Big Mistakes

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Levy and Taylor Ortega play a hugely dysfunctional brother and sister who get drawn deeper and deeper into the world of organized crime. Great Laurean Betcalf runs for public office. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about big mistakes on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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Joining me today is Kristen Meinzer. She co hosts the nightly a bedtime podcast for pop culture lovers. Hey Kristen. Glenn, nice to be back. Nice to have you. Also, with us is the former host of Slate's Internet Culture Podcast, ICYMI, and former pop culture happy hour producer Candace Lim. Hey Candace. Hello. Hello. Let's get to it. This will be an interesting conversation. In Big Mistakes, we meet Nikki and Morgan.

Two siblings who are not where they want to be. Nicky is played by Dan Levy, he's an uptight pastor forced to keep his relationship with his boyfriend a secret from his parishioners. Morgan is played by Taylor Ortega. She's a teacher whose dreams of making it as an actor in New York fizzled out.

After some business involving their dead grandmother in a diamond necklace, Nikki and Morgan find themselves doing odd jobs for a criminal organization, and as they struggle to extricate themselves from their new lives of crime, their mother Linda is running for mayor. She is played with a comic intensity so fierce that it can only be called Lori Metcaffian by Lori Metcalfen. Sometimes I get scared that your closest relationship is with God and don't take this the wrong way.

Honey, but God isn't touching your body for pleasure. All right. Honey, I know that it's a sacred relationship, but you know what I'm talking about. The show's co-created by Levy and Rachel Sennett, who created I Love LA, Big Mistakes is streaming on Netflix and I kinda dug it, but ah from our conversations before taping this episode, I gather, Kristen, you didn't. Tell me more.

Alright, well yes, we disagree much like the characters on the show, who bicker and bicker and bicker and bicker and bicker throughout the show. This is your fault, Morgan. It is entirely your fault. Your problem. This is really reaffirming. Yeah.

It's not productive bickering. It's just fighting that does not bring the story closer to something. It just in case you didn't notice, this is a bickering family. We're gonna show you again that they bicker. But I think my bigger issue with the show is that These characters have have no agency. They are pillars in their community. They own a business that has been a staple in their town for the past 70 years. Dan Levy plays a pastor who is respected and adored in his community, but

despite having these prominent roles, they can't decide anything or do anything. They can't even fail because they don't ever try at anything. They are essentially chess pieces being moved on a board and it just drove me nuts. I'm like, please do something. Please, please. And I will say by the end of the first season,

our characters do start making choices. They do start propelling themselves forward of their own volition. And once that started happening, I really did enjoy the show, but it was a slog to get there for me. Okay. Oh, the S word. We're busting out the S word. Sure. in the podcast. Ha ha ha. All right. Candace.

S word or no? Sorry Glenn, I'm gonna use the B word. I think this show's kinda boring. Go boy. A boring slug. I know, I know. So here's the deal. Like, I was interested in the show because of the Rachel Senate part. I really like her show, I Love LA. And I was kinda like, okay, like how does a Dan Levy Rachel Senate show work? I was like, I'm curious about how the puzzle pieces work, and the answer is they don't, because Rachel is

Her touch is just so not present in this project's tone or conception. I find her to be very kind of like sexy but dark woke and I find this show very sexless, which hey, maybe that's just Dan Levy's bag and go for it. Yep. But I felt like this show was just like one really long shits creek episode. And I don't think that's really where I'm at.

in terms of what I'm looking for in like a T V show that should be kinda funny and should be kind of like wild and crazy. And I was just like Hold on, one long Shits Creek episode would be a compliment. Okay. Uh huh. I disagree with both of you for different reasons. Isn't that interesting? Well I mean basically look there's a cheat code to the me's of the world. If you wanna hook a me

There's a very simple formula, it turns out I found out by watching the show. You just get Lori Metcalf to scream at a dying old woman in scene one and I'm in. That's it. That's all it takes. Mom, what do you want for your birthday from the kids? I don't want a birthday. What do you want for your birthday from Nicholas and Morgan? Whoa, are they? And certainly there's a tendency to think it's Lori Metcalf you just wind her up and let her go.

Whatever happens is gonna be worth watching. And that's kind of true. But here you still have to write for her and write to her. And I would argue that uh Levy and Senate are doing for Metcalf what Levy and the writers' room did for Katherina Heron Schitz Creek. You know the actor, you know what they can deliver. You write to them. You give them room to do what you hired them to do.

So you give the Laura Metcalf character a hardness that's funny, but you also make her want something so desperately, which is also funny. But then you honor that reality, right? You ground it a bit, and later in the season she gets a tiny little monologue to Explain why she wants to be mayor of this town and I thought that was gold.

When I knew that the day would come when your Nona would be gone and there wasn't anybody else I needed to take care of, I just thought, well, why not reach for a little power? I like this whole show. I kept thinking, ironically, Candace, I thought this is Shits Creek. without the hugs and smoopiness. Schitz Creek in that first season we don't like to talk about, but Schits Creek before it softened, before it sanded down and rounded out the characters' edges.

That's not fair because I'm comparing it just to Levy's work and I don't know Senate's work. I haven't watched Olive LA. Right. And it's also not fair because I mean uh Levy made a film in twenty twenty three called Good Grief, which

It didn't work for me at all. That felt more like journaling, felt more like a therapy session than it was a work of art meant to engage, you know, the world outside his own head. Clearly the guy's got schmoopiness to spare, but this is a co-creation. This is half Rachel Senate. And so I'm grateful for you to kind of saying what the Rachel Senate DNA is. But Kristen, did you pick up on any any Rachel Senate thing here? Like what's the formula?

I know Rachel Sunnet Best from Bottoms, which is a movie I sure love. I think Bottoms is fantastic. It feels raw and unfiltered, even though it's very well written and very funny. And I was with the characters the whole way, but I felt like the fighting in bottoms was the whole story and what propelled the story. And so It made a lot of sense to me where as

in big mistakes, the fighting just constantly felt like this isn't pushing the story forward. Okay. Unless that's the point of the show is just to watch. people not productively bicker. And there's a lot of that. And I'm glad you both have brought up Shits Creek though, because one thing I did think about watching the show was the first season of Shits Creek, which as you said, Glenn, we all almost always never speak of because it was so terrible.

By the end of the first season, I did actually start to have feelings of affection for Shits Creek. And I felt the same way with Big Mistakes. By the end of Big Mistakes season one, I was like Oh, well now I'm starting to feel something for these people, even though I hated them for most of the season. Maybe if it gets picked up for a second or third season, maybe much like Shits Creek, I will hold it near and dear to my heart. I will cuddle it at night and I will love it.

It was a little tough. And I cannot tell you how much I hated the first season of Shits Creek. I think I tried watching it ten times before I could get through it. Yeah. I mean the Rachel Senate of it all, like I love that you're bringing up bottoms because that's a thing you expect from Rachel, which is like brash honest too honest, like Gen Z just like

straight to the wall. I think that is where I got caught up because the show I actually feel is very reserved in a way that kind of does remind me of Shits Creek, which is that look, like Shits Creek is about a small town, as this show also is. And you kind of have similar archetypes or characters being played here, right? Like Dan Levy plays a pastor.

The sister is a school teacher. The mom's family owned this hardware store for like seventy years. And these are people who are supposed to be like upstanding, you know, citizens of their city. My thing though is that like I just have like very little to no faith in like institutional government, big or local. So in my head, I'm just kind of like,

What is this obsession with bringing up that the dad is like former chief of police? That I found so like weird and tacky. And I get it. It's supposed to kind of like put this umbrella over them of like, oh but like Isn't it crazy that they're like canoodling with the bad guys when they should be the good guys? And I was like, well, hot take, I was rooting for the bad guys, the entire.

And it's not because like this family is bad, it's because I was just like, they're kind of boring. And I think maybe that feeds into what you're saying about agency, Kristen, of like It's not that these are people that are like not worth rooting for. I'm just like, are you worth making a show about? I don't think so.

Now see, my favorite thing about the show, and this speaks to something you both have brought up. My favorite thing about the show is how much it almost dares you to like these people. Neither one of you saying, Oh, I don't like them, that's why the show is bad. I'm I'm grateful you're not saying that, because we've said on the show many times.

that likability is a hoax, likability is a mugs game. Likeability is this thing that is held up by, you know, screenwriting teachers and screenwriting books and schools as the only thing, the be all end all, the thing you need.

But you don't need it. What you need is to find your the main characters interesting and individual and believable and human and if it's a comedy, you need them to be funny. And where we're differing, it seems, is I found them all of those things and y you all found them None of those and I like to think and I have no basis uh for this being But in my heart, Levy saw the Schitz Creek fandom.

Right. The squeeing over Patrick and David, and the way that fandom became kind of louder than the show he made, and thought, yeah, I don't want to do that again. And uh and so I'm gonna make this brother and sister not David and Alexis. David and Alexis bickered also, as you know, Kristen, but they also had each other's backs at the end of the day. There is a real guess. Yes.

Between Nikki and Morgan. And I was grateful it was there. Me, I was grateful that it was there, because you had to honor it. You couldn't wave it away with one act of kindness. Because that's not how families work. When the Gulf does get bridged, it gets bridged a little later in the season, artificially, in a way that I Yeah.

Very funny and and very uh weirdly accurate, a in a way that I don't want to spoil here. So you don't have to like them, right? But it sounds like both of you got tired of them and found them actively annoying. I understand why that's a deal breaker. Yeah, I think annoying is exactly the word that I was feeling and

I agree with you. Like likability, what does that even mean? And I love lots of shows. I've loved many shows over the years with characters who were quote unquote unlikable, you know, arrested development.

transparent. There are so many shows I've loved over the years where people have complained, Nobody's likable. I don't need that, but I need to care about the characters. Oh yeah. And I just don't know if I cared that much about them. And then I'm just gonna do a little old lady minzer moment here, a little kids get off my lawn moment. Bye.

I had to have the remote control in my hand the entire time I was watching the show because the sound mixing was driving me nuts. There's whisper fighting, yelling fighting. Fighting, yelling, fighting, sound mixing, machine guns going off. Very quietly explaining why I hate you and want to kill you right now. Don't you dare tell mom. Right. I'm gonna stop. Old lady minzer off her soapbox. Sorry.

I mean, we talk about unlikability and I actually think is that not what like the Rose family was? They were so unlikable as like four spoiled members of a rich family. And then at some point that show like turns the key. Here's my thing. I think I love annoying people. I'm gonna say the people on I Love LA, for example, extremely annoying. I live among them every day. Am I one of them?

Mm we'll talk about that later. I think if you are annoying, are you at least moving the needle somewhere?'Cause I think one of my genuine like reasons for rooting for the bad guys here is because I see in this show like corruption. And I'm like, honestly, that's maybe a better option than local politics, which is a farce in and itself.

And so I'm kind of like, Well, at least the bad guys are getting stuff done. At least they're moving something forward and in a weird way I'm like, they're building community through trade. Hey now, that's local economy. And yeah.

That is such a good point, Candace, because our main characters are essentially non-player characters. They're like in the video game, the characters who just are there while you're driving your grand theft auto car and knocking down buildings and they're just on the sidewalk.

I understand where you're coming from in one very specific way, and it speaks to agency that you both brought up. There was one thing that almost had me slacking our producers and saying, Yep, we're not gonna do this. Uh I hate the show. I don't get the show. Happened in the very first episode and it's a plot thing. It has nothing to do with characterization. It's the so-called inciting incident, which is a screenwriting term for the moment that kicks the plot aside.

This show isn't a sitcom, right? It isn't just a vibe. It's a crime story at heart. And that means it depends on a narrative A narrative framework of escalation, so you have to incite that escalation correctly. If you don't buy the inciting incident, you don't buy anything that comes after it. There is a necklace on their dead grandmother's neck. Nicky, the Dan Levy character is a woman.

He has unique access to that casket. He knew what he needed to do, he knew what time he had to do it by, he had all the time in the world to do it, he had ample opportunity afforded only to him in all the universe there was only one person who could have been in that room with that casket alone and it's him. His mom comes in and says, We have to move her now because she's late for her own funeral I was like, What?

We only saw him in that room for like thirty seconds. He could have shown up hours and hours earlier. He could have spent two hours just futzing over that body. And nobody would have batted and I I don't buy it for a second. And we join the action that late? Why do we join the action that late? Why is she late for her own funeral? It's like every scene in a classroom which o uh you know opens like thirty seconds before the school bell. It's ridiculous. It bugged me so much and in interviews

Levy has said that he and Senate wrote that pilot in a day, and that's never happened before for me. And I was like, Yeah, that necklace business is some first draft nonsense. That that you needed Yeah. To interrogate your plot. You needed to do a better job of laying the track if it's gonna support The entire show. All of the narrative weight of the show rests on oh, he didn't get the necklace.

Yeah, and it's the second time in the pilot that he gets derailed because he chose not to lock a door also. There's also... I mean, I'm glad you brought up that point, Glenn, because what I actually thought about is the fact that this thing has happened on another show that I think we both love. dairy girls and they did it so much better. There's a dead woman, they're trying to get the earrings and it's just like they do it so much faster, shorter, better, sharper, better. To which I then say

I think that a better version of the show is How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. Like I think that is just as crimey, just as thrillery. It is longer, but it's It has an energy and it has a pace that honestly is more like Rachel Senate but Irish. And I think that's where this leaves me a little saggy of like.

I do think that, you know, my heart rate finally kicked up towards like end and end of the penultimate into the finale. I was like, okay, like I'm actually getting interested. But leading up to that, I'm like I'm having a hard time buying in. I'm having a hard time investing. To which I then think, maybe I just have a Dan Levy problem. Well, that's okay. Shitscreek was fine. That's fine. Kristen, you get the last word.

I like Dan Levy. Yes. I wanna make clear Dan Levy, if you're listening right now, I like you. I love it when you show up in a show and I don't expect it. I love in sex education when you end up. being a smarmy writing teacher who has a delicate ego and you're just a terrible man. I love every version of Dan Lovey. I think he's great. And I do have hope for the show. The final two episodes, I was like I I'm actually into it now. So I do hope that the same thing happens to me as

what happened with Shits Creek, that I will be with the show all the way if there's a season two. But if there's not a season two, I'll probably never speak of the show again. Look, this doesn't happen a lot where I'm out here planting a flag on the hill, being assailed, assailed, I say, by uh other people who've made very good points that I kind of agree with.

That brings us to the end of our show. Kristen Meinzer, Candace Limb. Thank you so much for being here, and thank you for not holding back. Hmm. Thank you. Thanks, Glenn. This episode was produced by Huff Safatam and Mike Katz have been edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Holokiman provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.

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