The Big Door Prize S2E2: Visions

In last week’s cliffhanger, Hana and Jacob discovered how to reactivate Morpho for “the next stage,” using Dusty’s old theremin. It asks to insert a card, and Dusty inserts his “teacher/whistler” card and waits for the results.

The results are odd. A cartoon avatar of Dusty, in a 90s-style video game, skiing downhill at Whistler, the ski resort he worked at in his youth. (Last season he became convinced that the second half of his potential was meant to evoke that ski resort, and the sense of freedom he had there during the only period in his life when he and Cass were apart.)

Dusty watches as cartoon-dusty skis around a few poles… and then the game abruptly stops and Morpho asks the question: Continue? 

But how to continue is unclear. So while Dusty, Hana, and Jacob puzzle over the theremin, Cass inserts her card. She doesn’t reveal what happens, but she and Dusty need to talk. Her game re-created her confrontation with her mother in the hay maze at the end of last season. But instead of hugging it out, she stabs Izzy. Over and over and over. Then dances on her body.

Dustin tries to convince her it’s a metaphor, and that in order to reach her potential, she has to get out from under Izzy’s toxic influence and stand on her own. But he’s forced to admit that if that’s the case, his own message is about him standing apart from Cass.

So they awkwardly try to break the news to Trina that they’re embarking on a “self-ploration,” spending some time apart to experience some freedom and better understand themselves. She calmly replies, “so you’re going to go into the city and do coke and fuck a bunch of people?” (There’s a reason she’s our favorite teenager on TV right now.) We quickly establish that they haven’t put enough thought into whether they can see other people, and that Trina’s not so emotionally invested that she can’t convince them to let her throw a house party, in the name of “self-ploration.” (And as she confides to Jacob, she doesn’t see her dad lasting a day without her mom, so she doesn’t expect them to stay split up for long)

For starters, their first act as a separated couple is to go together to a dinner party at Giorgio’s house, with new couple Giorgio and Nat (in matching black velvet track suits), and not-quite-couple Hana and Father Reuben. They talk about the latest Morpho developments, although no one’s quite ready to reveal what the machine showed them. (Giorgio assumes the machine showed Father Reuben “a priest video game where you, like, waste some vampires.”)

Meanwhile, the teenagers are having the world’s quietest rager, as they’re also consumed by talk of Morpho. Trina and Jacob haven’t tried the next stage, but a lot of their friends have and no one’s quite sure what the video game-style messages mean. Not to mention how Morpho knows what everyone looks like, never mind what their innermost thoughts are.

Regardless of what everyone’s game shows them, everyone seems resolved to take a step back and work on themselves. (Apart from Giorgio and Nat, who have no self-awareness whatsoever, and impulsively decide to get married. And Hana, who claims not to have a card.) So we get thoughtful heart-to-heart talks between Dusty and Cass, and between Trina and Jacob. The parents are often caught up in sitcom shenanigans, so it’s nice to get a reminder that they have a terrific rapport, and that their marriage is complex and weighed down by regret, but that they ultimately love each other and want to understand each other better.

And as the teenagers, Djouliet Amara and Sammy Fourlas are still great together, and as subtly drawn as any characters on the show. On the surface, he’s nervous and awkward and she’s an overconfident smartass (basically George Michael and Maeby from Arrested Development if they had actually gotten together), but beneath that, she’s wounded and insecure, and he’s thoughtful and quietly self-assured.

They make a great match. So in the end, they go hand-in-hand to Morpho, to see what the next stage holds for both of them. We’ll find out in episode three. 

Stray thoughts:
• Georgio reveals another pearl of wisdom, “here is where the now is,” only for the camera to pan back and reveal those same words in neon, on the wall of his living room. He’s the most broadly-drawn character on the show, to the point of occasionally being grating, but I do love the fun the writers have with his tacky, grandiose lifestyle.

• To that end, Hana gives Reuben the tour of Giorgio’s home, noting the bust of his head, “by renowned artist ‘3D printer’,” and “an alarming amount of exfoliants.”

• One odd detail that will likely become important later. Dusty, Cass, and Hana each have blue dots on their skin, and the only other thing they have in common is the theremin. Dusty and Cass each played it when she gave it to him as a birthday present. Hana claims not to remember playing the theremin, but she knows how. Even as we go deeper into Morpho’s mysteries this week, the mysteries surrounding Hana remain unresolved.