Apple TV+ review: The Afterparty: Season 2
Review Overview
Cast
9Consistency
5Comedy
7David Farnor | On 12, Jul 2023
Season 2 premieres on 12th July 2023, with new episodes arriving on Wednesdays.
The motive is always the key. In a golden age of murder mysteries – most of them self-aware send-ups of murder mysteries – that’s not only true of the stories they’re telling but why they’re telling them in the first place. The Afterparty, Chris Miller’s inspired Apple TV+ series, immediately stood apart from the crowd by framing the different suspects’ accounts of the event through different genres. Back for a second season, it sticks with the same witty method, but the motive feels lacking.
Season 2 brings back the best characters from the first chapter: Sam Richardson and Zoë Chao as Aniq and Zoe, childhood sweethearts who are now in their early days as an official couple, plus Tiffany Haddish as Danner, now a former detective who is interrogating possible culprits here just because she loves a bit of flirty gossip. We catch up with Aniq and Zoë as they attend the wedding of her sister, Grace (Poppy Liu). But all goes awry when the rich groom, Edgar (Zach Woods), turns up dead the morning after the happy nuptials.
The story of Aniq trying to impress Zoë’s old-money relatives – including a disapproving Vivian (Vivian Wu) and a no-nonsense Feng (Ken Jeong) – is the stuff romantic comedies are made of, and so Season 2 opens with a rom-com farce that once again showcases Richardson and Chao’s impeccable comic timing and charming chemistry, as they go up against everything from waylaid relatives to missing pets and awkward nocturnal encounters in the woods. But as Grace becomes the prime suspect for the death of her new husband, the show also doesn’t shy away from the tensions that arise as Aniq brings in Danner to crack the case and Zoë only wants it to crack away from her sister.
While The Afterparty’s playful presentation is its selling point, part of its strength lies in the way they format gives each of its stars to shine, and Season 2’s casting is once again top-notch. Zach Woods delivers wonderfully deadpan physical comedy as the gangly, eccentric oddball genius – him just reciting words with “g” in it is a joy (“Dungarees! Frigate! Gigolo!”). A steely Elizabeth Perkins is also good value as the suspicious, protective mother of the groom. They and Liu’s Grace are placed centre-stage in a whimsical Jane Austen pastiche that deftly mixes period and modern details.
As the genres switch up, the performers get to have more fun, with John Cho as Zoë’s long-lost travelling uncle Ulysses endlessly stealing scenes with his over-the-top, worldly bravado. (“Don’t give up.” “In archery or in love?” “Dealer’s choice.”) With Season 1 skewering action movies and musicals, among others, the strongest two pastiches here are given to the strongest characters: a film noir thriller starring Paul Walter Hauser as Grace’s former boyfriend, Travis, and an Ocean’s Eleven-style caper following Edgar’s slippery business partner, Sebastian (Jack Whitehall).
Hauser is hilarious as a loser who thinks of himself as Philip Marlowe, but who is revealed in every moment to be a conspiracy truther who still holds a desperately delusional torch for his ex. Whitehall, meanwhile, gets the best role of his career as the plummy British salesperson, cheating his way from one paycheque to the next. (“I’m in a knife fight here and I’m holding a sausage.”)
Their interludes work because each chosen genres fits their self-perception, just as Aniq wishes for the happy-ever-after simplicity of a rom-com and Grace is naively looking for her Mr Darcy. Season 2, however, struggles to tie the knot as neatly as the first anthology of anecdotes – where Season 1 was a meditation on fame and how we try to reimagine ourselves and distance ourselves from the past, Season 2 is a wedding where a corpse turns up.
That missing layer begins to feel more obvious the more the season goes on, even as the cast sink their teeth into the material with increasing versatility. By the time we get to a Wes Anderson-style interlude, the reduced sense of purpose behind the over-arching puzzle box starts to niggle. It’s testament to the smart scripting, however, that the season might still pull a surprise flourish out of the bag – and that, until then, the laughs are still packed into every episode. The result is a party that’s missing the energy of the first gathering, but it’s still a fun place to hang out.