Search Party: A Maddeningly Anxious Quest for Purpose
By: Brandon R. Chinn
Tags: Review, Articles, Comedy, Opinion, Television

Search Party is a layered cake of satire frosted in frothy blood.

I had little expectation for this show going in — in fact, I knew nothing about it before my first watch, save a sibling that prompted my viewing after it was added to HBO Max. Begun in 2016, the show lilted after its second season until HBO Max breathed life into the cooling corpse of the show and renewed it not only for a third season, but an upcoming forth.

Like many new viewers, I was taken aback by the unexpected, delicious anxiety presented in this short series that spans genres and packs twists, satire, humor and social critique into its quick-paced seasons.

[Spoilers Abound]

Not The New York You Know

Search Party begins as a safe traditionalist, a NYC drama of affluent millenials bored by the safety of their stereotypical bourgeois lives. Dory is placed front and center as the fixed point of the show, a girl completely lost as to her own meaning in existence. She feels no passion for her hipster boyfriend, has no education or career prospects and doesn’t view herself with anything beyond stale contempt.

That is, until she notices that an acquaintance from college has mysteriously gone missing.

The cast that you hate, then love, then love to hate.

The first season of Search Party sets itself up well for a murder-mystery romp, as Dory the over-eager protagonist drags her loving but uninterested friends on a chase that involves a mysterious cult, adultery, a private investigator, spicy leads and frustrating dead ends. The first season moves on at a clip, every short episode ending in a cliffhanger that drops some new morsel of information that begs a weekend binge watch. Dory becomes obsessed, dragging her friends into the abyssal search for Chantal, a person that admittedly none of them ever cared for much.

The Search For Meaning

Dory has decided that her new mission in life is the finding of Chantal. Not because of any great heroic complex or personal drive for a beloved friend, but because Dory is certain that this sudden avenue is the apex of her meaning as a person, something to give meaning to her vapid and uninteresting existence. Her boyfriend Drew and friends Portia and Elliot are drawn by the entangling of their lives through Dory’s obsessive search, until each one of them are undone by her narcissistic mania.

Instead of establishing itself across its few season as a murder-mystery noir, Search Party reveals early on that it is a scathingly dark satire that will spare no one. A millenial critique in all its forms, Search Party shines a cell-phone light on every corner of the vapid pursuit of shallow personal meaning, and Dory’s psychotically obsessive pursuit of Chantal creates a trail of death and destruction that touches every single person in her life.

The evolution of Dory across the current three season of Search Party is Heisenbergian in a way, the culmination of her psychotic episodes, delusions, lies, guilt and pain melding together under the solar heat of her increasingly horrific decisions. Somewhere between season one and season three Dory’s increasingly poor choices transform her into someone else entirely, a person unrecognizable by both herself and her friends as she seeks not to come to terms with her sins but to absolve them entirely.

The second-hand anxiety provided throughout the show rivals the greatest thrillers.

Beyond Noir

Search Party does not center itself only in the grim landscape of noir, but instead is a satire at heart filled with absurdist comedy and cartoonish characters drawn in broad strokes. Drew begins as an unbearable doofus of a boyfriend, a lanky and bespectacled hipster locked into a soul-sucking internship and belonging to a group of friends that see him as nothing more than secondary. Portia is vapid and sweet, but ultimately a self-centered artistic mess. Elliot trumps them all as a white gay socialite of outstanding privilege, a person that is maddeningly immune to punishment. These characters comprise the viewership, alongside minor characters such as the “morally righteous” Julian, manically verbose April and charming yet creepy Keith.

You begin the show with a rightful air of disgust for every single character. You end it with a twisted fondness for them all.

Alia Shawkat’s portrayal of Dory is incredible.

Search Party is terrifically hilarious. It’s grim, gnarly, bloody and disgusting. It’s also one of the funniest thrill-rides I’ve experienced from a piece of media in some time. It helps that my own viewing of the show was fresh, without expectation and included all three current seasons. As it stands, Search Party is an incomparable thrill ride of absurdity, a distillation of millenial anxiety that is overflowing with all the gooey goodness of loving despicable people. The transformation of Dory alone would warrant a watch of the show, but what helps Search Party stand above is its eclectic cast of dark, narcissistic characters.

It’s difficult to root for anyone in the show, and ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The writing is punchy and each cliffhanger is efficiently resolved and replaced with a new problem within minutes. Each action is absurd and as Dory continues down her path of delusion and mania, the episodes turn dreamlike and outlandish. Season Two on its own is some of the best television I’ve ever seen.

Like me, I would urge anyone to go into the show with very low expectations and foreknowledge and allow themselves to be swept along for the ride. I’m eagerly awaiting the next season, which HBO Max has already finished filming. Search Party may be relatively unknown, but will stand the test of time as a piece of media that readily detached itself from the deluge of hipster post-college shows and crafted something equally terrifying and hilarious.