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Beyond Vincent, Eric explores a vast array of characters with their own unique stories using its six-episode structure. Cassie only stays married to Cumberbatch's volatile character for her son; McKinley Belcher III's Detective Ledroit struggles between his reassignment to the Missing Persons unit and caring for his partner dying of AIDS; and Dan Fogler's Lennie is caught between a rock and a hard place as he tries to comfort his best friend amid his son's disappearance, while also grappling with his endlessly toxic behavior and the strain it's stressing on their show.
Although these entwining stories do surface in the show's final segments, the general build-up seems a touch too erratic for its timing. Eric looks to investigate these characters, but it discovers itself juggling a range of overlapping narratives, including a rise in homelessness in New York at the time, political corruption masquerading as benign development for the city and the police brushing some cases under the radar in favor of others. Although these are all rather interesting, they finally seem out of place and a diversion from the main focus of the program.
Beyond Cumberbatch in the starring position, Eric's strongest selling feature is the titular monster puppet, whose Vincent starts hallucinating while his search for Edgar intensues. This idea would be used for a more humorous effect in any other program, leaning into bizarre circumstances and embarrassing chats with the human character having to explain away his apparently crazy talks with a non-existent figure to people around him.
Morgan uses Eric as a reference for Vincent's general development in addition to leaning into the funny opportunities presented by a Netflix show. She really succeeds in both portions, but Eric's whole tonal balance feels a little too confused. With its narrative, which shows the terrible effects Vincent's behavior has left on his family and friends as well as himself as he fights with alcoholism and other drug addictions, the show follows a definitely dark route.
Eric is not a total disappointment despite some of its flaws; the cast is the main one that keeps him from being completely let down. Cumberbatch masterfully commands his performance in his pivotal turns as both Vincent and the titular monster puppet, believally getting into the darker impulses of the former and making Eric feel like both a totally different character and extension of his flawed protagonist. In their individual performances, Hoffman and Belcher III both excel, establishing their own original emotional storylines that captivate viewers.
Though it lacks the advantage of time, Eric is a show with plenty to say and many characters it wants to examine. Although it could be argued that distributing a Missing Persons plot over several seasons could cause even more problems with appropriate narrative emphasis, it would have at least given Morgan more freedom to better explore the several themes and well-rounded characters. Having said that, the program just barely avoids collapsing under the weight of its several storylines thanks to the outstanding performances of her amazing ensemble and some quite potent moments.
Writing an interesting missing persons narrative is difficult, especially one planned to span six hour-long episodes as Netflix's Eric does. That so, even if the play aims to challenge expectations of its fundamental idea with a bizarre incarnation of the titular puppet monster and an ensemble of fascinating individuals, it finds itself somewhat too hampered by these conflicting elements to make for a totally absorbing viewing.
Eric tracks gifted puppeteer Vincent, whose life is rocked by the unexplained death of his son, Edgar. Vincent transfers his pain into his puppet, Eric, as he descends into a world of hopelessness and obsession. From Shame co-writer Abi Morgan, Eric mostly centers on Benedict Cumberbatch's Vincent, the co-creator and star of a children's puppet TV show from the 1980s. Vincent's home life is anything from sunny since his egotistical nature sometimes runs counter to his wife, Cassie (Gaby Hoffman), small son, Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe), and colleagues.
Eric can't find the appropriate pace to do that where series like True Detective have flourished in gently providing answers to their major mystery while concentrating on character development. In certain episodes, the emphasis on other individuals and tales is so strong that the search for Edgar—that is, tell us who or what is behind his disappearance—almost seems nonexistent. Though these entwining storylines do surface in the show's later chapters, the general build-up seems a touch too erratic for its timing.
Vincent's darkest features become more frequent when his kid disappears; finally, they show up as a deluded hallucinations of the titular monster puppet his son built, hoping to persuade him to come home. But the program finally feels overloaded given the abundance of other characters and plots occurring.