Millennial Mystery Machine.
TBS' Search Party will air its entire 10-episode season beginning Monday, November 21st - with two episodes a night airing over five days. This is a spoiler-free review of the entire season.
From filmmakers Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, along with Wet Hot American Summer's Michael Showalter, comes Search Party - a tonal hodge-podge of hispter dark comedy that works as sort of a Girls meets Nancy Drew mash-up. It's a 10-episode mystery series that works as an ironic throwback to the Hardy Boys adventures of yore while tackling, from a dramedy standpoint, the lives of four unfulfilled millennials.
At the core of Search Party is Dory, a young aimless woman (played by Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat) who decides that the disappearance of an old college acquaintance, Chantal, should become an all-consuming element in her currently uneventful life. With hope dwindling among Chantal's actual family and friends, Dory, sans self-confidence regarding career goals and life skills, believes that she sees the missing girl alive and sets out to prove to everyone, including her own superficial squad, that she's not dead.
Search Party takes a few episodes to kick in. At first, you might find yourself frustrated with Dory and her circle of seemingly empty friends and wonder what the point is. Are you watching a parody of young people? Is it meant to be satire? Is there overtly clumsy messaging here about the narcissism of Gen Y and the perception that they're crippled by self-absorption? Some of it's laid out here in a fairly on-the-nose manner. Dory's ex, Julian (Brandon Micheal Hall), even tells her at one point that she only cares about Chantal because, basically, she's looking for something to care about.
Once you hit the end of the second episode though and get into the third ("The Night of One Hundred Candles" - each one has an old mystery novel-style title), Search Party picks up and finds its voice a little better. This is due mostly to a combination of the mystery aspects of the show becoming more layered and the fleshing out of the rest of the main characters - played by John Early, Meredith Hagner, and John Reynolds.
Because when you first meet Dory's beleaguered beau Drew (Reynolds) and her best friends -- liar/attention whore Elliott (Early) and flighty actress Portia (Hanger) -- there's a good chance you'll want to stop watching. The first few episodes are designed to bring Dory to the front and central more, relegating the others into off-putting quips and quirks that might drive you nuts. Once the other three start having more to do however -- not just with the mystery but with their own lives -- they become much more meaningful, and even likable, characters.
Then, once Search Party feels like more of an ensemble effort, it's easy to start to wonder, "Okay, what if a quartet of self-sabotaging post-grads can actually solve a real case?" What if these characters can actually make a difference to one grieving family, even if their motivations for doing so may be muddied with myriad forms of irony and distraction. It's actually a pretty cool transition, and by the middle of the show I found myself invested in both the mystery and the characters themselves. And yes, this is a show that works well from a binge perspective. The chapters and short and focused and TBS was wise to make them all available during one five-day stretch.
Search Party also comes with a slew of fun guest performers; from executive producer Showalter to Office Space's Ron Livingston to Zoolander's Christine Taylor to Rosie Perez and Parker Posey. Being an amateur sleuth series affords the show more than a few colorful characters for Dory and her pals to meet along the way. The music too, featuring a snippet of Purity Ring's "Obedear" for the opening title card, helps ground the show in more mysterious waters, always providing an soulful backdrop to remind us that there could be something ominous right around the corner.
The Verdict
Search Party takes a few episodes to find its groove while working earnestly to make you care about its ostensibily vapid characters. It is a comedy though, and includes more than a few laugh out loud moments, and are elements of satire involved with its portrayal of these particular millennials, but eventually the show settles into its own unique voice - a fun blend of dopiness and danger.
Editors' Choice
→
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire