Apple TV+’s high-concept existential comedy The Large Door Prize tackles the massive questions this week. A small city has been invaded by one thing known as the Morpho machine, a tool that prints out playing cards primarily based on individuals’s identities and tells them what they’re meant to be in life.
Some individuals love the Morpho machine and the massive modifications it triggers. Others, like our hero Dusty and a neighborhood priest, have points with it. A powerful exhibiting from The Large Door Prize forged helps this week’s episode, entitled, “Father Reuben,” go down straightforward.
The Large Door Prize recap: ‘Father Reuben’
Season 1, Episode 4: Father Reuben (performed by Damon Gupton), the preacher within the city the place the mysterious Morpho machine began doling out profession and life recommendation, is feeling down. He lastly caved and put $2 into the machine to study what his potential is. It says “Father.” In fact, we all know it didn’t simply imply “reverend” by the way in which he broke down crying when he obtained it. When he finishes sobbing, he goes to the native watering gap and asks bartender Hana (Ally Maki) for a powerful drink. She reluctantly agrees. She feels bizarre giving a priest a vodka.
Dusty Hubbard (Chris O’Dowd), additionally smarting over the ideological implications of the Morpho machine, lets slip to Father Reuben that his daughter, Trina (Djouliet Amara), is having a horrible time. Her boyfriend died final yr, she’s working greater than she’s at her highschool taking courses, and he or she has an air of distress about her.
Trina doesn’t wish to speak about it, although — and positively not with a priest, which additional takes the wind out of Reuben’s sails. So does studying he should officiate the marriage between Principal Pat (Cocoa Brown) and one in all her employees members, Mr. Malik (Noor Naghmi). The pair fell in love after she obtained “Biker” from the machine, had an accident on her bike, and Farid got here to see her. Father Reuben simply hates that they’re placing extra inventory within the machine than the phrase of God.
And your future is …
Dusty and Trina’s mother Cass (Gabrielle Dennis) are having their very own difficulties. They’ve been in a really bizarre place because the machine instructed them what they had been destined to be … “Royalty” in Cass’ case, “Trainer/Whistler” in Dusty’s. He’s bummed to suppose he’s reached his potential. And she or he’s bummed she hasn’t reached hers.
They’ve been bickering about little and large issues ever since. At present it’s that, to show his love for Cass, Dusty obtained a tattoo that claims, “I really like Puff.” (Or anyway that’s what it’s going to say. The method was painful, in order that they stopped after “Pu.”) “Puff” is Dusty’s nickname for Cass, one she hates as a result of it was primarily based on one thing she mentioned — that she thinks puffins are cute — after they first met 20 years in the past. He’s embarrassed and begins throwing away each puffin reward he ever gave her.
Issues get extra awkward later when Giorgio (Josh Segarra), who went to high school with Cass and Dusty and has harbored a crush on her all these years, introduces a brand new merchandise on the menu at his Italian restaurant: Cass Wings. This was introduced on by an argument Cass and Dusty had about spiciness in Giorgio’s restaurant final night time.
Getting wild at a marriage
Cass’ spirits are additional dampened when her mother, Mayor Izzy (Crystal Fox), runs into an ex, Martha (Susan Savoie), and decides to upstage everybody on the wedding ceremony by performing an erotic dance quantity. Cass is mortified, and her mother’s emotional outburst afterward makes issues even worse. Dusty, recognizing he has to do one thing large to win his spouse’s favor again and choose up her temper, does a foolish dance to George Michael’s “Religion.” Miraculously it really works.
Later that night time, Father Reuben tells Hana that he was married when he was youthful. Issues ended fairly poorly, and he was consuming and ruining his life when he obtained his first Morpho machine card. It mentioned “Priest,” so he went with it. So to get one other one which now says “Father” makes him really feel like he’s been on the improper path. He and Hana sluggish dance collectively after that, and each appear to be pondering a bit of too onerous about whether or not it means something to be so shut.
You gotta have religion
Picture: Apple TV+
Chris O’Dowd is nice this week on The Large Door Prize. He’s been locked into unhappy sack elements for so long as I’ve been conscious of him, even supposing his finest work often finds him taking part in motormouthed jerks. That’s not all the time the type of character kind that will get quite a lot of play in non-Ryan Reynolds contexts, so O’Dowd’s been taking part in guys with troubled pasts, making use of his droopy eyes and lengthy face to specific life’s many disappointments.
At first it type of appeared like that’s what The Large Door Prize was going to completely commerce in. And to be honest, there’s quite a lot of that (O’Dowd’s character, Dusty, is having a midlife disaster, in any case). However the present additionally lets O’Dowd do his different factor.
The spotlight of this week’s episode was Dusty explaining to Hana and Reuben concerning the internecine social drama between Martha and Izzy, all achieved with the pace of a sports activities commentator. Fairly good, effortless-seeming stuff from O’Dowd. The present might use a bit of extra of that, but it surely’s not precisely dangerous with out it, both.
I like Father Reuben, too. The character makes me nervous. Does he actually suppose he’s serving to individuals? Is he about to very all of the sudden cease serving to individuals? There’s quite a lot of “what ifs”. I additionally dig a present taking a look at life and asking questions in a non-Michael Schur “I’ve been to school” type of approach.
★★★☆☆
Watch The Large Door Prize on Apple TV+
New episodes of The Large Door Prize arrive each Wednesday on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a movie and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay sequence The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Movie Remark, The Los Angeles Overview of Books and Nylon Journal. He’s the writer of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Type of Tobe Hooper and However God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford within the twenty first Century, the director of 30 function movies, and the director and editor of greater than 300 video essays, which might be discovered at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
