Imagine if a magical machine showed up in town promising to reveal your true life potential. Would you change your career to pursue your supposed destiny? Or would you cherish the life that you’ve already built?
That’s the fascinating high-concept premise of the existential dramedy “The Big Door Prize,” which drops the first three episodes of Season 2 this Wednesday on Apple TV+.
If you need a refresher, the story is set in the fictional small town of Deerfield, where a mysterious device called the Morpho Machine appears in a convenience store with a haunting blue glow. Curious citizens scan their fingerprints, allowing the machine to spit out cryptic blue cards reading their “Life Potential.” Will the town residents upend their daily lives to pursue their alternative paths or remain content?
Chris O’Dowd, who played the cop love interest in “Bridesmaids” (2011) and won an Emmy for the British series “State of the Union” (2019), is perfectly cast as the mopey high school history teacher Dusty, who turned 40 in the pilot and received a Theremin as a gift. When he drew a Morpho card that read “Teacher/Whistler,” he initially thought that he was already on the right path, but Season 2 now has him questioning the freedom of a skiing trip.
His wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis, “A Black Lady Sketch Show”) drew the card “Royalty,” wondering if she settled for small-town life when she could have been a queen. Her performance is outwardly energetic but inwardly chaotic, never feeling good enough for her overbearing mother Izzy (Crystal R. Fox), a knickknack store owner who is also the town mayor. Their mother-daughter drama only intensifies in Season 2 with violent visions in the Morpho.
Still, the main change in Season 2 is Dusty and Cass deciding to separate for six weeks, insisting they’re not divorced while living in the same house — a bizarre experiment they dub a “self-ploration.” As you might expect, this opens the sliding door to a new potential love interest (Justine Lupe, “Succession”), but ironically not Giorgio (Josh Segarra), who constantly hit on Cass in Season 1 but who is now madly in love with Nat (Mary Holland).
Dusty and Cass’ dual midlife crisis creates confusion for their daughter Trina (Djouliet Amara), who is now out in the open with her feelings for Jacob (Sammy Fourlas) after spending last season sneaking around with the brother of her late ex in a small-town scandal. They both continue to grieve the death of Kolton Kovac, the town basketball star who died in a freak car accident and now appears in a flashback trying to buy booze underage in Season 2.
Rounding out the cast is Jacob’s broken father Beau (Aaron Roman Weiner), who turned his garage into a whiskey bar with a mechanical punching bag last season; Father Reuben (Damon Gupton), who converted into a minister based on his Morpho card; and local bartender Hana (Ally Maki), a drifter who showed up around the same time that the Morpho machine arrived in the convenience store owned by the quirky Mr. Johnson (Patrick Kerr).
Season 2 picks right up where Season 1 left off after the two-part finale called “Deerfest,” using a blackout at the annual town carnival for visual metaphors like a symbolic albino deer and Izzy building a hay-bale maze higher and higher like her own emotional walls. If you forgot all of this, don’t worry; Season 2 peppers us with reminders that are almost tongue-in-cheek in their heavy-handed exposition. Ahh yes, the challenge of episodic storytelling!
So far, Apple has only dropped the first three episodes of Season 2, but there remain more questions than answers. Showrunner David West Read (“Schitt’s Creek”) is reluctant to reveal the origin of the Morpho Machine, instead dropping clues of blue dots for us to connect. The device is a proverbial “MacGuffin” like the Zoltar machine in “Big” (1988), a supernatural way for the writers to explore larger existential themes of fate vs. free will.
Season 1 ended with the machine asking if we were ready for the next stage, which apparently means watching a video game rendering that symbolizes your future. I suppose that’s an upgrade over reading a short word on a card, but I’m skeptical about how much further the writers can take this concept. I guess we’ll find out over the full 10 episodes between now and June 19, hoping for a “big door prize” but likely getting a cliffhanger for Season 3.
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