‘The Big Door Prize’ Is the ‘Ted Lasso’ Antidote We Need
For the last 11 years, there has been a line of cinematic dialogue bouncing about my head, ricocheting between the cortexes of my brain like a ball someone shot out of a canon. In the often-forgotten Pixar movie Brave (I have never been—nor ever will be—a Disney adult, but bear with me), the lead character, Merida, ponders: “If you had the chance to change your fate, would you?” The reason this line has taken up residence in my silly little brain is not so much because it’s profound, but because Merida says this in a thick Scottish accent. “Would you,” sounds more like, “Whoo’jer?”
Still, every time I get suckered into toting this line reading along with me for hours, I begin to wonder. Would I? Sorry, Whoo’ji?
The Big Door Prize, which airs its first three episodes Tuesday on Apple TV+, asks a similarly existential question. The series, adapted from M.O. Walsh’s 2020 novel of the same name, unfolds in the small, idyllic town of Deerfield, where a mysterious machine has just appeared in the local general store.