The Profoundly Moronic Ending to Netflix's 'Eric' Explained

By Dustin Rowles | TV | June 3, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | June 3, 2024 |

I don’t really understand Netflix’s decision to greenlight a series like Eric. Yes, the algorithm says that Netflix viewers love true crime, and the fact that it’s based on real accounts is a big reason why the genre is popular. Eric feels like it’s targeted at those same true-crime viewers, but it’s fictional and incredibly bleak. If we’re going to suffer through six hours of it, we need to know that the stakes are real. In fact, midway through the first episode, I stopped to Google, “Is Eric based on a true story?” because that was the only reason I could imagine anyone would otherwise care.

Eric is set in New York City in the 1980s — not the fun, hypercolor T-shirt and Aquanet 1980s but the seedy early 1980s, back when the city looked like it did in Taxi Driver and The Warriors. It’s pre-Giuliani, when New York City had personality! And also crime, unhoused people living underground, and so much trash (in this series, sanitation services have been backed up for weeks).

Against this backdrop, Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) is the creator and puppeteer of the long-running children’s television series Good Day, Sunshine!. He’s also a real asshole to both his co-workers and the suits that control the purse strings. His assholery extends to his home life, where he lives with his wife, the chain-smoking Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann), and his nine-year-old son, Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe).

After work one night, Vincent is cruel to his son — who loves to create his own puppet characters — and Vincent and Cassie get into a screaming match before bed. Things are thrown. Profanities are uttered. The next morning, while Vincent and Cassie are making up in the stairwell of their apartment building, Edgar takes off and walks to school alone in Mean Streets New York City. Edgar never makes it to school.

What follows are six grim episodes in which Vincent and Cassie continue to fight and eventually break up; Vincent also continues to clash with his co-workers, including Lennie (Dan Fogler), the guy supporting him; and eventually, Vincent has a psychotic break. He begins communicating with a giant monster puppet, Eric, who Edgar actually created. Vincent searches the city for his son, yells at Eric, does a lot of drugs, and even gets wasted and goes dancing, as parents who have a missing child do, right?

Meanwhile, the only character that anyone actually cares about, Detective Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III), is also searching for Edgar, as well as a teenager named Marlon Rochelle who went missing the year before. The difference between Edgar and Marlon is that Edgar is white and Marlon is Black, but Ledroit — who is also Black — continues to investigate Marlon’s disappearance even after everyone else has given up. Ledroit is also a closeted gay man whose partner has AIDS because it was imperative that creator Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady) pile on the misery.

It’s clear that Eric wants to say something about systemic racism, police brutality, the unhoused, 1980s homophobia, mental illness, and parenting, among other things, but it tries so hard to say so much that it doesn’t say anything at all. And it’s all blanketed with grimness and an almost desperate Benedict Cumberbatch performance. It feels hot and sweaty, like everyone is sticky and needs a shower and some Nicorette gum. The magical realism of the giant monster puppet, Eric, doesn’t jibe with the rest of the film. It’s like Michel Gondry came along and injected a few scenes into Serpico.

It’s not fun to watch, it’s not compelling, and it’s not even based on a true story, so the only reason I kept watching was to find out what happened to Edgar. And here is where I tell you what happened to Edgar, because wow, is it dumb.

Spoilers

Edgar is missing for several days. There’s blanket local news coverage of his disappearance. The whole city is looking for him, and it feels like he’s probably dead. A bloody shirt he was wearing on the day he disappeared surfaces, and an unhoused teenager is found wearing his jacket. At one point, Vincent is a suspect. At another point, a very nice old man played by Clarke Peters is suspected. Detective Ledroit — whose partner dies of AIDS in the fifth episode — suspects it all centers around a nightclub called The Lux.

It is true that the disappearance of Marlon, the Black teenager, centers on the Lux. CCTV coverage catches Marlon giving a blow job to the deputy mayor when the police roll up. Basically, the deputy mayor has the vice cops deal with the situation; they beat Marlon to death. Then, sanitation workers — at the behest of the deputy mayor — wrap up his body, throw it in the garbage truck, and dump him in a landfill.

Again, bleak as hell.

Elsewhere, Edgar has been drawing a lot on the wall of the boiler room in the apartment building. Vincent eventually surmises that Edgar has drawn a map. Vincent, who is essentially out of his mind on drugs, begins to follow the map, which eventually takes him to a large underground community of unhoused people, where he does some crack and passes out, but not before spotting Edgar. It turns out that Edgar has followed a houseless man, Yuusuf (Bamar Kane), into the underground community because Edgar would rather live there than with his father. Yuusuf is kind to Edgar, although Yuusuf also believes that Edgar should eventually go home, and he plans to collect the reward money in exchange for Edgar.

But the police break up the underground community, and Edgar vanishes. However, Vincent had seen him, so when he wakes up from his bender, he puts on the suit of the actual Eric puppet back at the studio. This is when the tone of this bleak, sad tale of misery does a complete 180-degree turn. Vincent, in costume, jumps up on stage during a big rally for homelessness. He takes the microphone, and again, as Eric, he gives a grand speech where he apologizes for being a jerk. “Everyone deserves a home where they’re safe and not scared,” he says (he’s speaking both to Edgar and, I guess, to the cause), and he promises to do better as a father. “Truth is, everyone wants to change the world but never thinks to change himself,” Vincent says, removing his Eric mask.

Edgar is watching all of this on a television in a diner, where he sneaks in to eat someone’s leftovers. The music swells, and at this point, it almost feels like one of those Robin Williams’ family comedies. “Edgar, buddy. If you’re watching this, I’ll race you home,” Vincent says.

And Edgar takes off. And Vincent takes off. Running through the streets of New York City until finally, they reunite in front of the apartment building. Cassie comes, too. There are big hugs and happy tears. It feels like someone changed the channel, and we’re watching a completely different series.

There’s a postscript where we learn that Vincent went to rehab and everyone lives happily ever after, except for Lennie, who is outed for participating in a gay prostitution ring; the unhoused people who continue to be unhoused; Marlon’s mom, who lost her son, whose body is still missing in a landfill; and Detective Ledroit, who lost his partner and his apartment, because his partner’s family — who inherited everything — wouldn’t let him stay there because they are homophobic.

Don’t watch it. It’s a real bummer, except for a mawkish and sentimental 10 minutes at the end of the sixth episode, where it briefly turns into a Christopher Columbus movie. I understand that the juxtaposition between the grimness of Marlon’s brutal death and the well-lit discovery of Edgar may be intentional to illustrate a point, but it doesn’t work. Instead of highlighting the stark contrasts, it comes off as tone-deaf and strange.