![]() It’s all so warm, and all so real, and all so deeply, deeply funny. In short, in thrusting its audience in turn into each of these characters’ inner worlds, The Big Door Prize effectively transforms the MORPHO machine from a fun gimmick to a critical dramatic device, and takes Deerfield from being just another quirky small TV town to what is, ultimately, a lucid case study of the human condition. Which, given how many of the book’s core details ended up changed in translation-not just the nominally stylistic shift from DNAMIX to MORPHO, or the loss of the beloved trombone, but both the names and broad family biographies of both the Hubbards and the Kovacs-is saying a lot!) (And, not for nothing, whose very existence marks the steepest departure from the book. You show up for Chris O’Dowd’s charmingly awkward mid-life crisis-and boy, does his delivery of the (non-existent) expression “shakin’ jams” in the first episode pay dividends on that front!-but then the camera widens its lens to take in all the other MORPHO-blinkered residents of Deerfield, and all of a sudden you find yourself immersed in Kierkegaard’s take on anxiety, the deep unknown waiting just over the edge of every cliff, and the fairly stark reality that all human lives have the potential to branch off onto a new path, all the time.įrom Jacob, we switch to Father Reuben (Damon Gupton), one of two recent transplants to Deerfield whose wisdom Dusty often seeks out from Father Reuben, we shift to Trina (Djouliet Amara), a character significantly reimagined from the book to be Cass and Dusty’s teenage daughter from Trina, we shift to Beau (Aaron Roman Weiner), Jacob’s deep-in-denial Zamboni-driving dad from Beau, we shift to Giorgio ( She-Hulk and The Other Two favorite Josh Segarra), Cass’s longtime bro-y admirer from Giorgio, we shift to Mayor Izzy (Crystal Fox), Cass’s insufferable narcissist of a mom and from Izzy, finally, we shift to a bartender named Hana (Ally Maki), Deerfield’s other recent newbie, whose emotional distance from Deerfield’s complex social web ends up proving critical to the whole series. ![]() Where The Big Door Prize sneaks up on you is in how effectively it layers its dryly mundane comedic sensibilities with its high concept blue butterfly MORPHO machine gimmick to create a final product that so precisely reflects what it feels like to just be a person that it’s legitimately bracing. I mean, no spoilers, but *every single detail* of the Deerfield Hooves Homecoming game in the third episode? Multisensory comedy gold.) (That said, it’s not until Episode 3, “Jacob,” that you’ll realize The Big Door Prize has jokes jokes. Nor is it sneaky in establishing the specific parameters of its piercingly affective, affectionately goofy comedic register: all it takes is one cut from Dusty riding his fortieth-birthday-present scooter to school with the Usher soundtrack he’s riding along to, to Dusty riding his fortieth-birthday-present scooter to school without said soundtrack, and there you have it-the whole comedic tone of the series is set. ![]() Not in drawing you into its premise: the idea of a mysterious, blue-lit butterfly machine that promises to reveal your “life potential” appearing in the middle of a small town general store one weekend and changing the way everyone in town relates to themselves, each other, and even reality itself is an easy sell-especially when said small town cast is anchored by Chris O’Dowd at his anxiously-funny-everyman best as middling high school history teacher/moderately accomplished whistler Dusty Hubbard. Walsh novel of the same name, The Big Door Prize is the kind of show that sneaks up on you.
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