I recently streamed the Netflix limited series, “Eric” and came away pretty ticked off.  First, they managed to make Benedict Cumberbatch look terrible in his portrayal of the father, Vincent.  I never formally thought of myself as a Cumberbitch (sorry, apparently that’s a real thing), but it was hard to see him look like that.  But, that’s not my quibble.

And, the mother, Cassie, played by Abby Hoffman was benign enough, except apparently she is pregnant and smoking and drinking.  Now, yes, this is supposed to be in the 1970’s or so, but even then we knew that smoking and drinking were not good for a fetus. Watching her constantly lighting up was cringey and disappointing. But, that’s not my beef, either.

No, my beef comes with how Netflix dealt with the father’s clear psychosis. From the beginning of the film, its clear he is struggling.  He is drinking wayyy too much in an obvious attempt to deal with the ‘demons’ in his head.  He is volatile, edgy, and careening out of control.  He is so out of control that his son runs away because principally he’s afraid of Dad.  

And, yet, Netflix, you manage to first blame the Mom.  Apparently she tried to ‘drug’ him when he was young.  There were a few references to that.  No, it couldn’t be that she was trying to help a kid in crisis. The mother in the series is definitely the rich-cold-disconnected kind of mother, who probably should have never had kids.  But, here is the but, she clearly shows some sort of instinct to nurture and protect him.

And, then there were a few mentions of “that time” when he was hospitalized, but its referenced like everyone else was the issue.  Not the fact that they were trying to get this clearly struggling man the help he needed.  

But the cherry on this schizophrenia cake came when the way he worked out his psychosis was to take hallucinogenic drugs (on top of the alcohol), send himself into a super-duper trippy-trip, and then have a fist-fight battle with his main psychosis. By the way, his main psychosis vision was a 7’ tall “monster” named Eric that his son created.  And, with that fist-fight with a non-being, he found himself free of his psychosis and ready to take on the world. WTF?  @Netflix, are you kidding me?  What kind of message does this send to others who struggle with this awful illness?  Go get in a fight and all is better?  This is exactly the message that furthers stigma and discrimination and stops people from getting the treatment they need.

So, yeah, shame on you @Netflix. My rating of this series D-.  It would have been a D, if at least Benedict looked nice.