The Big Door Prize – Season 1 Episode 5 “Trina” Recap & Review

Trina

Episode 5 of The Big Door Prize sees the attention shift once more, this time to Trina. With a baseball bat in hand, she smashes Giorgio’s sign in town. Trina is hurting, and after Giorgio speaks a piece of his mind to Dusty, he’s all smiles and rainbows with Cass, whom we know he wants to be with.

Trina’s aggression has been pent-up for a while after her boyfriend has died. She speaks to Father Reuben, who tells her that she’s being hard on herself. He knows better than most that you can’t blame yourself for someone else’s death.

However, Trina’s guilt mostly stems from sleeping with her deceased boyfriend’s brother, Jacob. Unfortunately, her friends don’t help given they’re currently making plans without her, as they don’t know how to “act around her”.

At school, Principal Pat fires the coach after seeing he’s been given “Cheater” from the MORPHO machine and he has to go. When Dusty shows, Pat suggests that Dusty and Cass should leave on a romantic weekend together, to the “Cruising Cruise Inn” to be precise, which is basically all the fun of a cruise without actually being on a cruise… sounds riveting!

Martha is there though and things are tense between her and Cass when they arrive. The Coach from earlier? Yeah, he’s here too, and as for Cass and Dusty, they’re held up in a room that happens to sport a bunkbed, which only compounds Cass’s belief that Martha doesn’t like her.

Trina heads over to see Jacob and the pair discuss their current fortune and how they ended up together. A lot of this stems from Kolton ditching her. When they head into the living room together, Trina convinces his father that actually, Kolton wasn’t into Westerns and he really wants to watch a romcom… so that’s what they end up doing. And after, things end up awkward when Jacob’s dad talks about how great Kolton is and how he and Trina made such an amazing couple.

Over at the Cruising Inn, Dusty and Cass find themselves talking to a couple who have interpreted their cards in a very unique way. Glen is simply a photographer but as for his partner Hawaii, she got “Explorer”, which she’s interpreted as sexual explorer. With numerous different partners, her next conquest comes from having a threesome with an “older couple” – that being Cass and Dusty. Unfortunately, things don’t go to plan and Dusty ends up hurting his back.

While Cass heads off to go and get some ice, she ends up talking to Martha. The pair talk casually, with Martha actually not the horrible person she’s been led to believe by Izzy. In reality, she had no issues with Cass and it was actually Izzy who convinced her not to have a relationship with Cass.

Cass is distraught and decides to head home, although Hawaii wants to exchange numbers before they do.

Trina speaks to Kolton’s father and she opens up, admitting that she wasn’t a great girlfriend and in fact, she actually cheated on Kolton. She doesn’t say who with, but we do learn that she’s the one who had the card that said “Liar” on. Unfortunately, Jacob is caught in the middle of all this, as his father lets out his anger and decides to chainsaw the table in half.

The Episode Review

The Big Door Prize delivers another decent episode, although the drama has been dragged out and despite the episode titles showing that the spotlight is turning to different characters, it’s actually mostly been to do with Dusty and Cass with slight detours here and there.

These two have been the focal point for much of the episodes, and that’s slightly annoying in truth, especially when the emotional well of depth comes from the other characters.

Trina and Father Reuben’s stories are way more interesting than our central couple, whose story largely revolves around broadening horizons, but without the intrigue or depth that goes with it.

Either way though, there’s enough here to enjoy but like many of AppleTV’s other projects, this is starting to feel drawn out and overlong.