Each fall, most of the broadcast and cable networks debut a ton of new shows in the span of a few months, making it difficult to sort out which ones to make time for and which to skip. So we’re starting the WIRED Pilot Program, where we highlight what you should continue watching, and what you can just let sit on your DVR until it automatically deletes. Today's entry: Search Party.
The Show: Search Party (TBS, two episodes a night starting November 21)
The Premise: When Chantal Witherbottom, a college acquaintance of Dory (Alia Shawkat), goes missing, Dory's curiosity turns into an obsession. Not as strong an obsession, though, as the one she has for figuring out who she really is. Along with her spineless boyfriend Drew (John Reynolds) and self-obsessed friends Elliott (John Early) and Portia (Meredith Hagner), Dory decides to find out what happened to Chantal (Clare McNulty)—and, much more importantly, to find herself.
The Pilot Program Take: None of the characters in Search Party are very effective procedural detectives, since they don’t have much sympathy for what Chantal must be going through—they’re all too consumed with self-pity, up against the impossible task of discovering who they want to be when they grow up.
And that’s why the suspense thriller premise is so apt. Somewhere in Williamsburg, among the sunny brunch patios and dimly lit bars and marble-floored coffee shops, Dory and her friends are confronted with an impossible challenge—earnestly caring about the well-being of someone else. The dark comedy renders its callous characters in precise, spot-on detail, and it’s hard to tell who is the most narcissistic: Drew, the clingy, patronizing boyfriend; the endlessly self-promoting Elliott; the ditsy, needy Portia. The absurdity of their navel-gazing is drawn into sharp relief by opening and closing scenes of Chantal’s parents, panicked and scared and relatable, facing a tragedy that the indulgent hipster protagonists can’t step outside of themselves to see.
The show hinges on Shawkat’s performance, and she shines. Dory is (somewhat) aware of her ridiculous lifestyle, but she’s incapable of moving past it. Every event is a vehicle for her self-exploration—Chantal’s disappearance and presumed death, a nonprofit offering leadership skills to young girls, the domestic violence in the apartment next door—but she knows it. As she tells the counselor who rejects her from the nonprofit, "Everybody can tell me what I can’t do, but nobody can tell me what I can do." Shawkat plays Dory as both absurd and genuinely lost, and it carries the show.
The Verdict: Search Party mercilessly pokes fun at a certain self-indulgent twentysomething Brooklyn stereotype (the characters could have gone to Oberlin with Girls' Hannah and Marnie), and does it well. Beyond an occasional twinge for Dory, it’s tough to sympathize with any of the characters, none of whom see anything beyond themselves—which is why the premise of selflessly searching for a missing girl is so deliciously good. The thrift store overalls and floral rompers may not be dark, but the humor certainly is.
TL;DR: Watch it, especially if you’re ready to be smug about—or to recognize yourself in—some mid-twenties self-indulgence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LDqYdVGWWw
