For his first major screen role in three years, plays a child psychologist tasked with caring for a puzzling pint-sized patient in . While it’s a decidedly non-comedic part, creator/writer Sarah Thorpe’s 10-part Apple TV+ series, premiering Oct. 25, is often—too often, in fact—unintentionally daffy.
A mystery that begins intriguingly before drowning under the weight of its myriad out-there elements, the series takes little advantage of its star, whose straight-man performance is sturdy if lacking personality, save for the grief and torment weighing upon his heart. It’s a character that doesn’t suit Crystal well, and worse, he’s hampered by a story whose developments veer from beguiling to baffling to laughably bonkers. Eli (Crystal) specializes in working with adolescents, so he’s more equipped than others would be when he hears scratching at the door of his NYC brownstone and discovers that the culprit is Noah (Jacobi Jupe), an eight-year-old stranger who promptly runs off without explanation.
The following night, Noah reappears in Eli’s bedroom (having snuck in through the residence’s dog door), and when he again bolts without a word, Eli follows him to his home, which he shares with his newest foster parent, Denise ( ). There, Eli learns that the boy barely speaks and has drawn a picture of the doctor’s brownstone. Eli takes this with him, and later remarks to his friend Jackson (Robert Townsend) that he feels as if he’s living in someone else’s d.
