Unveiling the Dual Faces of "Eric": An Insightful Journey Beyond Imagination

At a time when what we watch on the small screen can be at once highly psychological and hard-edged realistic, the series holds out the possibility that it will occupy a space between both … and yet reveals an identity crisis at its very core that runs the course of the show’s six episodes. Created by Abi Morgan, the writer of The Iron Lady, Eric undertakes an exploration of the mind of its creator, peeling away the layers of a procedural drama that also serves to unravel aspects of the human condition, of human foibles, and of the monstrous undercurrents of 1980s New York.

The Promise of "Eric": A Psychological Exploration Turned MONSTER

It’s a psychothriller at its heart, and carries such potential for exploration. As Benedict Cumberbatch’s Vincent, the creative force behind a children’s TV programme like Sesame Street, learns to live with the monster that emerges, literally, from his son’s eyes, and his own spinning mind, the monster becomes something deeper than a real imaginary friend, but rather the manifestation of Vincent’s fragile mental state.

The Monster within "Eric”: An Unbalanced Tale

The story of ‘Eric’ quickly swerves away from internal, psychological realism, morphing into a procedural drama in which Vincent confronts systemic racism, homelessness and police brutality, as well as many other manifestations of social monsters. These issues are as monstrous as any we encounter in Beyond the Wall or in ‘Varney’ and ‘Eric’. They’re just as terrifying. But this shift to environmental monsters comes with a jarring knee-jerk redirection. After creating a complex psychological space that invites us – as much as a Victorian reader could have been invited – to follow Vincent’s intense sensations, the opening of The Wicked City ratchets that backstory into a denunciatory broadside about the evils of society. The monster becomes a vehicle for addressing more than just scare tactics: it’s a genre that invites us to engage in discussion about pressing social problems.

Navigating the Monsters of New York with Vincent

New York in the 1980s, one of the ‘protagonists’ in ‘Eric’, becomes the perfect mirror for this polyphonic story: a city of uncontrollable anger and sweat, of things crawling and wriggling, is the perfect monster-filled labyrinth for Vincent, but also, it seems to me, it’s in its rendering of the city that Eric finds its greatest strength and true element. Between unicorns and AIDS.

The True Monsters of "Eric": Shallow Treatments of Grave Issues

By the end of ‘Eric’, its monster becomes made of different stuff: the treatment of its thematic ambitions. Its flattening of serious issues into monsters of missed opportunity. Its characters quickly identified as symbols of larger social issues, with their humanity erased by the monster of societal allegory. This monster of totalising commentary monsters the monsters of genuine seriousness, ironically perpetuating the monster of shallow engagement.

A Monster of Its Own Making: The Narrative Struggle

Eric ultimately suffers from a monster of its own making, cannibalised by the show it aspires to be and the show that it actually is. This kind of schizophrenia in narrative fits into a larger problem of storytelling in our current social climate: how to effectively balance entertainment with social commentary without falling down the monster of tokenism or pandering. Eric’s own descent into a procedural cop show, with cartoonish villains and all, is a monster – a step away from the premise that could have been something fresh and interesting.

The Monstrous Potential Unleashed: The Performances within "Eric"

Disjointed storytelling aside, ‘Eric’ has numerous places where real feeling throbs through its veins, mostly due to its cast. Cumberbatch as Vincent caught between the world and his dream machine, Hoffmann expertly layering Cassie’s nuance, and the few times when the show actually delves into real characters instead of doing some random-one-note-as-usual shtick, ‘Eric’ threatens to tap into a much more monstrous identity than its confused self ever could.

Understanding Monster

A monster can be literally or figuratively corporeal, like those seen by Eric. It can be societal, like the plagues of our era. But it can also be the whole show, as Stranger Things is: a monster with multiple aspects and double identities, struggling to be the great entertainer it is but also, like the best stories: speaking two ways at once in a world of highbrow vs lowbrow, and entertainment vs commentary. It is a monster of storytelling, the social novel as monster — with the impossible task of trying to do both, be both — of trying to be deeper but easier, and bringing bold commentary into the realm of mass entertainment.

Yet finally, Eric’s reminder that ‘monsters are stories’, and that stories can be revealing or false, is itself revealing and true: the show’s ambition and its many errors invite us to look more self-consciously at the monsters in our own society, and how we might – or might not – bring them into the light.