You know how siblings could be on the verge of death and still find time to argue about who stole whose top in 2016? That exact wildly questionable energy is what fuels Big Mistakes, except here the backdrop is organised crime, which somehow does nothing to improve their behaviour.
After Schitt’s Creek, Dan Levy returns on Netflix with something new and far more chaotic. He’s still the uptight queer brother, but in Big Mistakes Levy plays Nicky, a quasi-closeted pastor trying to stay on the right side of things, while Morgan (Taylor Ortega), a schoolteacher with a big “this will probably be fine” energy, is the petulant younger sibling that is essential to this dysfunctional family comedy.
It is, of course, not fine. One impulsive decision involving a stolen diamond necklace for their dying grandmother drags the duo into organised crime, and from there everything escalates. Which, funnily enough, comes straight from Levy’s very irrational fear of getting trapped in the mafia world.
And still, they argue.
They argue while being shoved into a truck. They argue while being threatened by gangsters. They argue in a cemetery at night. At one point, Morgan is panicking, nearly in tears, and blurts out, “It’s fully giving kidnap homicide,” and Nicky, with a gun at his back, still finds the time to go, “It’s giving? Those are your last words?” as if the real crime here is a school teacher’s use of Gen Z slang.
A lot of the plot seems like it could be avoided by anyone with at least two functioning brain cells. The necklace they are risking their lives for, at one point, is practically within arm’s reach and yet, instead of doing the obvious, they panic and do what every sane person does. Stall, overthink, and somehow end up digging a stranger’s grave to retrieve it. And that really is the show in a nutshell. It is not trying to be airtight or logical. It is also not interested in fixing its loopholes, because the fun lies in watching how these two manic siblings react to increasingly ridiculous situations.
And to really round things up, Big Mistakes throws in Natalie, the goody-two-shoes youngest sibling. Nicky and Morgan are very much aligned in their shared disbelief and mild resentment of her, united in the way siblings often are when faced with someone who is just… better at life. If you have ever felt like the underperforming sibling, congratulations: this show sees you.
This show’s lead pairing feels like a darker, more unhinged version of David and Alexis, where the affection is buried under irritation but shows up anyway in the way they stick together, even when they are actively making things worse. Unlike Schitt’s Creek’s squabbling siblings who somehow get each other, Nicky-Morgan are the more realistic spiralling siblings who only exist to clash. The show gets even better at home, where their mother, Linda (played by the brilliant Laurie Metcalf), is running a mayoral campaign while managing a dying parent and two adult children who keep derailing everything.
Co-created with Rachel Sennott (of I Love LA fame) and loosely inspired by Levy’s own dynamic with Sarah Levy, the sibling energy here feels painfully real. Where Schitt’s Creek used both plot and character to pull you in, Big Mistakes is really just about the characters. Will the plot make you want to yell at your screen? Absolutely. Will you stay for the relatable sibling dynamics? Definitely. But the core idea for both the shows is the same. Family, however crazy, sticks. Even when it really, really should not.
