The Big Door Prize S2E3: Power & Energy
Last episode had the adult characters confronting the ramifications of Morpho’s “next stage,” in which each person sees a pixel-art version of themselves, acting out something to do with their potential. And at episode’s end, Trina and Jacob walk towards Morpho, hand in hand, eager to see what the machine reveals about them.
Trina sees herself smashing the neon sign atop Giorgio’s, as she did last season, except the sign reads “Liar,” just as her Morpho card did. In her interpretation, she’s ready to put her deceitful past behind her and make a new start. Very positive and healthy. But keep in mind, she’s a liar. Both of her parents had a second half of the video they held back from the other, and we only see as much of Trina’s video as she tells Jacob about. There’s almost certainly more to be revealed.
Jacob is less apt to keep secrets, and doesn’t have much of a choice, as Trina wedges herself into the booth with him. (At least, until Morpho tells them “one player only.”) Jacob sees himself playing tennis, with his father as the line judge. He tells Trina he and Kolton used to play a tennis video game, but he also doesn’t tell her how the story resolves.
We haven’t seen principal-turned-biker Pat yet this season, and she’s none too happy that, thanks to the town-wide distraction that is Morpho, school attendance is down, and the computer teacher quit to become a glassblower. When she casts around for solutions, Dusty steps up and suggests revamping the curriculum to excite the students and remind them there’s a world of newfound possibilities ahead, even outside of what a glowing blue machine predicts for them. We did establish last season that Dusty’s a thoughtful, engaged teacher, but this is still a big change for the man stuck in a comfortable rut at the series’ outset.
His enthusiasm (and the principal erroneously suggesting Dusty’s getting a divorce) catches the eye of Alice, the music teacher, who eagerly chats up Dusty after school, although he’s either disinterested or oblivious to her flirting. But he suddenly realizes, he’s temporarily single, he can do what he wants. He does downplay it to Cass as a “boring teachers’ meeting,” but when he gets to the restaurant, Giorgio immediately clocks it as a date, and cheeseball that he might be, Giorgio does a fine job of smoothing over Dusty’s awkwardness and nudge the two teachers towards a romantic evening (even if they’re sitting in a gondola in a hockey-themed Italian restaurant.)
Cass feels like she needs a night out of her own, so she books a night at her ex-stepmother Martha’s landlocked cruise-ship-themed hotel. It’s really just an excuse for Izzy to show up and be awful to her daughter, and for Cass to hang out with Hana a bit, who’s at the hotel after her basement apartment flooded at the end of last season. And for Dusty to be jealous, as he assumes Cass is staying in a hotel for some romantic assignation.
The more affecting story is Trina and Jacob, as both of them are still struggling to let go of Kolton. Middle-aged people questioning their life choices and where they’ve ended up is a rich enough vein for the show to mine, but it works precisely because it’s so ordinary. As we’ve said before, the trouble with potential is that no one ever fully lives up to it, and we’re all left wondering what if. But Jacob’s story is so much more complex. His twin brother overshadowed him in life, and continues to do so in death. His girlfriend left Kolton for him, but still has feelings for him. It’s hard for Jacob to be mad that Trina still cares about his dead brother, but it’s also hard to still have to compete with Kolton even after he’s gone. Jacob’s card read “Hero,” and it appears his struggle is to find a way to carry on outside of his brother’s shadow and, like David Copperfield, be the hero of his own story.
Stray potential:
• One more bit of Morpho mystery — Jacob tries to record his video, but his phone only records static. Then again, it’s the most believable of Morpho’s strange qualities. Nothing else about how the machine works makes a lick of sense, but to the show’s credit, it doesn’t try to overexplain and just asks you to go with it.
• We get both Dusty playing up his Irish brogue to impress Alice, and Cass doing a delightfully terrible impression of it to amuse Hana. Her impressions of the other characters, however, are spot-on.
• For no particular reason, the hotel is hosting a convention for Deerfield Power & Energy, hence the episode title.
• We usually get a cliffhanger that makes it obvious where the next episode is going to pick up, but this episode ends on a mildly unsettling moment with no clear meaning.