Potential.
It’s a term used quite a bit in a fanciful yet surprisingly grounded Apple TV+ comedy series “The Big Door Prize” starring Chris O’Dowd as Dusty, a 40-year-old high school teacher in a small town where a mysterious machine dubbed Morpho pops up one day in the convenience store.
For $2, after typing in your social security number and providing your fingerprints, the recipient will receive a blue card saying what their potential is.
What makes the machine especially intriguing is how it disseminates “potential.” In many cases, it’s glorious and vague like that for Dusty’s wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis) who gets “Royalty” or Giorgio (Josh Segarra), who is dubbed “Superstar.” But Dusty received “teacher whistler,” which is what he was already, meaning he was a teacher and could whistle well.
This card makes Dusty confused, skeptical, then intrigued by the machine. He begins exploring ways to go beyond what the machine told him he is, while his wife tries to define what “royalty’ actually means to her. O’Dowd himself isn’t sure how he would react if the card dumped out “actor.”
“Would I feel good about it?” O’Dowd said in a brief interview with Segarra last week in a video call from Third Rail Studios in Doraville where the indoor scenes of the series are done. “I don’t know. I might feel the same way as Dusty.”
Dusty discovers his wife likes dudes with tattoos so he tries to get one. He decides to become the high school basketball coach despite being a benchwarmer in high school. He is even open to a threesome.
“I found the premise [of the show] intriguing,” said O’Dowd. “I read the book [by M.O. Walsh]. There’s this idea we may be doing our lives wrong and someone else or something is going to tell us a different way.”
The show, he notes, explores this from a religious angle and from a practical level. The author, O’Dowd notes, uses the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken” as a thematic. What choices are right? What choices are wrong? Who knows?
“You can become a cocktail barman or a kung-fu instructor,” O’Dowd said. “You can take it up. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy for people depending on where they are in their lives.”
The series is set in a town where most of the main characters have grown up together.
“You think you know everybody’s identity,” O’Dowd said. “Then the next day, they say, ‘Oh, I’m supposed to be a magician.’ It throws everything up in the air about their perception of your oldest friends which is fascinating as a jumping off point for a show.”
Segarra’s larger-than-life character Giorgio owns the local hangout restaurant and has the hots for Cass, Dusty’s wife. Dusty tolerates this. “I think he’s dealing with it really well under the circumstances and you need to give him some space at this time,” O’Dowd said, tongue firmly in cheek.
“He can be so blatant about it,” Segarra said, “because he loves both Dusty and Cass just the same.”
Giorgio’s “superstar” Morpho card throws him for a loop, too, because it’s clear he isn’t fully happy with how his life has turned out so far. “He wants to fulfill everything he thinks about himself,” he said. “You come to find he’s struggling with it a bit. He’s questioning that.”
O’Dowd, not a dancer by trade, does loving but entirely awkward dance for his wife to George MIchael’s “Faith” during a later episode. “That was really fun learning to do that dance,” O’Dowd said. “I always thought I’d have that in my back pocket moving forward but I think I’ve forgotten it already.”
(The series, by the way, is seeking extras for several days starting April 22 in Loganville for a big parade scene. You can sign up at Hylton Casting.)
IF YOU WATCH
“The Big Door Prize,” on Apple TV+
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