The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Eric’ Review: Benedict Cumberbatch, Imaginary Puppets, and a WTF Ending

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Charles Holmes and Jodi Walker fight with the monster under the bed to recap ‘Eric,’ the six-episode limited Netflix series starring Benedict Cumberbatch. They start by discussing their complicated reactions to the pilot, why the subplots are much more interesting than the main story line, and how the narrative becomes increasingly convoluted as the show progresses (2:06). Along the way, they unpack its attempts to tackle an overwhelming number of heavy themes throughout the bizarre crime drama (18:01). Later, they talk through the tonal whiplash and surprising twists in the finale (23:49). Hosts: Charles Holmes and Jodi Walker Producer: Kai Grady Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Danny Hyf. It's here to remind you that it's never too early to start thinking about football. Join me with Danny Kelly and Craig Korbleck on the Ringer Fantasy Football Show all offseason. As we dive into the biggest news and topics are in the 2024-eastern season. Also, we probably get into really stupid arguments too. That's the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify. This episode is brought to by Boris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep-fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Borishead just did that.

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Obsessed. Today, we're here to discuss a very, very complicated television program. It's called Eric. Released on May 30th, the sixth episode limited series was created by Abby Morgan and Lucy Forbes and stars Benedict Cumber Patch in the leading role. It follows the story of Vincent, a puppeteer who must find his missing son in 1980s, New York, while being hunted by a large metaphorical Blue Monster, with all that Netflix table setting finally over, J-Dog, Jay Dizzle,

Walker, Texas Ranger, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Charles, I really appreciate you using all of my Muppet names. Thank you so much. We discussed that beforehand, and you did great. Speaking of Muppets, I would say I'm doing well. I'm also feeling a little mixed up,

because I did think that I was coming into a show that would be predominantly about Muppets, but was ultimately predominantly about municipal government. And that was an interesting pivot, but I was surprised at what we found in Eric. Much like most children's programming, my life,

just like this show sold me a dream, that it had no hopes of, you know, living up to the expectations that I expect for my programming and my life. So it's been a complicated couple of days. Shout out Justin Sales, who was like, you need to watch six episodes of this. This is such a big, unwieldy show in a lot of ways. I don't even want to try to wrap our Muppet arms around the whole thing. I just want to talk about the pilot episode.

Can you please walk me through your feelings after the first episode that kind of sets up this journey of this puppet, puppeteer Vincent, who creates a show, Good Day Sunshine and he loses his kid. I mean, we got to say, though, killer original song on Good Day Sunshine. Really great song. Good day, sun.

I've been singing it ever since I watched the show. I think the Sesame Street stuff works. I'm sure you won't like this, but I'm actually going to take us back a step further to the trailer for Eric. Which kind of sold me. I mean, it was a big idea.

Like, I think that this is such, you know, to take a sort of like murder show or a missing kid show and set it in this Sesame Street world, inexplicably make the dad like a, you know, creative genius who made this children's show is interesting. Having him go unhinged and start seeing the image of the Muppet that his son has drawn up and convince himself that the only way to get his son back is to create this Muppet and put it on television and hopefully his son will see it and come back home to the extent that he has the ability to do that. That is interesting.

So I went into this show being like, okay, what are we up to? And then to my absolute shock, and I feel like this is pretty evident or was for me pretty evident already in the trailer, I'll say I think that the Eric stuff, works decently in episodes one and two and then just gets completely overtaken by much more interesting, somehow much more interesting storylines in the eight-foot-tall Muppet.

But yeah, in the pilot, we kind of, I would say the most disheartening twist for me, sort of, is that Benedict Cumberbatch's character, Vincent, the father, whose son goes missing, who's created this show. is just your standard asshole. And I found that pretty deeply uninteresting in terms of a main character,

just kind of like, oh, yeah, another creative genius who, like, you know, just swigs vodka straight out of any glass he can get his hands on, a coffee couple do. It was just somehow the most interesting seeming storyline to me ended up being the most uninteresting. And then I would say that the police corruption, the municipal government corruption,

like the stuff that we see a lot more of, more standard, worked pretty well for me a lot in part to McKinley Belcher III, who I thought gave a really stellar performance. And like right off the bat, right in the pilot, I just found him incredibly engaging. So I was much more engaged in that aspect. But I was surprised by Eric. How did the pilot find you? So I did not watch the trailer. All I had seen was the press photo of Benedict next to this large, fluffy,

Sesame Street, Muppet-style character. And I was like, not for me, never watching that. And then, you know, the prestige TV phone went a rang rang. And when I picked it up, I just, I was just like, I'm not even doing any research on this. I'm just going to turn it on. I don't know what it's about. It's probably for the best because the trailer used SOS by ABBA, which is a trick.

That is an immediate trick for me to get on board. I would assume that maybe some people who are listening to this like, Eric, what's Eric? Maybe I'm just going to listen to this podcast and they will fill me in. I will walk you through being someone who knew nothing about this TV show watching the pilot. So like, okay, to your point, Jody, Benedict is just playing his very typical role. Dr. Strange, Sherlock, the asshole, alcoholic, addicted to drugs, anger issues. And he's created this show. And his son, he's kind of just an asshole father, asshole wife, checked out.

And one day, he loses his son amidst the fight the night before that continues into the morning with his wife. And basically the show unspools from there, where, to your point, It quickly becomes a show that's not just about this father trying to basically find his kid. It's also about NYPD corruption and the AIDS epidemic and also the homeless crisis and gentrification and addiction and child trafficking rings and conspiracies. And it just every, and this is a six episode series. And that's why it's like, I didn't want to come in here and be that. like, oh, I didn't like it. It's more so I was,

I ended up being very confused about what the show was and what it wanted to be and what it was its North Star because to your point, the interesting part of the show is this Leroyt character who was tasked with finding the missing son and he also, there's another black child

that he's never found. And that mystery becomes way more interesting and has nothing to do with the puppets and all the puppet stuff and all the bedded it cover patch stuff. I'm like,

this is kind of dragging me down. It's just pretty unbelievable that it's some, and it's kind of because of the way that the plot moves around, I do think they make the right choice to, at some point, just focused a lot more on Detective LaDroit,

his story, what he's up to, him solving these cases, and a lot less on the Muppet, but you're never not aware that there is a Muppet character named Eric. So, like, you always know that that is coming back. And it is a lot about expectations, I think. Like, this is a spoiler-heavy episode of Prestige TV.

So, but it's possible that there are people who are listening who haven't watched and who I think would, like, be better suited to watch just knowing going in that this, Muppet does not provide levity, which is, you know, kind of my assumption, was that, like, this was not going to be your standard missing child miniseries because of the Muppet. But it's actually a pretty strong standard missing child mini series. I think if it were about Detective Lodroit and his journey, for me, it's just like every time it went back to what was sort of set up as being the thing that made it different,

it was just a little bit taxing. And dare I say that is because Eric the Muppet wasn't charming enough, like wasn't enough of a character. I didn't, he, there was not a lot of chemistry because this is so insane. Oh my gosh, are you like, all right, you said it, you've been dancing around it this entire episode.

Are you saying in this weird puppet band rom-com, there was not enough chemistry between the titular Eric. That's right. And Benedict Cumberbush. And to anyone, but I mean, mostly Benedict Cumberbatch, who's the only one who can see him. And that's not really thanks to the Benedict Cumberbatch performance, which is strong.

I honestly don't have enough Muppet experience to say if it's thanks to the Eric performance. But it's sort of set up like Eric the Muppet is, I think a decision that the show never makes is, are we supposed to be on board with Benedict Cumberbatch's or Vincent's plan to use making Eric the Muppet to get his son back? Or are we supposed to think that he's crazy?

And more so are the people who are around him on board with this plan? Or are they just sort of appeasing him hoping that he doesn't go off the deep end? I mean, one thing is that he basically starts off the deep end. So that journey is sort of convoluted. But I couldn't really tell what my investment was supposed to be there. But mostly, he's just another Vincent.

It's not like Eric is a better or worse version of Vincent. It's not exactly like he's a version of the missing son. They're both assholes and they're just assholes to each other. And so they're kind of just like, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, all the time.

And yeah, it's not, I found the chemistry between the Muppet and Benedict Cumberbatch's character, Vincent, a little lacking

to want to go back to. And ultimately, I don't believe that this show needed any levity, so it's not missing that. I mean, I think it really works

when it's like a real tragedy and really in the dark. And probably the most successful thing, it does is like paint this 1980s New York in this sort of tangible way, but it's also very Sesame Street-like where everyone is just running into each other all the time. Like it's all just the same city block and all of...

And that is what ultimately creates the twist, which I will admit worked on me. It got a big old gasp out of me. But it takes all five episodes to set up. I want to stick on Eric because I agree with you. Hit me. Where the show, I was like, they aren't hiding the metaphors. They're not subtle at all.

It is like, I get that this boy drew this puppet that is big and furry and scary because his dad is an alcoholic who yells at him at night and yells at the mom and is totally self-absorbed. Got it good. Don't need to explain it further. But to your point. Once the kid is gone, they're like, look, he's seeing this puppy, and the puppy is a metaphor for all of the toxic things in himself. And I'm like, cool, got it done. But then Benedict Combridge Patch and then the show makes a choice visually where he's constantly yelling at the puppet, but no one else can see him. And all the characters are like, damn, little weird that you're yelling.

And then like back to more plot points. And I'm just like, is no one going to focus on the fact that this guy keeps talking to himself? Is the show ever going to address what this childhood was? He was, they say he was heavily medicated by his mother. He had problems. And I'm like, the show isn't invested enough in that layer, the alcoholism, the toxicity, the all of that, where it's just like, no, no, no. You're just going to learn it all through the puppet. And I'm like, no, I need a little bit.

Is that fair? Because I was just like, you guys are giving me enough. You're just being like, he's a mess. And I'm like, why? What am? He is a mess. And don't we know it? I feel like Eric suffers from what a lot of time travel movies or TV shows suffer from,

which is like there are some rules, but not enough rules around Eric and how Benedict Cumberbatch experiences him. And there is a, you see a physical. fight between the two of them in the final episode, which sort of goes back and forth between you actually seeing it happen with Eric the Muppet and then not, and then when he's not there, which is the reality of the situation. And Benedict Cumberbatch is flinging himself around and physically experiencing this thing, which is not, it's just hard to figure out.

And then he basically beats. the hallucination of Eric by beating Eric up. Like, that's sort of when Eric disappears for him. And it's like, oh, okay, so I guess this wasn't, you know, mental health. This was just an actual manifestation. But then I'm just like, I'm confused because his mother essentially kind of, everybody keeps saying like, oh, this has happened before. There's some type of mental health issue that he has either had a child or at another

point in his life. But then to your point, he has a physical fight with Eric that only he can see conquers him, but then narratively goes back to the Sesame Street Place to put on the physical costume to go find his son. And then he takes it off, which I'm like, all right, I get it metaphorically. You're taking off the head of the monster inside of you and you're going to go to rehab. And then at the end, the kid puts on the Eric costume. And I'm like, we have a lot of lost the thread of who Eric is in the show, what he's supposed to mean, because the last scene is like Eric,

like the actual mental image of Eric, not the suit, looking down at father and son, and I was just like, I'm not understanding what is going on thematically, metaphorically at all anymore. Am I just an idiot? It was such a strange way to end the show.

And, you know, obviously, we are ragging on a show that kind of like gave us some really, it just, I would say that my main issue was that was how convoluted it was and how much it was trying to do in six episodes, because it quite undermined the parts of it that really worked. But my biggest complaint is that ending of him, of big, real or not real, the Eric that we've been living with for six episodes, who Benedict Cumberbatch has physically shaken off of him

in the underground subway system. And they pan out on this character. We see him one last time. Like, didn't we all have a good time here? It's like, no. We had a bad time. I thought Eric was bad. Children are being trafficked.

Children are dead. Some children are found. The homeless population has been displaced. Like, we had, yeah, and Eric's bad. Eric's, he did, he, he, he, he, He doesn't do anything to help. And I just think at some point, I mean, this, you know, it's one, it's one thing for Vincent to be a bad dad. He starts off as a bad dad.

And I want to be clear that this is not his journey to become a better dad. This is his journey to become a worse dad. Because while his son is missing, he spends all of his time conceiving of a new. new Muppet and pitching that Muppet to the upper brass of this TV station. Then he gets the Muppet on air. Then he immediately goes to the club, gets hammered, dances all night, does cocaine in the bathroom with the Muppet. Later, he smokes a crack pipe and immediately passes out.

Like, he is not looking for this kid at all. I mean, not to mention he is quite literally the worst person to everyone in his orbit. And I get the fact that the show is saying, you know, this is what addiction does to you. But at no point did the show ever establish why I should care about Benedict Cumberpatch, because I'm like, he's an asshole, and I didn't care about the family

because I'm like, this family kind of sucks. So it was just like, too, like, I think we've been talking around it as well. It's like, the reason I was interested in everything else happening, because I'm just like, well, I like, at least like LaDroit, I like the police officer. He at least is compelling.

I can root for him. Benedict is just smoking crack now and I'm just like, they never mention it again. And I'm like, guys, we have to pick something and explain it. And I think that's my larger issue with the show a little bit where what am I supposed to care about? There's two missing children. There's corruption in the municipal government.

There's corruption in the NYPD. There's the AIDS epidemic. And then the homeless population and addiction. and what does this show want to say about any of this if we can only get little droplets of each? There's also this thing in terms of how you're being directed to sort of worry about the missing children where the sort of exposition

and what you're being told is like, this is so wrong and this is so corrupt that this little rich white boy is getting all the attention and all the media and all the funds and will most likely be found one way or another because of that. And that this black boy has been missing for 11 months and basically given up on and no one's paying attention to him and isn't that bad. You're like being told in the show isn't that bad.

Yeah. But also the show isn't really focusing on him and the show is also. And you're sort of constantly, well, once you find out where Edgar is, which is in the underground tunnel where he has run away to and been found by like a pretty nice guy who's just holding on to him and maybe going to get the reward money, you know he's okay. You know, like he seems okay. There are definitely times where he is in danger. And it's not like you want him to not be okay, but you know that he is.

And so it does kind of undermine the stakes of that storyline that's already pretty, disparate because the mom is frantic and the dad is making a puppet. It's just, you know, I'll give the show this. It zigs a lot when you think it's going to zag or wear a normal show with zag. It definitely makes interesting choices. But, yeah, it's hard to know

where to focus your attention. There's like a whole storyline about like a private garbage. company that is running cocaine and, like, working with the, you know, doing, like, bad trades with the government. And that stuff is ultimately important to the twist, but it gets a lot of time. There are a lot of characters to keep up with. I mean, also, there's a whole separate storyline where Benedict Comfortatch's wife,

Cassie, I believe her name is, gets pregnant by the man. that she's been seeing. And, like, the show does this thing where it was, like, sometimes the writing, I'm like, guys, we needed one more pass. Because in the pilot, Benedict is, like, yelling at his wife,

and he's just like, you don't want to have sex with me. You don't want to have sex with me. And then literally, a couple of days later, we see her with the other guy. And I'm just like, I didn't really need this whole,

like, horny dad, Benedict to be yelling this at me. I already don't like him enough. I don't like have to hear him screaming at his wife that she won't have sex with him. Charles, when she... And I got to say, this is also a great performance from Gabby Hoffman.

Like, that's what's so interesting is, like, these are really good actors, and I think what is hardest about the show is, like, there is a lot of promise. Like, there are storylines that work. There's a world where putting a Muppet in this as a sort of, like, you know, vision of the main character

There are a lot of versions of this that work. But anyway, when Gabby Hoffman said, and I'm pregnant, I was like, oh my gosh. I got one more thing to keep up with. Sometime around like episode three and four, I really couldn't believe how many. And like the city commissioner is at the Sesame Street show. The trash man is his brother-in-law.

The guy who found the shirt. is working for the trash company. And again, these things all come together. The things that the show does that don't work, it does with intention. Like, even, you know, we talked about that Benedict Cumberbatch's character, Vincent, is, like, supremely unlikable.

But there's a line from another very unlikable puppeteer at the Muppet show. And she's like, how do you have everything going on in your life right now that you do? do and you still struggle to make people have basic human sympathy for you. And that is, it is a feat. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help.

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And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L. Every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. I think there are two parts of this show where there is the part of this show that is very

much, I'm like, oh, I would be interested in a Jim Henson stand-in who is struggling with addiction and creativity and destroying everyone around him and this show, because I'm like, this is interesting, but the show never really commits enough to the puppet stuff for me to even believe or think of this is a real interesting show. And then there's like the true detective part, conspiracy, child sex trafficking through clubs part, which I'm like,

that part really has nothing to do with the puppets. And I'm like, I could understand when you're in a room being like, this is going to be true detective. But instead of these people, it's like Jim Henson and a black dude, you're just like, us all.

Yeah, let's do that. They, and never shall the two meet. Like these two, you know, they ultimately, Detective LaDroit becomes our other main character that, you know, I think we both think worked a lot better. There's got to be a world where these...

And he's looking for Vincent's son, but like the storyline somehow fairly overlap. Like in terms of what Vincent is doing and what Detective LaDroit is doing, both allegedly working towards getting Edgar back one person is just playing in the sandbox pretending to work towards getting Edgar back. The other one is absolutely in, you know,

the nightclub hell making it happen. But it's strange, really, like how little these two main characters interact when they're doing the same thing. I could not agree more. And there was another thing about the show that I was just like, this is what happens when it's a six episode limited series

where every character knows every character where it was like there's this clumsy part that happens in the finale where Vincent Bennett Comber Patch's character The Puppeteer has this partner, this put upon partner, who helped him create the show. And the show will do this thing

when they want you to know that there's another suspect coming, a police file will fall off the desk and reveal the photo this happens twice. Like twice, there are two different characters where I'm just like, oh, this character went to prison. Oh, this one.

And the partner character who made the help make the puppet show, the police officer comes to him and he's just like, hey, do you want to tell me about why you were at this club and why you got arrested? And he literally goes, I love children. I love this puppet show. And I'm like, oh, please don't do the thing that I think you're going to do. And the officer is like, have you ever been alone with the child?

And I'm like, please, like, what are, what's happening? And at the end, the final spoiler alert, at the final episode, they're listing off all of the people that have been brought up in this conspiracy, child sex trafficking. And we realize it is the partner was one of the guy's name. And he opens a window and jumps out of it. And I'm like, why did we do this? This character should not have overlapped with the other. plot, but he needed to.

And I was like, we never learned that much about him. And that was when I was just like, oh, the character from the Muppet show, this is him crossing over into the true detective universe. And it ended up tasteless. It's a lot. And then I was like, well, I guess it is this sort of, eventually it sort of starts, some of it, the, like, extreme overlapping of characters once. Vincent transitions from focusing all of his energy on building a Muppet

and communicating with the, you know, real-life version of that Muppet. He finds a map that his son has drawn down in the basement of their building. And he sort of starts following this map to find his son. And it sort of works. But then he smokes a crack pipe and passes out. so he doesn't find him. At that point, I was like, yeah, you know, I guess these are all people that Edgar the Sun crosses paths with every day.

Like, there is going to be some local overlap. But I think at the point where, you know, Detective LaDroit was like childhood sweethearts with the club owner who he had to be. bust for sex trafficking, right? He sleeps with them, but then the guy gives him the tape that he needs, and I'm like, this is messy. Like this whole thing. I'm like, why can, why is, that's kind of what I meant by, like, I like the storyline about,

okay, there is this closeted African-American cop who is trying to find these kids, trying to fight off the homophobia in the NYPD, but just in the world at that time. So if we think about the characters that are gay, there's a lot of them, but they're all wrapped up in the same mystery. So it's like there's the cop, there is Vincent's partner, there is, who else?

And then there's... The club owner. The club owner. Most of the people at the club. There's the sex trafficker where it's like everybody is like, it's introduced to us in a way where I'm like, this show really does care about really showing us, like, this is how dangerous,

you know, the AIDS epidemic and what it was to be a gay man, gay woman in this time period. This is what you had to face. I'm like, no, that's interesting. But you guys don't have the real estate to spend time enough on it to make it, honestly, make sense narratively, but emotionally make me feel like, all right, you guys did this in a very caring way. And I know they probably tried. The creators tried their best.

Yeah. But I'm like, when I have to go. back to the Muppet storyline where Benedict Cumberpatch is beating up an invisible person totally that's it. It's just a big shift. And I don't want to like shit on this. There were parts I loved

but I was like because I like the La Droit storyline so much, there was a feeling of like y'all could have handled this a little better. I think that the care was there. I think that they cared to

do that the creators cared to do this. They weren't just like, we are going to wedge every societal issue of 1980s, New York, right into this show because we have to to make it a certain way. It didn't feel like that to me, but it, like you said, it didn't feel like it had the real estate to make as many things work as it wanted to make work. Something that I felt worked with a very small amount of real estate was the partnership between Detective LaDroit and his lover, who we only, or his seven-year-long partner who is dying

and dies in the show. I was hurt. I was like, oh, my God. I was emotionally moved by their connection. I think it really comes across on screen. It comes across quickly, how much they mean to one another, how much it means to have had this partnership

to Detective Leroyt. who works in this like, you know, predominantly white, very toxic, straight environment where he's having to, you know, hear slurs all the time, like to go home to that peaceful environment full of love. To me, that, like, really came across. There are places where the show successfully does things in a quick and subtle way. And then like in the complete opposite, there are places where it feels very ham-fisted the way that everyone knows each other or is a or is a Muppet. Those are the places that it felt hand-fisted to me.

And I think this is both a beautiful thing about TV because it can be so random, but an indictment of the show that the relationship that I was most invested in was not Benedict Cumberpatch and Eric, it was LaDroit and his partner who was dying of AIDS. Because to your point, I was like, oh, that's the character that I care about. And you're showing me a portion of his life that is not tied up in the world treating him poorly.

It's not tied up in this case. It's him getting, it's the thing that we love about TV. I'm like, I get to see this character taking care of someone to the best of his ability and sharing, tender moments and tough moments and he gets to be a fully fleshed out character and I was like oh I want that version of the show

where there's enough time because by the time his partner dies I'm like I was a little bit like all right well now you lost the one thing in the show that I thought was like firing on all cylinders which was their relationship and now I felt after that I'm like La Troit just has to be

an unstoppable unmovable train that's getting shit on by the entire world for the rest of this series, which is tough. What do you have bedded at Cumberbatch? Ending up smoking crack. Underground. A question I kept thinking in this show

where I liked a lot of things, but it was obviously suffering from packing too much in. And it's kind of rare these days to get a six-episode mini-series, especially on Netflix, where you can just, you know, this definitely had the Netflix treatment

of giving a cliffhanger at the end of each episode that made me want to tune into the next. Do you think it would have benefited from being 10 episodes? Like, is there a world where these other storylines could have either been fleshed out more or eliminated?

Like, do you think there's a more successful version of this show? The worst reply I can give you because we say it all the time, but I was literally like, this is a movie. like this is a this is a two and a half like a two hour

not two and a half if it's two and a half I'm still mad I'm like this is a two hour movie because I'm just like everything that this show is trying to do I'm like either make a show about a gay black cop

in the NYPD trying to stop a child sex trafficking ring and having to go up against the entire corruption of the government or make your Jim Henson show don't try

try in six episodes to do both. And if you are going to try to do both, I'm like, you're going to need the to me the tightness of a movie. Because if it's a movie, you're like, a lot of the stuff I didn't like about this would have been cut. You know, Charles, I knew that you might say this to me. I knew that you might say that it should be a movie in anticipation.

I don't know if it works as a movie because it's, yeah, it's two different things. And I tend to be a love. not a hater, and I neither loved nor hated this show. I was disappointed on account of being so excited for the Muppet thing. I want you to go back and watch the trailer. I think the trailer really sells the Mupp, like, that Eric, that this, like, you know, grieving father going down the drain of sanity and only finding solace in a Muppet of his own making.

the trailer sold me on that. And the extent to which the titular character of Eric doesn't work, like can't be understated here. It just, it's, it doesn't move. I'm not sure what, like, purpose Eric was ultimately supposed to serve, except to be a gimmick. I mean, aesthetically as well, I was like for a character, that needs to really just sell the show.

Like, I don't even know if I, like, looking at Eric. I don't know if I like the name Eric. Like, what I was describing this show to people? They're like, what show are you watching? I'm like, I cannot tell people that, hey, I'm watching some Eric. Watching six tight episodes of Eric. You know, I just bingeed Eric this weekend. I don't even want to say that.

Here's a thing. I just, are we in a post-puppet society now where, For a puppet to work, you really either have to be all in on the puppet. And I just don't know. Like, puppets can work. Here's the thing. I will list off some puppets at work and they're all from the same franchise. Baby Yoda works.

Why? Because that show is just like, we got Baby Yoda. We know what you want when you see a puppet. What do you want? You want a tiny little gremlin freak doing cute shit. Everybody loves that. What's the Rise of Skywalker? One of the worst movies I've ever seen in theaters.

Have you seen that movie? I have not. But have you ever seen the meme of Babu freak? Yeah. Da-da-da-da-babab-freek. You've never seen Babu-Frick? I don't know if I've seen that specific meme. All right. Oh, we're doing this live.

Type in YouTube, just type in B-A-B-U-F-R-I-K, Babu-Frik. That's a puppet that works. Oh, not what I was thinking of. And what did he say in the meme? I don't even know. It's just like, hey, babu-fri-fri-fri-. Just click on one of the videos. Five seconds of it, you're going to fall in love with Babu Frick.

Yeah, no, I love him already. I'm not listening to you anymore. I'm listening to BabuFrick. To answer your question, no, we are not in a Post-Muppet world. Muppet's work. That is what is wild about the experience of watching this is I just expected that to be the thing that I, You're so disappointed.

And I don't know. Maybe, like, maybe if this McKinley Belcher, the third performance was not so strong, maybe Eric wouldn't be so lacking in comparison. But also, you mentioned his name and not wanting to tell your friends what you were doing, which, like, classic part of the job, you know. But I do feel that this show suffers from Challenger syndrome, where the names should be swapped. Like, in the movie, Challenger's art seemed like a Patrick,

and Patrick seemed like an art. here, I feel that Edgar is the much more obvious Muppet name. Like that sounds... Edgar, yes! Like a Muppet name and Eric sounds like the name of a little boy.

I could not agree more because I was also like, you know, Barney. Barney is a Muppet name. You're just like, oh, my friend Barney, Elmo. You're just like it rolls off the time. You're like, oh, I'm chilling with my friend, Elmo. I can't, like, a kid's not like,

Eric! I want to hug Eric. Like, I'm kids to do it. ever said that, even if his dad's name was Eric. Nobody wants to say that. It does make sense that a kid would name his character, Eric. It does make sense. But to then base the whole show on it and have to

call that big gangly guy, Eric, it's funny. No, I will say. It got a genuine LOL out of me when Eric, the hallucination, says about Eric the Muppet. Oh, they got the eyes all wrong. I thought that was pretty funny.

And I did, I did like the subtle differences between the Eric that was created and the Eric that lived in Vincent's head. But then you're also watching Vincent create Eric the Muppet while Eric the hallucination is behind him fully formed

and Vincent really toiling over like, ah, how do I get the teeth right? It's like, you got the teeth right. You're looking at him. You're looking at him. Yeah, he was slaving over the sketch. I'm like, first of all, I'm like, your kid already did like,

80% of the work, dude. And to your point, I'm like, you have a whole, I'm just like, tell him to sit down and pose like Rose and Titanic and you'll be done in five minutes. Stop. He's already nude. So we're halfway there. I love puppets. So I love puppets.

I don't want, people are going to be like, he hates what I love puppets. Gremlins is one of my favorite movies. I watch it every Christmas. But here's the thing. Gizmo, I go back to the whole thing. Gizmo is a little gremlin dude. He always is doing cute stuff. getting into shit. I'm like, bro, I love Gizmo. Eric, to your, like, we keep coming back to this point.

I'm like, Eric isn't fun to look at. He just yells at people. He's cursing. He's mean. I'm like, if you're going to have a puppet in your show, he needs to be like a baby Yoda. He needs to be a Gremlin. He needs to be something I can point to and be like, I want this thing in my life. He can't be a cousin Skeeter. Okay. He cannot be a cousin Skeeter. Excellent reference. But does the name is Ted a puppet? Where does Ted fall in the classification of

Muppets, Puppets, and Animatronics? Ted is CG, so he's technically not, but he does fall under the same principle where it's like even though Ted is like foul-mouthed and shit, he's still a cute little teddy bear. So I'm just like, look at that cute

little teddy bear getting up to no good. It's like why we love cats. Cats are assholes, but every single time you look at cat, you just kind of have to laugh. You're just like, look at that little furry thing being a dickhead. That's great. Why does Big Bird work? Big Bird's an asshole. No one likes Big Bird because he's big. But everybody loves Big Bird because he's big and nice. So you're just like, oh, you could squash me or your neck could like literally snap my vertebrae in five seconds. But you don't do that because you're big and fluffy and I love you. You know what I'm saying? Oscar the Grouch, very, very tiny.

He gets to be grouchy because people like, what are you going to do? Hop him out of that trash can, you would die. That's why we love you, Oscar the grouch. He also gets to be grouchy because Big Bird is nice. The problem with Eric and Vincent is that they're the same character, but one of them looks like Scully from Monsters Inc.

And one of them has been in a Cumberbatch. And it just, like, it does not provide a bouncing board. they're basically playing pretend at finding this very real missing boy. And it's just kind of at some point like unimaginable that the dad is not, it is imaginable that like in his grief and his sorrow and his regret over not being a good father, that he, but it doesn't seem like the Muppet, it doesn't seem like Eric is who's telling him that he's been a bad father. he knows he's been a bad father.

Like, Eric is just, Eric hates Vincent and Vincent hates Vincent. And the world hates Vincent. And the world hates Vincent. And so there's just kind of like not a lot of ground being covered. Whereas over at the NYPD with Detective LaD, I mean, he is busting up sex rings. He is listening to tapes.

He is hitting so much 1980 CCTV. But I was getting such a hit every time he got new CCTV. footage. Oh, yeah. Because he was finding stuff out, like, every new VCR tape he got. Was his secretary was Tina? Tina would be like, we got some new footage. And I'm like, hell yeah, LaDroit, pop that shit in the VCR.

Let's fucking go. And Tina as like a side character, a very small, very subtle side character in that storyline really worked for me, too. Like, she had a journey of being, like, set up, you know, of his boss trying to, like, set him up with his secretary, which is, you know, just wild 1980s behavior. To being like, oh, you know, my cousin is like you, to being like his best ally and, you know, hiding the tapes so they can't get stolen. Like, I just, I liked her.

I took to her. I understood these characters and these people. And I, you know, I think it's a long journey to get you to understand a Muppet. And the show doesn't take the journey. And it is actually a good thing for the show that it doesn't because it then has these other storylines that work a lot better and come into this ultimate twist in the penultimate and finale episodes. But I wonder what kind of show it would have been without The Muppet.

What's the twist? Because I watched all these episodes like none of this feels like a twist to me. I mean, the twist is that the young, you know, the teenage boy who's been made. missing, Marlin was ultimately killed by these undercover cops that Detective LaDroit has kind of known that something was up and that he wasn't just killed by them. He was killed in the process of being trafficked by this city commissioner who we've had to get to know. And then his body is taken away by the city commissioner's brother-in-law who runs.

the trash company that is going to get the contract for clearing all of the unhoused people off the streets. The extent to which, like, we are asked to understand what is happening in this municipal government, I really couldn't believe. Until the twist, that didn't, the city commissioner's involvement in the teenage boy, Marlon's disappearance, that didn't play as a twist for you? No, because the pilot has this very Netflix thing where it was shot in a way that I was like, are they doing this on purpose?

Where when Edgar and Vincent are walking home for the first time, like a sinister garbage man, like watches them from the garbage truck. Or like when Vincent is being an asshole at work while he has a puppet, a puppet on his arm, his sidekick, he's like, All right, make sure not to be an asshole live, the city commissioner, and everybody are here, play nice. And I'm just like, oh, you're doing the thing where you are introducing all of the players.

And these are all of the pieces, but you're doing it in the very Netflix way, where if I check my phone and then I look back up, they're going to keep hitting. They're just like, look at this sinister motherfucker. He looks like Donald Trump. Look like this. He looks like the fucking villain from an 80s team. high school movie. And I was like, well, of course these fuckers are up to no good.

Who else could it be? And that's why the mystery, it never really felt like a twist. Like there's all these SEO headlines being like, the ending of Eric explained. And it'll literally be like, they found the kid,

it was a sex trafficking ring, there was no twist. And I'm just like, you fuckers. So it never felt like a twist. Okay, I will tell you what. The actual twist is that like everything you've been watching matters, because it's so, and it doesn't,

but it's so deeply feels. It so deeply feels like, I am being forced to get to know this city commissioner for no reason. And the payoff is not high enough for the amount of time I spent with the city commissioner for him to then be involved in this and get arrested during his daughter.

What did you think about the finale of this show, the payoff that we get from the storylines that we both liked and didn't like? What did you think about getting to the end? I thought I've touched on this. I thought a lot of it bordered on the offensive where it was like, okay, so we find out that this missing black child was, well, it's never confirmed. I think it's heavily implied that he was queer or maybe closeted. This is a 14-year-old child, and LaGroix is watching the CCTV footage of in-performing sexual act on the commissioner. And then these cops are coming out, and the cops basically are at this club, and they want

all of this money, and they get mad at the teenager. And one of these white cops kills the black team. And there's a point when the city commissioner, when the cop is like, has him in the interrogation room and he's asking and the guy's just like, you don't know how hard it is to hide all your life. And he kind of goes into this spiel of how hard it is to be a closeted gay man. And I'm just like, I understand narratively that you are underlining what La Troit's been facing, which is like every single time he goes into work, he's going into a highly racist, homophobic place. I am getting a little bit offended that I'm just like, this story is about a 14 year old.

black child. And it's not really unfolding with the amount of care that I think that scene needed. It almost felt a little too true, crimey, where I'm like, I feel like this could have been a little bit more elegant. I feel like this other closeted man who was, it's heavily implied, having inappropriate relationships with teenagers, jumping out of a building needed more care because that character wasn't a character. And I'm like, if you're going to introduce a, all of these queer characters at once, they all just can't be, honestly, the villains of the story

performing these very hard acts on teenagers and teenagers of color. Am I being unfair? No, I don't think you're being unfair. I think I had this very strange, like, sort of like, almost visceral experience of watching the finale where I just kept thinking it was going to end. And then there were like 15 more minutes.

And each one of those minutes came with like another tragedy. I was kind of like, I feel like we're wrapped up here, you know? Like it kind of, this whole show has been designed to wrap up in like a very ugly bow where all of the storylines come together on this CCTV footage, basically. And like you said, like it ends really tragically, really badly. villainously. For all of the queer characters, all of the characters of color,

it almost feels wrong or weird that the show ends with this kind of like happy ending. You get like a few months later title card for Vincent where he's gone to rehab, he comes back, he gets to be with Edgar again. But there's also this sort of,

you know, you mentioned earlier than Edgar puts on the Eric suit. And there's like sort of a sinister energy to what, to the music when Edgar has on the suit. I just, I had so fully become invested in LaDroit and that storyline. He's the hero of the show.

It almost felt wrong for it to end with Vincent. It definitely, as previously discussed, felt wrong for it to end with Eric. But I kind of was like, just end it when Lodroit is, like, is weeping in his apartment as he has to move out because his, you know, love of his life partner has died. Like, this show is a tragedy. Just call it, I think.

This man, Vincent, has the nerve to call his Logan Roy ass father onto this bridge to kind of, like, rip him a new one for being a bad dad. I was like, was that the intention of this conversation? Why did he bring his dad to that bridge and kind of like, what, right? I mean, you know, generational trauma. It's true. Like cycles of abuse. It's he has the right to like, but there is such an air of superiority to Vincent

throughout the show where like he works at this children's show and is kind of like, you know, always like pissed off at the city commissioner and no one's ever doing anything right? And he's not doing shit to improve shit. Like he's not a good citizen. And he's like acting like he's a good citizen. I agree because when he's yelling at his Logan Roy ass dad, is Donald Trump standing dad?

To your point, I'm like, wait. So all Vincent needed to do to self-actualize and be the character and father he needed to be is go to rehab. And then when he gets out, there is this moment where I'm like, wait, but he was still very, very toxic in his workplace. He was constantly yelling at women, younger people, the people of color in his workplace. He gets his job back. It seems like he's back in the leadership position.

He is with his son and has quote unquote, like, kind of this is his happy ending. But I'm just like, is that really the message of like, oh, if you grow and you do all this thing everything will be right because I'm like, that wasn't the case for any other character. So I'm just like that it also goes back to thematically like what is important to this show. I'm like, nobody's addressing like, oh, what happened here were any mistakes made?

It's just like, hey, happy ending. Well, and you know, in 1980s New York, yeah, that all adds up. Like that guy is definitely getting put back in a position of power. But in terms of us watching this TV show and us investing in these. stories and these characters, you know, I think like what we both came around to in episode six and probably in episode one or two is some of these characters feel worth investing in and strangely, the one on the poster does not.

The two on the poster. The two on the poster. Maybe that was the twist all along. I feel so bad. I think I did, because you know the thing, I didn't want to come in here, hating the show because I did not enjoy watching it, but I understood what it was trying to go for and I

enjoyed the swing. Like I enjoyed it. I'm like, you got to your point. I was like, oh, hey, you guys are doing this. And very quickly, I was just like, oh man, it's I didn't hate watching it. I was, I think, probably more invested in the

like sort of mystery of it than you. And, you know, it's number two on Netflix right now. only behind a cult documentary, which you're never going to beat a cult documentary. So what is that the one, the 7 million TikTok cult one? No, see, you think that 7M means million

because it's by TikTok, but it's actually just that the cult was called 7M. It's confusing, but head on over to we're obsessed for a breakdown on that because obviously I'm obsessed with cults and TikTok. But yeah, people are watching it. And I don't, if you're looking for something to watch, I wouldn't even discourage

it's six episodes, you know, and it's good performances. It's a kind of interesting mystery. But it is dark, and it is not about puppets. So that's a bit of a warning. All right, I'm the walk-around puppet of Prestige TV.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to the best puppeteer and the business, Jody. Thank you to Kai. Stay locked in to Prestige TV and all the content that's coming on the feed. We will react. There you.