2016, 2018, 2020, 2021 - created by Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, Michael Showalter - HBO Max
There was a time in my online culture consumption that the AV Club was my go-to source for what was notable and worth my time. By the time Search Party debuted it was in the AV Club's waning days. Most of my favourite writers and critics had moved on and the site was starting to lose relevance. Rather than being a daily visit, it went to sometimes, irregular visiting. But the draw that kept me coming back was their episode-by-episode coverage of television shows. They've been a very good resource (with a talented stable of writers, even with my favourites moving on) for unpacking what it is you just watched.
Search Party, in 2016 and 2018 was one of those notable shows that consistently was given high marks on a per episode basis and a was kind of buzzed about. At the time though, Search Party was on TBS, a network that is not available from my cable provider (cable?). It was pitched to me at the time as a mystery comedy and somewhere in my head I had conflated it to basically Scooby-doo or Encyclopedia Brown with inept, entitled millennials. You know, something incredibly silly. I wasn't actually reading the reviews because, I thought, if it's a mystery, I don't want any spoilers. I knew that there were comedic people involved, like Arrested Development's Alia Shawcat, comedian John Early, and Wet Hot American Summer co-creator Michael Showalter was involved so it seemed worth noting for whenever it turned up in my country, whether on a Canadian channel or streaming service.
By 2019, the AV Club was a ghost of its former self, and I rarely visited the site at all, except when something from their daily mail-out caught my attention. They were less committed to covering television episode by episode and thus weren't very useful to me. I didn't see what was going on with Search Party, or if the hype was there. Every now and then I'd check my cable box (cable??) or streaming services to see if the show was available somewhere. It just kind of sat in the back of my mind as one of those lost treasures waiting to be found, even though it seemed any hype had completely died on it.
About 2 weeks ago, my cable service (cable???) had a big highlighted tile promoting Search Party on HBO. A pang of excitement fluttered in my belly. This was my "must watch next" show and I threw it on, not even warning my wife what it was we were about to start watching...because in reality, I had no idea what it was we were going to be watching.
I didn't know that there was a long 2 year hiatus between season 2 and 3, and that it had switched networks from TBS to HBO max, nor that the reason it was being promoted was that Season 4 had literally just been released. A quick peek mid first season on the AV Club and it looked like they abandoned reviewing the show ep-by-ep early in Season 3 (the thing about the AV Club is their TV reviews only happen based on page hits, and just like TV shows, TV show reviews can get cancelled). I was very confused about what was in store for me.
Minutes into the first episode, I realized I had no idea what was going on. This for sure wasn't the goofy mystery comedy I had convinced myself it was. Instead it was an uncomfortably dark comedy about aimless, self-involved millennials with a broodingly intense underbelly. I wasn't necessarily enjoying it at first, but I was captivated and consuming it 4 or more episodes at a time.
Season 1
Shawcat plays Dory Seif, a mid-20's NYU graduate lost in her life. She's been dating Drew (John Reynolds) for a few years and they live together seemingly out of lack of desire to be elsewhere. Drew is an incredible drip, a spineless dork who refuses to commit to a stance on anything and follows anyone's lead. Dory kind of pushes him around because otherwise he wouldn't get anything done. Dory works for Gail (Christine Taylor) a rich housewife, as her personal assistant, basically a paid friend to help her out with anything she needs. It's a purposeless dead-end job that provides no fulfillment, and when she tries to find work elsewhere she is told pretty much flat out that she has no qualifications and is worthless. So when Dory finds a missing persons poster for Chantal Witherbottom (Clair McNulty), an acquaintance from college, she starts to fixate on the case.
Dory's fixation on Chantal quickly becomes all-consuming. She starts to see clues, and becomes convinced she saw Chantal fleeing a Chinese restaurant. She pulls Drew and her other besties, Elliott (John Early) and Portia (Meredith Hagner), into her fixation. They all have fleeting rememberances of Chantal but literally no connection to her. As such they question why Dory is so committed to finding her. Dory doesn't really have answers to that question, ever, except to say that Chantal seemed like a nice person, and that she wants to do something meaningful. A reviewer (can't remember if it was the AV Club or not) noted that Dory and her friends' ability to pursue Chantal's case speaks to their entitlement, their ability to just go wherever, and say whatever - whether it's to infiltrate a Loving Hut-style cult operating out of a boutique arts and jewelry shop, or going to Chantal's family house for a hilariously inappropriate vigil - they have the luxury of doing so really without any questions or concerns.
Each of Dory's cohorts has their own Millennial journey in Season 1. Drew tries to find a spine while checking in on his downstairs neighbour, April (Phoebe Tyers), who may be in an abusive relationship. April jumps down Drew's throat for even deigning to intervene, then later tries to repay him with agressive, angry innuendo and comeons. Elliott, is trying to launch a boutique bottled water project that promises to donate some portion of proceeds to getting water to children in Africa, except he builds the whole enterprise around his personality (a story about surviving cancer in high school primarily), only for it all to be based on a lie, exposed by Dory's journalist ex-boyfriend Julian (Brandon Michael Hall). Despite being utterly ruined, Elliott boldly and proudly holds his head up high and lands a book deal to write about his boldly fake life. Portia, meanwhile, is a professional actress, working on a police procedural where she's playing a young Latinx detective (Portia being an upperclass, blonde, very white woman), only to be written out of the show because the show's lead is kind of jealous of her youth.
This leaves all three in prime position to follow Dory's lead in searching for Chantal. To say that I'm skipping some nuances is an understatement, a lot happens in these 10 episodes, but it all culminates in a very intense and uncomfortable showdown in the season finale, and certainly doesn't play out as any of them had anticipated. SPOILERS: it involves deceit, stalking, cheating, and murder. Oh, and Canada.
But beyond the more sensational aspects of the show, it's really about looking at how disengaged millennials are, and how they've had to manufacture lives or truths for themselves. Portia and Drew are both from upper class and seemingly have everything handed to them, but Drew is at once so overly concerned with consequences and yet completely dismissive of them when they arise, like he can just be a wounded, naive puppy and that makes everything ok. Portia just thinks that because she is who she is that there shouldn't be any struggle, and so she refuses to struggle at all. She just goes with whatever is happening, no fight really in her at all. Elliott basically has concocted his own reality where he gets to do what he wants, be who he wants, and disregard everyone around him except when it suits him. His relationship with poor Marc (Jeffrey Self) is as toxic as anything, yet Marc can't help but embrace the abuse. It's the kind of attention he wants and Drew is more than willing to give it to him. And Dory is just so lost, that she doesn't care about the impact her fixation is having on herself or the people around her, and she allows herself the option of getting lost in the narrative she's constructed, believing it to be the only truth despite what people around her tell her. Her conviction only seems to suck them in. It ultimately threatens to ruin them.
Season 2
Where season one was a darkly comedic mystery, even quasi-thriller at times, season two goes even darker, a bitingly bitter psychodrama that turns the whole show on its head.
There's no escaping SPOILERS about where Search Party goes fromherein, so you've been warned.
At the end of Season 1, Dory was attacked and Drew clobbered Dory's attacker, killing him. Elliott convinces them to dispose of the body rather than calling the cops and Portia refuses to be excluded, only to instantly regret getting involved. Again, the show indites these millennials with their "good enough" attitude, thinking that they can somehow get away with this crime with the bare minimum of effort and a decided lack of tact or considerate thought. But hey, they found Chantal and are hailed as heroes, despite building their whole heroic fable on a house of cards.
Julian, the guy who exposed Elliott last season, smells something off about this, and there's something rather potent about the hard working Black guy picking up on white people's bullshit that the show taps into. Likewise, Detective Hartman, a Black female NY cop, is on the case of the missing dead guy, and it doesn't take long for her to recognize the perpetrators. It's just proving it that eludes her. Again, a hardworking Black person sees through the lies of the entitled, yet struggles to get out from under them, it's a potent metaphor.
But even with eluding direct capture through an ever expanding web of lies, all four of our protagonists are dealing with some intense post-traumatic stress. Elliott starts developing physical symptoms including rashes and hair loss, and leans heavily on Marc, the poor sap, to hold him up. Portia takes solace in her art, playing a Manson family murderer, and getting under the thrall of her director (Jay Duplass) in a very deliberate example of grooming. Drew just wants to run away from his problems, a very Drew thing to do, which emboldens him set up a stack of domino lies to try and land a promotion that would take him to Asia. And Dory, she tries to move on with her life, to confront her guilt, to hold the gang together, to keep the their secret buried under smoke and shadows. And when she's threatened with exposure she goes even further.
Season two is so very, very dark, and intense, and uncomfortable. The show never even tries to play on sympathies towards what Dory and friends have done. If anything it wants you to understand what they're going through in their guilt but it also wants you to root for their inevitable capture, if only to alleviate the tension, which effectively builds and builds over the 10 episodes. Dory, in particular, becomes challenging as our lead character to follow, as it's clear the walls are closing in on her to everyone except her. It sets up the arc of the third season well. It's gripping but heavy viewing and it weighed on my mind throughout the three or four days we were watching this season. There's still some humour in it, and a few very big laughs along the way, but the darkness overwhelms the tone of the season.
Where the second season fails though, is in fulfilling its own promise of Julian and Detective Hartman. Both are sent off in purposeful side stories that ultimately don't find their way back into the main thread. Julian exposes Chantal's fake kidnapping in a very public article, but then is basically blacklisted for calling Chantal (who positioned herself as a victim of abuse) a liar. Then he's sexually harassed by a woman running for senator who thinks that the boy who cried liar on a victim of abuse is ripe for the treatment. The show makes it hard to figure out if this woman is trying to teach him a lesson, or if she is legitimately harassing him. It's a thoughtful story but we've spent so little time with Julian as a POV character that it seems strangely pidgeon-holed at this stage of the series (and then only to not follow through much with Julian Detective Harmon, meanwhile, is sent off on a wild goose chase with Dory's lies, and then falls into a situation much like Dory herself fell into. It's meant to be ironic, and I think the show thinks it's clever (it is a little) but again, it fails the characters in favour of a punchline. Detective Hartman is basically cast aside after this.
Season 3
Search Party takes yet another pivot into full on farce in season 3. It's an even wilder tonal shift than that between season 1 and 2. Effectively Dory and Drew are arrested (Portia and Elliott manage to escape prosecution) and a very public trial happens. Dory pivots even deeper into her darker self, convincing herself of her innocence and kind of reveling in the media attention. Drew, on the other hand, is feeling at rock bottom with no where further to recede.
Dory gets a pro-bono lawyer in the form of Cassidy Diamond (Shalita Grant) which is the result of Gail calling in a favour from a friend. The only hitch is this is Cassidy's first ever trial. Cassidy is the show's best-ever character, a modern take on Legally Blonde where everything about her screams "not a lawyer" and yet, she's completely awesome through and through. This show needs to spin Cassidy off into her own show ASAP. Grant is endlessly delightful in every scene. Drew's dad, meanwhile, gets him a lawyer from a friend of a friend, who turns out to be Louis Anderson in prime form of a man well past his prime, and almost past caring about doing a good job. In the courtroom, the trial is presided over by a judge who has a medical condition, and so he has to constantly be snacking. The buffet of snacks on his bench grows and grows as the trial goes on.
Prosecuting the trial is the feisty Polly Danziger (Michaela Watkins), who can't help but hate these millennial kids. Her purpose of prosecuting Dory and Drew is just, but her attitude about it is all wrong. She's placing the blame on a generation, and not the individuals, and so she's kind of the villain of the piece, even as Dory sinks deeper and deeper into unlikeable asshole territory. The mugshot of Dory, decked out in her red and black patterned dress with her hair done up and a half smirk is kind of iconic, and Season 3 makes a case for putting Dory on the list of great villains like Hannibal or Freddy. You WANT to see her punished.
Elliott, meanwhile, looks for a win and proposes to Marc with all the sincerity of a professional liar. Marc doesn't care and their wedding promises to be epic. It is, absolutely. Portia meanwhile feels lost and finds Jesus, with all the conviction of Elliott and his marriage. Chantal wants to have purpose and meaning and something to call her own and takes a paid interactive seminar for women in business, which seems like it takes off only to fail in spectacular Chantal fashion. Julian gets confronted by the now-Senator who maybe harassed him, to no real satisfactory purpose. These side stories feel like kind of meaningless asides compared to the big show trial that centerpieces the season. While the season sor of collides at Elliott's wedding with the arrival of Dory's stalker, and then peaks again with the big trial finale, it ends with the friendships having ruptured and then reformed and ruptured again, like globules in a lava lamp.
The indictment of millennials persists in this season, and yet, like every season it also finds its sympathies for them. The narrative here at times is Millennials are handed everything they could ever want, on a silver platter, and yet, what is given to them is never as good as it appears, and just as often as not sets them further back than ahead. Just as the trial is a farcical indictment of a generation so too the show's critiques are held up as farce, as if acknowledging that what it has to say about them isn't necessarily the truth, just a grand exaggeration of the truth for comedic effect.
Season 4
Once more the show pivots. Dory has been kidnapped, and nobody seems to notice. We wanted to see Dory punished for two seasons now, and her kidnapper, Chip Wreck (Cole Escola) does quite a number on her. He chains her up, shaves her head, forces her to renounce her friendships and claim him as her bestest friend ever. He locks her up in a basement cell that is a plush recreation of her NY apartment. It's like Saw if directed by Michel Gondry.
Chip's confinement of Dory is part of his own priviledge... a rich, spoiled child with everything handed to him. He's had an exceptional education but no need to apply it to anything. He has exceptional talent (I mean his dolls are incredible and his plush recreations are absolutely amazing) but no need for his talent to be validated. What he doesn't have is kinship, friends, and he's fixated on Dory being the one that actually understands him. He feeds Dory only apples and chicken nuggets, he dehumanizes her while praising her, he's an even more disturbed version of Portia's grooming director from Season 2 and yet still less vile in some way. Dory's attempts to escape are constantly thwarted, and her punishments severe, with Chip pulling out the final straw with some serious chemical brainwashing.
The show is trying for us to find our sympathies for Dory again, and it's a credit to Shawcat's acting, some very brave moments of deep vulnerability that a completely broken Dory, after everything she's been through, finds her way back into our hearts. She never wanted to be who she was, she never wanted the things that happened to her to happen, but at the same time, she refused to acknowledge her part in events for so long, she tried to bury it and pretend like there was a different truth to it all and it made her evil and villainous. It's a warning, in some ways. But finding truth in self, when we put on a deceptive face every day, is a real challenge. When the world expects nothing out of Millennials and has for years only sought to judge them for how they don't stack up to previous generations, who are they? What is their identity?
Drew has escaped to a fantasy land, which he thinks he finds joy in, but only finds minor solace in his escape. Elliott is asked to sell out what remains of himself, and he does so gleefully, becoming a celebrity talking head on a right wing news channel, decrying his own gayness and pretty much anything he ever claimed to believe in. Portia auditions to play herself in the docudrama on Dory's story, only to land the lead role. But her perception of Dory and what the producer's perception of Dory is clash, and she just can't seem to get it.
Eventually the gang realize that Dory is missing, not just escaping them, but legitimately in trouble, and they can't convince anyone of the problem. This second half of the season takes them on that inept Scooby-doo gang silliness that I originally thought the show would be. Where the first half of the season is a Stephen King style thriller-drama, the second half of the season takes the shape of a full-blown comedy (with a little dramatic catharsis in the mix). There's a surprise guest star late in this season that just elevates the entire show into legendary status, and her performance is big, bold, cartoonishly delightful... and it brings to the show one of the top five most epic car chase sequences ever filmed (epic in its absurdity, truly).
Likewise, there's an episode that spotlights Chantal's journey following the events of Season 3 that shows that the show has completely mishandled its side stories in previous seasons. Really stepping aside for a character for an entire episode, rather than trying to weave it throughout a season, is infinitely more satisfying and less frustrating. It's less of a distraction and serves the character and the performer much better. Plus Chantal, of all characters, is the most ridiculous figure, and continues to only get more and more ridiculous every time she's on screen.
The finale of season 4 provides a weird sense of closure to the series, but, along with the final moments of episode 9, episode 10 makes you question the reality of what you're seeing and have seen. What is the truth for these characters. If it were the series finale, it would be a rather fitting and beautiful sendoff to a very mixed and complicated series... but only a few weeks since its release, a season 5 has already been announced by HBO Max. The creators are teasing an actual finale, but stating "you never know". How very Millennially non-committal of them.
