Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
It came from nowhere. And for two bucks, it’d change your life.
Sure, that’s a lot to expect from a machine—particularly one that looks a little like one of those drugstore photo booths and acts like a robo-fortune teller. But talk to the folks of the small town of Deerfield, and they’ll tell you: The Morpho machine is the real deal.
Well, most of Deerfield’s residents would, at any rate. Dusty? He’s not so sure.
While the rest of Deerfield was lining up at the Morpho machine and asking it to tell them their potential—which most interpret as what they should be doing with their lives—Dusty held back. The high school history teacher didn’t need a machine (however mysterious it might be) to tell him his potential. He already had a wife, and a daughter, and a job that he kind of liked. And after his 40th birthday haul, he’s the proud owner of a scooter and a theremin (a musical instrument that you play without touching). I mean, what else could Dusty want?
“Maybe you didn’t want enough,” someone tells him.
Most other townspeople don’t have that issue. No, deep down, they wanted more. And suddenly, under the guidance of the Morpho, shopkeepers are turning into magicians. Teachers are becoming motorcyclists. A low-performing student suddenly believes he’s destined to become a meteorologist. (“I’m going to be building your rocket ships one day,” he proudly tells his classmates.)
But it’s not just that the Morpho is uncovering long-lost dreams and ambitions. They’re unsettling the people who harbor them, too. Folks who were perfectly happy before now feel restless and despondent. Even Dusty’s wife, Sandra, seems dissatisfied.
One must also consider the people whom the Morpho said had darker potential. Dusty runs across a telltale Morpho card in the high school trash, stamped with just one telling word: Liar.
The Morpho isn’t making dreams come true—not by any stretch. But it is reminding many of dreams gone by. And for the town of Deerfield, that might just prove to be a nightmare.
The Big Door Prize, based on a book of the same name by M.O. Walsh, centers around two of the most powerful words in the human experience: choice and change. The show asks us something powerful and, in some ways, dangerous. If we had a choice, what would we change?
In the opening episode, Dusty’s friend Father Reuben gets at this tension point, telling Dusty that the famed theologian Soren Kierkegaard believed that anxiety came into the world before original sin. When the snake suggested that it was possible to eat that forbidden fruit, Reuben relates, “[Adam] realized he had a choice. And this machine, whether it’s magic or not, is reminding people that our lives have more than one possible path.”
That’s a pretty compelling setup for The Big Door Prize. And given that the show is created by David West Read—the guy responsible for much of the writing behind the Emmy-sweeping Schitt’s Creek—you can assume that The Big Door Prize will blend its philosophical musings with plenty of yuks.
Alas, the show comes with plenty of yuck, too.
The Big Door Prize is preoccupied with sex, and we see and hear about it frequently (though the comedy seems to steer clear, so far, of nudity). Language can be raw and awfully common. And some characters turn to problematic pastimes and impairing substances to both try to fulfill and forget their potential.
And perhaps that’s a fitting place to land this introduction. The Big Door Prize is not just about potential; it had plenty itself. While we can’t say just yet how the show will unpack its myriad moral conundrums, the fact that it has them to unpack is, at the very least, interesting.
But even as its setup encourages us to lean in, its content forces us back. And despite the promise of some sort of prize behind the door, it might be one to just keep closed.
A weird machine shows up at Johnson’s drug store—one that even Mr. Johnson doesn’t know where it came from. Soon, it seems like everyone in town has asked the machine—called the Morpho—to tell them their hidden potential, and it’s changing lives all over town. Dusty, the high school history teacher, is a holdout at first. “You’re going to decide your own life potential, folks,” he tells his class. But when someone asks him what his potential is, Dusty realizes that he doesn’t know.
A spiritual thread runs through the episode, mostly centered around Father Reuben. When someone tells him that the Morpho told her to dive into motorcycle riding, he suggests that the machine’s insights are more subtle: It’s not the machine telling readers what to do, but rather revealing something about the readers themselves. He relates a story about when a resident saw “the face of God” in someone’s hydrangea bushes. God’s face wasn’t in the bushes, the collared priest suggests, but it does show what the woman who saw Him was searching for. He also unspools a theory from Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard that unpacks anxiety and sin in the Garden of Eden.
Dusty and his wife, Sandra, have sex. We see them in a sweaty post-coital moment, discussing the act that just passed. But when Sandra suggests they do it again, an embarrassed Dusty says he’s not ready yet (blaming the two piña coladas he drank at dinner). He tells a couple of different people that Sandra’s the only person he’s been with. At a restaurant, the owner talks about how lucky Dusty is to have married Sandra—insinuating that he once had his eyes on her (and perhaps still does). Dusty worries about some blue dots that have suddenly appeared on his rear: He tries to talk to Father Reuben about them, but initially says that the growths are actually on the rear of one of his students. (This causes some uncomfortable conversation as to how Dusty would know about the marks on one of his students’ behinds.)
We learn that a high school boy—a one-time boyfriend of Dusty and Sandra’s daughter—died relatively recently. (Dusty discovers that his daughter dropped most of her classes in the aftermath.) While using his scooter to get to work, he notices a man shooting an arrow at an apple placed on a little girl’s head (presumably he was told by the Morpho that he should’ve been an archer). Another man practices martial arts. Dusty tells his class that they’ll be studying Henry VIII’s many wives, and that he hopes to get through them faster than Henry VIII did. (Two of the six were executed.) Dusty wears a gifted T-shirt that says, “I’m 40, put a bullet in me.”
Alcoholic drinks are consumed. A scene takes place in a bar. Someone tries to pry open the Morpho to discover its secret. The Morpho asks for some very personal information when it tells its users their “potential”. Characters say the f-word eight times, the s-word four and “a–” another four times.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
