There’s a new sheriff in town this week on The Big Door Prize [Apple TV+ recap]

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Aaron Roman Weiner in ★★★★☆
When you pull the "Sheriff" card from the Morpho machine, things can get wild.
Photo: Apple TV+

TV+ ReviewApple TV+ sci-fi comedy The Big Door Prize, about a machine that reads people’s potential and possibly their future, takes a hard look this week at a character who’s maybe hardest to like among the ensemble.

Beau goes on the hunt for a cheater. Giorgio continues his quest to best Dusty. Trina has a terrible realization. And Jacob bears the brunt of it all, as usual. The episode, entitled “Beau,” serves up quite a good showing from the cast and writers. It’s one of the season’s best yet.

The Big Door Prize recap: ‘Beau’

Season 1, Episode 6: Beau Kovac (played by Aaron Roman Weiner) is having a crisis much worse, and much more embarrassing, than just about anyone in town, athough Principal Pat (Cocoa Brown) getting into a motorcycle accident and marrying the first and only person who came to check on her is a close second.

Beau had been a go-nowhere kinda guy (what Tony Kushner might call a “can’t make it Caucasian“) before the Morpho machine arrived to start parceling out potentials. Beau’s wife left him, then one of his twin sons, Colton, died in a car accident. Suddenly his life of driving a Zamboni for a meager living and watching TV every night didn’t seem fulfilling.

Then he went to the Morpho to discover his destiny reading. The word it gave him: “Sheriff.”

In response, he quit his job, started chainsawing up the furniture to make … smaller furniture … to make an Old West saloon in his garage. His still-living son, Jacob (Sammy Fourlas), is wigged out by this sudden and impulsive display of life. And more so because it happened after Beau discovered something troubling about his sons.

Sammy Fourlas and Djouliet Amara in "The Big Door Prize," now streaming on Apple TV+.
Jacob (Sammy Fourlas, left) and Trina (Djouliet Amara) have a secret.
Photo: Apple TV+

Jacob had Colton’s girlfriend Trina (Djouliet Amara) over for his birthday, and when Beau started asking about Colton, Trina let something slip: She was cheating on him. She didn’t say it was with Jacob, though, and if Beau found out he’d probably never talk to his son again. Jacob tries to talk to Trina about it. He wants their relationship not to be a secret anymore, but she isn’t really ready for that.

So Jacob’s caught between a rock and a hard place. If he gets to date Trina, his dad will lose it. Of course, Trina spies an out for herself, another chance to be a miserable martyr, when her former close friend Savannah (Elizabeth Hunter) keeps dropping not-so-subtle hints that she wants to date Jacob. Trina, realizing she can’t give Jacob the kind of relationship he wants, decides to encourage Savannah to ask Jacob out.

Jumping through hoops

The trouble doesn’t stop there, either. Beau asks Jacob with whom he thinks Trina was cheating on Colton. Jacob lies and says someone on Colton’s basketball team. Then, when Principal Pat calls in Giorgio (Josh Segarra) the next day as a replacement basketball coach, he calls in his old teammate to assist. That teammate? Beau.

Principal Pat also pulled in Dusty Hubbard (Chris O’Dowd) for the basketball coach slot, without telling either him or Giorgio about the overlap. That’s awkward, because Giorgio loves Dusty’s wife, Cass (Gabrielle Dennis.)

Beau starts hounding the basketball team to try and find the player with whom Trina might have been cheating on Colton. He even invites the team to his new garage saloon. Of course, because there’s nothing to divine from the very confused basketball players, Beau spends the whole day making a fool of himself and harassing the kids. One of them in particular, Tucker (Andrew Dicostanzo), gets especially shabby treatment. Meanwhile, Giorgio gets Dusty drunk in order to embarrass him.

When Cass and Trina come over to pick up Dusty, his daughter takes the opportunity to sneak into Jacob’s room and break up with him officially. When she leaves, Beau sees her and finally puts it all together. He’s furious for a minute, but comes to Jacob’s side and comforts him later. It’s one of the nicer moments this show has yet orchestrated.

Separating the men from the boys

Josh Segarra, Chris O’Dowd and Aaron Roman Weiner in "The Big Door Prize," now streaming on Apple TV+.
How many coaches does one basketball team need? Giorgio (Josh Segarra, left), Dusty (Chris O’Dowd) and Beau (Aaron Roman Weiner) pitch in to get it done.
Photo: Apple TV+

This was a mostly very charming episode of The Big Door Prize, with unexpected heft and lots of good Chris O’Dowd bits. His and Gabrielle Dennis’ chemistry, even in scenes where they’re not on the same page, is terrific. O’Dowd can be a great utility player because his acting style involves so much reaction and puzzle-piece dynamics. He knows where to slot himself in conversations and how to get a comment in as quickly and quietly as possible to make sure the flow of a scene isn’t interrupted.

My favorite moment this week came when Giorgio let slip that his dad is Puerto Rican, and it was his stepdad who was Italian. Dusty, remembering that Giorgio’s whole identity in town is tied to his Italian restaurant, says, with maximum incredulity, “You’re not even Italian?!”

Still, as much as I like O’Dowd as the center, I think The Big Door Prize thrives when he’s off to the side as texture, rather than the full focus. Dusty just isn’t the most compelling character for a show center. Despite O’Dowd’s performance, the writers just can’t make Dusty’s foibles as ingratiating as they ought to be. So when he’s over there instead of dead center, we still get the benefit of the actor’s chops without wondering if there aren’t bigger issues we could be tackling.

This episode alone gave us multiple highlights that didn’t focus on Dusty:

  1. Beau and Jacob reconciling silently.
  2. A very well-performed, if slightly overwritten, talk among the basketball players about the pressure of parental expectations.
  3. Cass trying to get out from under her mother’s shadow in town.
  4. The beautifully realized stuff with Trina and Savannah, and how softly heartbreaking that is.

On a show like The Big Door Prize, a lot can happen when you mix things up a little.

★★★★☆

Watch The Big Door Prize on Apple TV+

New episodes of The Big Door Prize arrive every Wednesday on Apple TV+.

Rated: TV-MA

Watch on: Apple TV+

Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper and But God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century, the director of 30 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.

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