With Schitt's Creek, Dan Levy and Eugene Levy crafted the sweet story of the ridiculously lovable Rose family, who begin the series at their lowest point — freshly broke and awful to everyone around them — before embarking on the road to redemption.
In his newest project, Big Mistakes, Dan Levy and co-creator Rachel Sennott turn the tables on that redemptive arc, delivering a much darker tale of a family that's just beginning its own downward spiral.
What's Big Mistakes about?
Taylor Ortega and Dan Levy in "Big Mistakes." Credit: Spencer Pazer / Netflix
The family in question is the New Jersey-based Morellis. Mother and hardware store owner Linda (Laurie Metcalf) is preparing to run for mayor of their small town, with the help of her peppy, annoyingly put-together daughter Natalie (Abby Quinn). Her other two children are... messier. Pastor Nicky (Levy) is hiding his boyfriend Tareq (Jacob Gutierrez) from his congregation, and school teacher Morgan (Taylor Ortega) has grown tired of her long-term relationship with high school sweetheart Max (Jack Innanen).
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Their romantic lives are about to be the least of their concerns, though. When Morgan steals a necklace for their dying nonna (Judith Roberts), she lands the pair in the service of a local crime lord. Soon, Nicky and Morgan are running illicit errands for a criminal syndicate. Do they have any criminal bona fides or any desire to do this job? Absolutely not. But do their positions as a pastor and teacher provide the perfect cover? Unfortunately for Nicky and Morgan, they do.
Dan Levy and Taylor Ortega are a hysterical duo in Big Mistakes.
Dan Levy, Ilia Volok, and Taylor Ortega in "Big Mistakes." Credit: Netflix
I've never really been a fan of stories where people are drawn into the criminal underworld against their will. Yet Big Mistakes won me over thanks to the dynamic between Nicky and Morgan, especially their blatant reluctance in the face of every task they're given.
Take the first episode, which ends with the pair in the back of gangster Yusuf's (Boran Kuzum) truck.
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"It's fully giving kidnap homicide," Morgan moans as she climbs in.
"Those are your last words?" Nicky retorts, with a gun at his back.
That contrast between sibling bickering and the threat of bodily harm fuels the dark comedy of Big Mistakes. No matter where Nicky and Morgan wind up, be it a cattle auction or a Miami yacht, they're always complaining. The nonstop sniping can occasionally carry shades of David and Alexis Rose, but the show's grittier thriller tone, as well as a stress-inducing score from Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum and Peaches, helps distance Big Mistakes from Schitt's Creek.
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Levy and Ortega also establish themselves as a stellar comedy duo, feeding on each other's frenetic energy to turn each illegal deal into a tour de force of cringe comedy. Big Mistakes' broader ensemble is also a joy to watch, especially Metcalf as the beleaguered Linda. When we first meet her and her children, they're bracing for a family tragedy: the death of Nonna Morelli. We learn her decline has gone on long enough that her family's grief has morphed into the kind of pained resignation in which everyone is making her illness about them. For Nicky and Morgan, it's an inconvenience. For Natalie, it's an opportunity to performatively out-grieve her imperfect siblings. And for Linda, who's doing her best to keep her ailing mother under control, it's a hindrance to her campaign announcement.
"Make my mother's death easy on me," Linda asks her children. The line highlights how pitch-black Big Mistakes is willing to get, and the kind of self-absorption we'll be dealing with from all the Morellis as the series spirals further into criminal chaos.
Big Mistakes leans into the anxiety of Nicky and Morgan's double lives closing in around them. But it also finds wholesomeness amidst the sordid schemes, with Nicky and Morgan growing closer thanks to their new endeavors. Here, Levy and Ortega showcase a vulnerability that's not on display in their earlier, more abrasive arguments together, and the result is heartwarming. (Even if these moments of reconciliation often come at the worst possible moments.) It's proof of Levy and Ortega's chemistry, and it also helps set up what could be one of TV's next most compelling sibling duos.