Everyone makes mistakes. We trust the wrong people, make bad choices, buy things we can’t afford. For most of us, the consequences are noteworthy but ultimately minor. A broken heart, a skinned knee, a lighter wallet. That sort of thing. For siblings Nicky (Dan Levy) and Morgan (Taylor Ortega), the ramifications of the latter’s decision to steal what she believes to be a cheap necklace prove far more than merely noteworthy.

In an attempt to make their mother, Linda (Laurie Metcalf, running nonstop), happy, Morgan snags the necklace as a gift for their ailing grandmother despite the convenience store clerk Yusuf (Boran Kuzum) refusing to sell it to them. Hours later, the clerk, actually a low-level organized crime henchman, shows up at the rectory where Nicky works as a pastor. The siblings must return the necklace, which is not, after all, a cubic zirconium-and-plated-metal fake, or risk the wrath of Ivan (Mark Ivanir) and whoever is pulling his strings. Unfortunately, that necklace is already around the neck of the formerly ailing, now very dead grandmother.

Obviously, this kind of situation would be disruptive to the most stable of lives. Unfortunately, those aren’t the lives Morgan or Nicky are living. Their mother is running for Mayor, something she views as a well-deserved treat after years as a small business owner and parent. Their youngest sister, Natalie (Abby Quinn), is securing her place as the favorite child by running the campaign. Morgan’s in a long-term committed relationship with Max (embracing the bland here with as much skill as he did cool in The Adults). She’s bored with him, but she’s done too much wrong, and he’s done too little for her to justify a break-up. Nicky, on the other hand, is very into his secret boyfriend Tareq (Jacob Gutierrez). His congregation, on the other hand, is a different story. They’re fine with him being out, as long as he’s not actually expressing that sexuality.

It’s the kind of normal chaos that many must weather from time to time. When paired with death threats and grave robbing, though? The problems whirl themselves into a maelstrom. It knocks both off-balance and repeatedly derails their relatively average lives.

The strange thing is, for a show with so much incident, Big Mistakes is lumpy and structureless. The plot less develops than shambles from moment to moment. It’s a crime story paced like a hangout show and doing neither subgenre well. At its best, it recalls the tragicomedy of early Weeds. And its worst, it feels like the “overstayed its welcome” scrambling of latter-day Weeds. Episodes frequently careen from knee slapping to a slog.

Big Mistakes is at its best when it keeps things small and character-based. This vitriolic bond between Nicky and Morgan suggests an ocean of slights and sibling spats that have congealed into something a bit nastier. Levy and Ortega volley well off each other, delivering haymakers and then pulling back like siblings, even estranged ones, do. It’s why, when Levy dashes off a laundry list of Morgan’s problems with an air of disinterest before declaring nothing wrong with her, it feels a bit like a hug. And it is to Ortega’s credit that she reacts to it in much the same way. She doesn’t love that list, but she hears the buried reassurance within it.

Even without the specifics of how they got here, the show makes it easy to understand. Metcalf’s matriarch laces every word she says with disappointment and challenge. Her children absolutely grew up pitted against each other in an ongoing contest to curry mom’s favor. Even though Natalie clearly has the catbird seat, she occasionally catches strays. Quinn captures that wounded, “you’ve got to be kidding me” look before gripping her clipboard hard enough to suppress her rage.

As a viewer watches Ortega begin to fall in a kind of love with her growing role in organized crime, they get it. Locked into a life that isn’t at all what she imagined, still shackled to her high school boyfriend, crime is a twistedly perfect “hobby”. She craves upheaval and control, and doing favors for Ivan scratches both itches. She is somehow as out of and in control as she’s ever been, at the exact same time.

The good make the mistakes of Big Mistakes all the more frustrating. Squinting reveals the better show that could’ve been with a little pinch here, a few minutes shaved off there, and a scene rearranged now and then. Unfortunately, it didn’t make these choices, shipwrecking the series’ best elements in often listless storytelling. A Levy freakout is a thing to behold, but in the midst of an episode that feels devoid of any kind of narrative momentum, it is wasted. Big Mistakes makes too many little ones, ending up less than the sum of its parts.

Big Mistakes makes them over and over on Netflix starting April 9.

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