Apple TV+’s high-concept existential comedy The Big Door Prize tackles the big questions this week. A small town has been invaded by something called the Morpho machine, a device that prints out cards based on people’s identities and tells them what they’re meant to be in life.
Some people love the Morpho machine and the big changes it triggers. Others, like our hero Dusty and a local priest, have issues with it. A strong showing from The Big Door Prize cast helps this week’s episode, entitled, “Father Reuben,” go down easy.
The Big Door Prize recap: ‘Father Reuben’
Season 1, Episode 4: Father Reuben (played by Damon Gupton), the preacher in the town where the mysterious Morpho machine started doling out career and life advice, is feeling down. He finally caved and put $2 into the machine to learn what his potential is. It says “Father.” Of course, we know it didn’t just mean “reverend” by the way he broke down crying when he got it. When he finishes sobbing, he goes to the local watering hole and asks bartender Hana (Ally Maki) for a strong drink. She reluctantly agrees. She feels weird giving a priest a vodka.
Dusty Hubbard (Chris O’Dowd), also smarting over the ideological implications of the Morpho machine, lets slip to Father Reuben that his daughter, Trina (Djouliet Amara), is having a terrible time. Her boyfriend died last year, she’s working more than she’s at her high school taking classes, and she has an air of misery about her.
Trina doesn’t want to talk about it, though — and certainly not with a priest, which further takes the wind out of Reuben’s sails. So does learning he must officiate the wedding between Principal Pat (Cocoa Brown) and one of her staff members, Mr. Malik (Noor Naghmi). The pair fell in love after she got “Biker” from the machine, had an accident on her bike, and Farid came to see her. Father Reuben just hates that they’re putting more stock in the machine than the word of God.
And your destiny is …
Dusty and Trina’s mom Cass (Gabrielle Dennis) are having their own difficulties. They’ve been in a very weird place since the machine told them what they were destined to be … “Royalty” in Cass’ case, “Teacher/Whistler” in Dusty’s. He’s bummed to think he’s reached his potential. And she’s bummed she hasn’t reached hers.
They’ve been bickering about little and big things ever since. Today it’s that, to prove his love for Cass, Dusty got a tattoo that says, “I love Puff.” (Or anyway that’s what it’s going to say. The process was painful, so they stopped after “Pu.”) “Puff” is Dusty’s nickname for Cass, one she hates because it was based on something she said — that she thinks puffins are cute — when they first met 20 years ago. He’s embarrassed and starts throwing away every puffin gift he ever gave her.
Things get more awkward later when Giorgio (Josh Segarra), who went to school with Cass and Dusty and has harbored a crush on her all these years, introduces a new item on the menu at his Italian restaurant: Cass Wings. This was brought on by an argument Cass and Dusty had about spiciness in Giorgio’s restaurant last night.
Getting wild at a wedding
Cass’ spirits are further dampened when her mom, Mayor Izzy (Crystal Fox), runs into an ex, Martha (Susan Savoie), and decides to upstage everyone at the wedding by performing an erotic dance number. Cass is mortified, and her mom’s emotional outburst afterward makes things even worse. Dusty, recognizing he has to do something big to win his wife’s favor back and pick up her mood, does a silly dance to George Michael’s “Faith.” Miraculously it works.
Later that night, Father Reuben tells Hana that he was married when he was younger. Things ended quite poorly, and he was drinking and ruining his life when he got his first Morpho machine card. It said “Priest,” so he went with it. So to get another one that now says “Father” makes him feel like he’s been on the wrong path. He and Hana slow dance together after that, and both seem to be thinking a little too hard about whether it means anything to be so close.
You gotta have faith
Photo: Apple TV+
Chris O’Dowd is great this week on The Big Door Prize. He’s been locked into sad sack parts for as long as I’ve been aware of him, despite the fact that his best work usually finds him playing motormouthed jerks. That’s not always the kind of character type that gets a lot of play in non-Ryan Reynolds contexts, so O’Dowd’s been playing guys with troubled pasts, making use of his droopy eyes and long face to express life’s many disappointments.
At first it kind of seemed like that’s what The Big Door Prize was going to exclusively trade in. And to be fair, there’s a lot of that (O’Dowd’s character, Dusty, is having a midlife crisis, after all). But the show also lets O’Dowd do his other thing.
The highlight of this week’s episode was Dusty explaining to Hana and Reuben about the internecine social drama between Martha and Izzy, all done with the speed of a sports commentator. Quite good, effortless-seeming stuff from O’Dowd. The show could use a little more of that, but it’s not exactly bad without it, either.
I like Father Reuben, too. The character makes me nervous. Does he really think he’s helping people? Is he about to very suddenly stop helping people? There’s a lot of “what ifs”. I also dig a show looking at life and asking questions in a non-Michael Schur “I have been to college” kind of way.
★★★☆☆
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.
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 director of 25 feature films, and the author of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at his Patreon.
