hustle and bustle to further emphasize that everyone feels like a suspect when you’re searching for a needle in a giant, grimy haystack. With transparent cliffhangers ending most episodes, a fluid pace, and the human compulsion to find out what happened, the episodes fly by, but I wouldn’t say they’re easy to watch. That whiplash never fully fades, and the pitch-black underworld dominating half the show creates a foul flavor that lingers after the credits roll / Netflix autoplays an ad for “Baby Reindeer.”
Plus, as soon as you recognize the embarrassingly flat arc Vincent is barely able to crest, there’s simply no saving “Eric.” For Cumber-enthusiasts, it barely functions as a showcase for its very capable star, since this isn’t the first time we’ve watched the two-time Oscar nominee depict a toxic white man, or a profound windbag, or a rich so-and-so who descends into a drunken and drugged stupor, and these repetitive character traits do little to draw interest toward his tiresome new character.
Aside from Vincent’s self-evident flaws, he also suffers in comparison. Det. Michael Ledroit doesn’t exactly break the mold. We’ve seen cops process their personal grief by throwing themselves into the darkest corners of their work time and time again. But in addition to Belcher’s tough-and-tender turn, his storyline expands beyond his dying boyfriend at home, beyond the search for Edgar among Manhattan’s ugliest denizens, into an affecting (albeit extremely unpleasant) concurrent quest. Marlon Rochelle, a 14-year-old Black boy, has been missing for much longer than Edgar. He’s been gone for enough time his mother has given up hope of finding him alive, but remains resolute in her demands for justice. She calls Ledroit’s office every other day. She asks the questions no one else will ask. Why is all this attention going to another kid? Where’s her son’s nightly news stories? How come the NYPD is trying to brush her and her boy under the rug?
The answers matter less than how Ledroit responds to the questions. As a closeted gay man in a station filled with macho white guys dropping racial slurs and homophobic retorts on the regular, the detective doesn’t exactly feel welcome at work. He doesn’t really feel welcomed anywhere, except with his partner, and that sole safe space comes with a ticking clock. But he’s very good at his job — good enough to know when suspects aren’t telling the full truth, good enough to notice clues overlooked by others, and good enough to spot curious overlaps between Marlon and Edgar’s circumstances. That he’ll have to put his own job, his own life, on the line to help these boys almost goes without saying, but showrunner Abi Morgan makes sure you feel the weight of the forces he’s up against, which feel especially hefty compared to the fluffy furball Vincent’s dragging around.
It’s a bit too simplistic to say “Eric” is half of a good show and half of a bad one. Questionable decisions abound, whether it’s what facts are shared to stretch out the mystery or how the series embodies some of the very problems to which it draws attention. (Maybe don’t spend the majority of your story on the white kid and his basic family while a rightly rage-filled Black mother sits in silence — except, of course, when the show wants to chastise the cops for racial discrimination?) “Eric” is filled with enough important issues — and one big hairy quirk — to make it seem like a series filled with fresh, serious ideas. But they’re really just window-dressing around another bad-dad saga that’s too distracted chasing a long shaggy tail.
Grade: C-
“Eric” premieres Thursday, May 30 on Netflix.
