Master of Puppets

After watching Eric, Netflix’s new limited series, my only question was: Okay, what was this about? Let me try to summarize something that, considering its loose structure, is hard to summarize: the plot of the six-episode miniseries, created and written by Abi Morgan and directed by Lucy Forbes, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the leading actor. Vincent Anderson (Cumberbatch) is a puppeteer, creator of a children’s TV show quite similar to The Muppet Show, whose nine-year-old son, Edgar, disappears. And well, since the child disappeared, Vincent must find him. At least that would be the premise of the series, although it is really a false premise. Because really this show is not about that lost child. And here is when Eric becomes a very rare visual-narrative experience so flat that, sadly, we will forget it very soon, even though Cumberbatch could win an Emmy.

Set in the New York of the early 80-s, when it was horrible and full of homelessness, drugs, and crime, the ambition of the show’s creator is so out of this planet that it doesn’t fit on the screen. This is something like Alice in Nightmareland. We go down a rabbit hole littered with so many plots and subplots that it quickly dilutes into total narrative disconnect and an almost insane arc for the main character, if Vincent is the main character at all, though personally I don’t think he is.

From the first scene we are in an almost hellish world in which Vincent is going through his worst moment: his show is in a slump, his marriage has long since collapsed, his relationship with his son is as toxic as sniffing insecticide; he has alcohol and drug problems. But the above is just scratching the surface, Vincent has mental issues. And although no one diagnoses him as such in the series, he suffers from bipolar disorder on the most bipolar level imaginable.

Then his son disappears. The kid longs to create his own character to be included in his dad’s TV show (Good Day, Sunshine!, my goodness, what an opposite name to the creepy show it really is!) And the kid actually creates this huge monster named Eric. Up to this point we have the plot for a limited series. In fact, with this material there are plenty of possibilities to make something very interesting. But the series is not, at its core, about any of this.

Eric: Plot 2

There are a lot of layers here that are supposed to propel the main plot, but when you have no idea what the main plot is, then everything is a mess. Within this blender of stories, we have a poor police investigation, the social cleansing of the areas of New York City with the largest homeless, black and queer populations in a forced nod to the supposed requirements of today’s inclusive audience. But it comes compacted in the worst stereotype of all: a gay black cop whose partner is a rich white artist. If that’s not forcing a plot, already pushed to the extreme, I don’t know what could be.

And of course the show’s creator makes a superhuman effort to push this to levels that make no sense. So, what could be like the craziest thing? Eric, that puppet that Vincent’s son created comes to life (in Vincent’s mind) and accompanies him everywhere, making his life even more miserable than it is. Imagine Tyler Durden  from Fight Club, but with the difference that here he is a seven-foot-tall puppet that reminds us of Sulley from Monsters, Inc.

This thing about Vincent seeing and the monster accompanying him everywhere is completely unnecessary. It’s a visual nuisance, interfering with the character’s reality: he is his own monster and you don’t need a seven-foot doll to build a metaphor (if that’s the purpose). At times I thought Benedict Cumberbatch was overacting in some scenes, but after I consulted an expert on bipolar disorder who watched the series, she told me that the guy acted exactly like someone with that disorder behaves when he reaches peak points. So good for Cumberbatch, and too bad Eric the monster was a pain in the ass along the way.

But in the broad aspect, the series wants to be about many things, including the implosion of a city and of society in general… And it’s all so distorted that no wonder that no one kidnapped the kid, but rather, he ran away in the midst of this madness. I apologize, sort of, for that spoiler, but I did just save you six hours of your life.