Big Mistakes Review: Dan Levy and Taylor Ortega Shine in Crime-Driven Comedy

Big Mistakes is the kind of high-concept swing I will always admire. The basic premise of siblings becoming accidentally wrapped up in organized crime is already pretty fun, but throw in a top-tier cast and the comedic talents of both Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott behind the scenes and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a real winner. And that recipe was certainly followed through on because Big Mistakes is one of the funniest and most inventive shows of the year thus far. How did they pull it off? Let’s discuss.

What is Big Mistakes about?

Our story centers on brother and sister Nicky (Dan Levy) , a gay pastor attempting to hide his relationship, and Morgan (Taylor Ortega), a public school teacher who is constantly either crashing out or about to crash out. While attempting to procure a gift for their dying grandmother, the pair end up unknowingly stealing from an underground criminal organization. To make up for this, they must perform a series of increasingly dangerous odd jobs all while navigating their tumultuous relationships with each other, themselves, and those around them. And ideally, not die in the process.

Big Mistakes Review

Even just from that brief description, you can probably tell that Big Mistakes has a lot of plates spinning in the air at once, so to speak. On top of the constantly escalating crime storyline and all of the side characters therein, there’s the romantic drama with Nicky and Morgan’s respective boyfriends and a shockingly extensive B-plot involving the pair’s mother Linda, played by Laurie Metcalf, running for mayor of their small town with their younger sister Natalie, played by Knock at the Cabin‘s Abby Quinn, as her campaign manager.

A lesser series would likely crumble under the weight of balancing all these stories together, but here every storyline supports every other storyline, enhancing and intersecting each other in unique and unexpected ways. It’s also the rare comedy of errors where it never feels like a character just does something stupid for no good reason in order for the plot to happen. Yes, the inciting incident is a character making an unquestionably bad decision, but it’s a bad decision that makes complete sense within their established character and therefore never takes you out of the story.

Moreover, the series manages to remain consistently funny throughout its eight-episode run despite the A-plot’s comedy being largely hinged on one repeated bit: Nicky and Morgan are almost entirely dysfunctional as a duo, constantly arguing with each other and failing simple tasks much to the frustration of their terrifying bosses. It would be very easy to make this feel repetitive or obnoxious, but it works here for two main reasons: Dan Levy and Taylor Ortega’s excellent performances and the variety of the situations they find themselves in.

Despite being best known as a more confident and quippy comedic presence, Dan Levy does an excellent job at bringing the walking ball of neuroses known as Nicky to life. That nervousness then contrasts beautifully with the “Well, my life is already terrible, so this might as well happen” energy Taylor Ortega brings to Morgan. And every situation the pair find themselves in is unique, and thus the back-and-forth between them during the situations is unique despite following the same comedic rhythm throughout.

Going back to how well the show manages its subplots for a moment, the worse version of this story would undoubtedly have fumbled the “Laurie Metcalf runs for mayor” plot so that it wound up as the boring thing we have to sit through to get to the criminal underworld stuff. But instead, Linda’s mayoral campaign is legitimately enthralling throughout. Laurie Metcalf is one of those actresses who does get a considerable amount of flowers, but it never feels like enough for just how good she is, and that’s very much on display here.

The palpable emotion and genuine sense of struggle Metcalf brings to Linda is quite honestly astounding for what could have easily been a one-note character. And her “blunt and honest possibly to a fault” persona bounces off Abby Quinn as the meticulously careful and controlled Natalie rather well. Seriously, this seemingly inconsequential B-plot is so good that when the series starts to shift exclusively to the crime storyline for a brief stretch, I found myself thinking, “This is great and all, but what’s happening with Linda’s campaign? I need to know!”

Is Big Mistakes worth watching?

I kind of expected Big Mistakes to be pretty good, but I was pleasantly surprised by it turning out great. Sure, the darker tone and subject matter might be a little jarring for those used to Levy’s other work, and the ending is admittedly weird (not bad by any means — just weird), but the cast is great, it’s genuinely hilarious, and it takes full advantage of its unique premise. I’m not sure if a Season 2 is in the cards at this point, but if it is, I am very much onboard.

Big Mistakes is now streaming on Netflix. All eight episodes reviewed.