"Eric": Drunken puppeteer, a gay cop, a missing son, and a boyfriend with AIDS. Life as usual in 1980s New York

The Netflix series with the one-word title Eric is drawing my interest because it's set in the 1980s, so there will be some nostalgia, and because it's about a missing youth  -- 99% of the time, it's a woman or a girl.   

But...it stars Benedict Cumberbatch, hated for his role in the aggressively queerbaiting Sherlock and the execrably heteronormative Doctor Strange. 

Oh, well, let's give it a try.

Scene 1: The ten-year old Edgar -- is that a 1980s male name? -- has been missing for two days.  His Dad addresses him on tv: "I'm sorry, buddy. Prove to everyone that you're not dead.  Come home"  Sorry for what, dude? Did you do something? 

48 hours earlier: Edgar wanders around backstage as his dad and others film Good Day Sunshine, a marionette show with full-sized human figures.  The puppeters sit under them, apparently visible on screen.    Their closing motto is "Be good, be kind, be brave, be different."  In the Reagan-Thatcher 80s?  As if!  

A live orchestra-- this is a big deal.

Edgar waits while Dad Vincent -- Benedict Cumberbatch -- criticizes the producers for trying to "switch it up" with a beatbox number. The director explains, "We need to get some elementary school viewers, the cool kids." 

"What's next? Slime?" That was a Nickelodeon thing.  He insults his fellow cast members until they make excuses and leave.

Meanwhile, Edgar wanders around wardrobe.  He cuts some aquamarine fur from a muppet "for Eric."

Scene 2: Dad Vincent grabs Edgar, snarling, and pushes him across the street, against traffic, and onto the subway.  Edgar tries to discuss his idea for a  new character, a monster named Eric.  But Vincent isn't paying attention; he's glaring at some beatboxing teens. The kidnappers?

Nope. Next Dad makes Edgar wait outside while he buys booze in a liquor store. Customers glare at him. Uh oh, here's where he vanishes. 

Nope. Next he angrily insists that Edgar race him home, through the busy streets of midtown Manhattan.  Uh oh, here's where Dad zooms ahead and Edgar vanishes. 

They make it home ok. 

Scene 3: Edgar's Mom, who has a man's hair cut, complains that the city is going to close another homeless shelter.  Where are they supposed to go?  Edgar goes up to his room, decorated with art and comic books, while Dad criticizes Mom for withholding sex, and Mom criticizes Dad for being a drunk.  Whoa, drama. 

Upstairs, Edgar can hear them arguing and yelling "Fuck you!" at each other.  He escapes into his art.

Scene 4:  At dinner, Edgar tries to talk about his puppet idea again, but Dad Vincent is too aggressive: "Sell me on it!  You're not being enthusiastic enough!  Don't be a wimp!" Emotional abuse, Dad.

Edgar goes up to his room again and puts on headphones, but it doesn't help.  He still hears the parents arguing:  "You're out all night!" "Fuck you!"  Is this going to be paranormal?  Is he going to escape into Eric's world?

Mom comes in to hug him and check under the bed for monsters.  They discuss how much they love each other.  My parents never once spent five minutes whining "I love you so, so , so, so much!"  when I was trying to read a comic book and fall asleep. 

Scene 5: Morning.  Dad makes French toast to smooth things over, but Edgar is still afraid of him.   Closeup of one of those "missing kid" milk cartons.

Edgar heads out to school.  Men glare at him.  A guy in a van glares through his rear-view mirror. Maybe he'll be kidnapped now? I'm tired of the misdirections. 

Edgar is played by Ivan Morris Howe in his first screen role, but he has done theater, including "Oliver."  Looks rather femme.

Cut to the police station.  Detective Ledroit comes in.  A woman asks "Who's the lucky lady?" due to his after-shave.  That's heterosexist!  How do you know that he likes ladies? Oh, because he gazes at you with a sultry expression for five minutes. 

Adequately heterosexualized, he can go on to the Missing Persons case. 

Wait -- the Detective is played by McKinley Belcher III, who is gay in real life and has a husband.  Why isn't his character gay?

Scene 6: Vincent at the studio.  Today's filming is big deal, with network suits watching, so he promises to not have a meltdown or tell people to "fuck off."  A coworker notices that he's bleeding, but he covered it with a headband.  Uh-oh, Vincent killed his kid.

When the filming starts, Vicent goes off script: "Let's play a new game.  It's called 'Spot the Pile of Trash.'"   He stomps off, gets ten messages to call his wife, ignores them, gets some fan photos taken, snarls at the network suits.  Just fire him, and get someone else to voice the puppet.

More after the break

"Angels in America": A tearjerker about AIDS, Mormon angels, and some 1950s guy. With dicks and butts to keep your spirits up

 

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, won numerous awards during its run at the Mark Taper Forum and then on Broadway.  I saw it in 1997.  Well, the first 300 hours, anyway -- it's divided into two parts, Millenial Approaches and Perestroika, each requiring superhuman endurance and thinking about butts and cocks to sit through.  

Very, very depressing: people dying have never been my idea of entertainment, and this dude is dying of AIDS, very slowly, with all of the symptoms displayed in graphic detail.  Meanwhile he thinks he's a Mormon prophet and turns straight, having sex with a female angel with multiple breasts and vaginas, and this guy named Roy Cohn is dying of AIDS, too, and an elderly lady in a 1950s outfit is comforting him although she hates him.

Are we supposed to recognize these people?

Plus the names are bizarre and off-putting, and you never know what's really happening and what's an AIDS fever dream, and people are dying.  Help!

Ok, very slowly, let's try to get through this mishmash of obscure history, with illustrations of actors from the tv miniseries that appeared in 2003:

Part 1: Millenial Approaches. Not the year 2000, the 1000 year reign of Christ on Earth.

1. New York, of course, in the 1980s. the Jewish Louis, played by Ben Shenkman, discovers that his Mormon boyfriend Prior -- prior to what? --  has AIDS, and dumps him.

Prior is played by Justin Kirk, top two photos.  He will have delusions of becoming a Mormon prophet.

2. Prior is comforted in the hospital by an ex-drag queen nurse named Belize.

3. Meanwhile, Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson, butt and dick left), conservative Republican Mormon politician in Boyfriend Louis's office, becomes interested in him, which causes friction with his crazy wife and conservative mother, and causes him to dream about meeting Prophet Prior. 

Republican Joe comes out to his mom, who travels to New York to coddle him, and to his wife, who flees from the house and believes that she is in Antartica.  Then he starts dating Boyfriend Louis.

4. Joe's boss is Roy Cohn.  Yes, that Roy Cohn, played by Al Pacino.  I had never heard of him at the time, but he was one of the instigators of the Red Scare in the 1950s.  He was gay in real life, but closeted and homophobic. 

In the play, he  claims that he is dying of liver cancer, but actually it's AIDS.  

The elderly lady who is comforting him, although she hates him, is Ethel Rosenberg.  In 1953, Roy prosecuted Ethel and her husband Julius as Soviet spies, and got them the death penalty.  They were widely presumed innocent, being railroaded because they were Jewish. 

5. Prophet Prior has a lot of disturbing fever dreams.  He meets his ancestors, also named Prior, and a Mormon angel with several breasts and vaginas, who has sex with him and tells him to prepare for the Great Work.

Left: Simon Callow, one of the prior Priors

The first play ends there.  Sort of a cliff hanger, innit?

Perestroika after the break