Search Party

Search Party

TV-MA

A thoroughly enjoyable thriller and takedown of millennial culture

The Very Best

8.0

TV Show

United States of America
English
Comedy
2016
Alia Shawkat, John Early, John Reynolds
22 min

What it's about

A dark comedy about four self-absorbed twenty-somethings who become entangled in an ominous mystery when a former college acquaintance suddenly disappears.

The take

Search Party starts off with a simple mystery: whatever happened to Chantal, that girl Dory (Alia Shawkat) barely knew in college? She's been pronounced dead by authorities but Dory is sure she's seen her alive just recently. With nothing else going on in her life, a life she imagined would be filled with big feats and adventures by now, Dory enlists the help of her fellow 20-something friends and decides to get to the bottom of the case.

What ensues is a terrific mystery—perfectly paced and twisted—elevated by Dory and company's comic self-absorption, which buoys the story with great wit and humor. It's both a self-contained mystery and a satire, and none overwhelms the other. 

As the series progresses, Search Party gets even deeper down the loony hole. The crimes get darker, the stakes get higher, and their sanities barely withstand the new cracks they get. But it also gets even more complex and interesting, with many things to say about our so-called lost generation, the millennial generation, who would rather solve mysteries and find simple cure-alls than look at ourselves in plain light.

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