I really had no clue that Apple+ was in the midst of airing the second season of The Big Door Prize when I had started watching the first season. In the end, I decided to wait a few weeks for it to finish up before I dove in.
The second season picks up right where the first season cliffhanger left off. Everyone in Deerfield is grilling Hana about how she knows about the machine and why she has the blue dots. It turns out that she’s not the only one in town with the blue dots and about halfway through the season I think I landed on why they’re there. But anyway, Hana doesn’t have the answers people are looking for, so instead they get treated to the next phase of the Morpho machine which involves visions. Each townsperson goes in the machine and sees disturbingly accurate videogame versions of themselves trying to tell them something about their future.
The visions are vague, and annoyingly, almost everyone harbors at least one piece of their vision for themselves, conveniently revealing it later in the series to help make a plot point make sense. In a way, that felt like lazy storytelling, though I suppose I get why they did it. The biggest revelation over the course of the season is the deterioration of Cass and Dusty’s marriage. They’ve only ever been with each other, but both of their visions tell them in different ways that maybe they shouldn’t be together. Dusty is taken back to a time just after college when he was truly happy, while Cass sees herself stabbing her mother and Dusty in a hay maze.
They decide to move forward with a “selfploration,” where they are still living in the same house, but encouraging each other to live a new life over the course of six weeks. They don’t make it to the end of that time table, nor had they really done anything to truly see what life could be like apart. What it does make them aware of, in separate ways, is that Dusty likes a fellow teacher, who might have been in his vision, but he was definitely in hers, and Cass is tired of getting passive-aggressively getting put down by Dusty. It’s a little sad to watch because almost everyone always roots for the nice couple to work out.
Turns out that nice couple might end up being Georgio and Natalie! They are both such strange ducks and they totally work for each other. Even though what they have is new, it seems real and it seems like it will last. Also a couple I didn’t know I needed was Beau Kovac and Mr. Johnson. They are new besties and time spent in Beau’s presence makes Mr. Johnson reflect on his past, but ultimately let it go so he can be happy. That’s how his blue dots disappear, so it seems everyone else in town is pretty damn miserable. Trina and Izzy remain to be the most irritating characters on this show, but I suppose not everyone can be likeable.
Given how the second season ends on another cliffhanger, we better be getting second season. I am still not crazy about this show, but it is funny enough to keep me invested.