The Big Door Prize S2E4: Storytellers
Last episode ended with a somewhat disconcerting vignette. Beau is patrolling the darkened main street at night, as newly-not-technically-appointed sheriff, when he comes across Mr. Johnson — who had only woken up in the hospital the previous day — in the parking lot of his store, staring at the brick wall of the building and the faded old ad painted there. He quietly said, “I don’t want to be alone,” and the two men silently stared at the brick wall as the credits rolled.
Like most of the revelations on this show, it has to do with his past. We open this week with a different machine at the center of Johnson’s General Store — an old fashioned punching-bag game, the same one Beau has in his saloon-themed man cave. A much-younger Johnson awkwardly flirts with the handsome repairman, to the point where he sabotages the machine so the guy can come back. So “I don’t want to be alone” is more a long-term statement than it seemed to be last week. So Beau takes him in for the near term, and just having he and Jacob’s company makes him happy. Running the store 7 days a week never left him much time for friends.
Realizing that, he closes the store for a few days to take some time off. Jacob uses his day off to hang out at Giorgios, so he can playfully bother Trina as she works. But it’s a bit too much. She needs the occasional bit of space from him, and while she’s sweet about it, she also tells him she doesn’t want to end up “codependent and unfulfilled” like her parents.
As she says that, one of those unfulfilled parents is sulking in the basement while the other hosts a “storytellers group” — like a book club, but where the group shares stories, this week’s theme being “my greatest relationship.” Nat co-hosts the group with Cass, and she’s very transparently threatened when Cass invites Hana, who slept with Giorgio once in a moment of weakness and quickly broke things off. But Nat still sees her as a romantic rival, and is loudly passive-aggressive towards her in short bursts.
Izzy, Cass’ mother, is loudly passive-aggressive every time we see her, but she’s a well-drawn enough character that we see the bottomless well of insecurity underneath it, and how fiercely she tries to be in control of every encounter she has, even if it means alienating everyone close to her. We’ve spent less time with Nat, and her character hasn’t shown more depth than “flighty,” as last season she mostly just appeared when Cass needed someone other than Dusty to talk to. So her attacks on Hana just come across as annoying outbursts.
But she’s not the only one. Dusty interrupts, convinced the group is talking about him behind his back, and his date with Alice in the previous episode. It’s at least grounded in something more interesting, as he’s clearly hurt by the fact that Cass isn’t more jealous, and feels friendless and neglected while Cass is getting together with her friends. But it all comes out as Dusty just saying embarrassing things and digging himself into a hole, and the scene kind of drags.
At least, until the storytelling comes around to Hana. After spending the afternoon looking uncomfortable and sitting apart from the group, she opens up slightly — which is still a lot by her standards. Her dad dumped her into a boarding school at age 8, she hated the other rich kids, she ran away as soon as she was old enough, and she’s found it hard to connect with people ever since. And disconcertingly, she already had the blue dots at that age. Whatever her strange relationship to Morpho is, it’s a lifelong one.
And that’s The Big Door Prize in a nutshell. It’s a broad comedy that doesn’t work very well, and it’s a thoughtful, philosophical character drama that does. And in the end, the stuff that works is enough to outweigh the stuff that doesn’t. The Dusty and Cass stuff is awkwardly written and staged, but it leads to a quieter talk where they explore their ongoing doubts about their relationship. And after a not particularly strong episode, we end with an affecting scene between Mr. Johnson and, of all things, Morpho. The machine speaks to him more directly than it has to anyone so far, and actually helps him deal with his long-buried regrets. It’s a satisfying resolution for him, that only opens up more questions about the machine and its effect on everyone else.
Stray potential:
• The young-man makeup they put on Patrick Kerr in the Mr. Johnson flashback scenes isn’t terribly convincing, but casting a younger actor would have meant taking time to establish that it was the same person, and it still feels like a better choice than CGI.
• The repairman also gave Mr. Johnson the theremin, which has some connection to Morpho. Jacob took it home, and Beau’s now trying to repair it.
• Jacob also befriends Trevor, a classic 20-year-old self-regarding intellectual, who tries to convince Jacob he only flunked out of college because the professors couldn’t handle his “original ideas,” and dismissively refers to soda as “corporate sugar water.” Trina immediately clocks him as a “pretentious douche,” but then accepts that her boyfriend having a friend isn’t the worst thing.
• There’s a great running gag of Giorgio hanging bigger and more ridiculous paintings of himself and Nat in the restaurant, but it also leads to him having a heart-to-heart with Trina and forgiving her for smashing his neon sign last season. Cheeseball that he is, he’s growing into a less one-dimensional character this season. Along similar lines, Beau quiets down this episode, and actually shows up to be a decent friend to Mr. Johnson. The show might gradually close the gap between its broad and thoughtful sides yet.
