Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Big Door Prize’ On Apple TV+, Where People In A Small Town Change Their Lives Based On What An Arcade Machine Tells Them

How many shows have we seen where someone is going through a midlife crisis, where they’re wondering “is this all there is?” The age range for this crisis seems to go from 40 to 60, but they all have the same characteristics: A main character (usually a man) looking blankly in the distance as life swirls around them, hoping against hope for a spark of change. A new Apple TV+ comedy has elements of that, but also different perspectives that keep things fresh.

THE BIG DOOR PRIZE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Bathed in the blue light of an arcade machine, a man stares at it in a dark store. “What are you waiting for? Give it a whirl!” says the man behind him.

The Gist: Dusty Hubbard (Chris O’Dowd) puts coins in and sits. A screen on the MORPHO machine says “Discover Your Life Potential,” then it spits out a card that has what that life potential is.

We cut back to a couple of days prior, where Dusty is getting a celebratory stack of pancakes for his 40th birthday. His wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis) and daughter Trina (Djouliet Amara) give him 40 gifts — mostly stuff like trail mix — but he gets a new scooter and the promise by Cass of some lovin’ that night.

He scoots over to Johnson’s General Store, where he sees the MORPHO for the first time. The owner (Patrick Kerr) has no idea where it came from, but it’s been attracting people to the store all weekend.

Dusty then scoots over to Deefield High School, where he’s a popular history teacher. The whole school is abuzz with what the little blue MORPHO cards have told them about their life potential. One kid’s card says “Meteorologist,” which he thinks means he’ll build rockets. Jacob (Sammy Fourlas), who worked at Johnson’s store when the machine came in, thinks “it’s bullshit.”

Dusty tells himself that he’s got all he needs; a job he likes, a great relationship with his wife, and a teenage daughter that’s only slightly snarky. He thinks he’s a great whistler. But the more people start to change their lives in order to match what the card says — he sees one person on his ride to work actually trying to shoot an apple of his kid’s head with a bow and arrow — he wonders if there actually is more to life. Even Cass has started to act a bit differently.

Everyone in town is talking about the cards, including Georgio (Josh Segarra) a former NHL player that opened the restaurant where Trina works; Izzy (Crystal R. Fox), who insists on being called “Mayor;” Pat (Cocoa Brown), the school’s principal, who cashes in her savings for a new Harley; and even Father Reuben (Damon Gupton), the town’s priest, starts to have second thoughts.

One sleepless night, Dusty decides to get up, put on his robe, and walk to Johnson’s General Store to try MORPHO for himself. What the card says, though, throws him for a loop.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Big Door Prize, adapted from M.O. Walsh’s novel by David West Read (Schitt’s Creek), gives us vibes of Big mixed with a small-town comedy like Welcome To Flatch.

Our Take: The idea of The Big Door Prize is that the first eight of the season’s ten episodes will concentrate on a different person in Deerfield and how they deal with the card they’re dealt (literally). Although two people are dealing with real-life doubt and sadness in this town: Jacob, whose brother recently died, and Trina, whose boyfriend was Jacob’s brother. Even there, though, MORPHO may factor into the decisions they make during this season.

The shifting perspective helps, because if the entire series were about Dusty and his brand-new midlife crisis, it wouldn’t feel all that much different than so many other shows we’ve seen even recently (Lucky Hank being the latest example). But what we’re going to see is how the presence of this machine effects different people with different perspectives on how their lives are going.

If anything, the message here is likely that no matter how blessed you are in life, there is always that gnawing feeling that you were destined to be something different. So each of these people are going to see if the card is right or not, and if they’re OK with that. The hope is that each approaches it in a different way.

In the meantime, there’s some genuine big laughs and a few story questions that should keep us intrigued. For one, Dusty’s card and his reaction to it were definitely unexpected, and it’ll be fun to see how he goes about living his life after what it says. But we also loved how lovingly goofy Dusty and Cass were in front of Trina at Georgio’s restaurant, where Trina works. They not only ascribe to the “she’s going to be embarrassed by us no matter what, so me might as well lean into it” philosophy of parenting teens, but it shows that the three of them are relatively close, no matter how snarky Trina is towards them. That’s a bit of a change of pace, given what we’ve seen in shows recently.

Sex and Skin: After their birthday boink, Cass asks Dusty, “Do you think you can fuck me again?” The way she phrased that makes us wonder if that was informed by what she saw on her card.

Parting Shot: Cass wakes up in the middle of the night; Dusty is already out of bed because he went to Johnson’s store. She picks up her card and looks at it. A slight smile comes to her face and she takes a deep breath.

Sleeper Star: We’re looking forward to seeing Damon Gupton, who plays Father Reuben, deal with the MORPHO from his perspective. He’s a seemingly steady presence in this storm of change, but bubbling underneath the calm might be a guy who also is questioning things.

Most Pilot-y Line: “My secret’s out. I’m turning 21,” Dusty says to Mr. Johnson when the store owner tells him his coffee is on the house. That’s bad even for a dad joke.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Big Door Prize is a show that could have spent its time naval gazing, but the shifting perspectives of each episode keeps the show from going down that road.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.