The Afterparty serves up a buffet of stars and genres to mixed effect

The Afterparty, by its nature, is going to be a little hit or miss. In concept and execution, it’s impressively ambitious, with each episode taking place inside a different genre, whether rom com or action thriller, each starring a murderer’s row (zing!) of current comedy stars, all recounting the events of the same 15 year high school reunion and afterparty. But given the big swings, it’s inevitable that some episodes are going to land a little better than others.

In the early going, the first episode is unfortunately the weakest, taking two deeply charming actors in Sam Richardson and Zoe Chao and sticking them into a sort of blah romantic comedy. This may be because the premiere has the burden of setting up a premise both simple (the whodunnit, among a group of people who have secret motivations to love or hate each other, is a classic) and complicated (at least one of these people thinks they’re in a Fast and the Furious movie). It also initiates a problem that the rest of the series has not quite untangled so far, which is that when every episode is told in a different genre, from different perspectives, it’s a little hard to tell who these people are.

Richardson’s Aniq fares the best, even if he’s in the most hot water during the subsequent investigation into the death of the widely loathed Xavier (Dave Franco), thanks to the fact that everyone thinks he was the last person to see the victim alive, and he was spotted alone in Xavier’s room. But he’s a little bit of a cipher—even as John Early’s Detective Culp tries to categorize everyone at the reunion as a high school type, he labels Aniq “adorkable,” which doesn’t tell us that much about him. He has a truly bizarre career (escape room designer?), but is still positioned as the everyman character among this batch of genre characters personified. But in later episodes, as he scrambles to solve the mystery before Culp and Tiffany Haddish’s Detective Danner arrest him, he settles into just being the weird desperate guy making outlandish remarks in an effort to gather enough clues to pinpoint the killer, and it works better than lovestruck nice guy.

Chao is stuck in the unenviable position of playing the dream girl to at least three different men so far. There’s no reason to think she won’t get an episode told from her perspective further down the line, but it’s frustrating to watch her get saddled with reacting to various scenery chewing men episode after episode. Even Aniq gets to be funny episode to episode, whereas Zoe is mostly just charmed or annoyed by turns at whatever hijinks the men are getting up to.

Of the first three, Ben Schwartz’s Crazy Ex Girlfriend-esque musical riff is the most polished start to finish, possibly because conceptually it holds together the most as a mini arc. Yasper went to the reunion hoping to get Xavier to “bless” one of his songs, Xavier gives him at least some hope it’ll happen, and then he has those hopes dashed when Xavier is killed. It doesn’t hurt that the songs they give him are pretty funny—”We All Get One Shot, Twice” is somehow a spoof of both the Eminem song and the Hamilton one. Plus, the groundwork has already been laid that Yasper is kind of an oddball, guessing in an earlier episode that definitely-not-a-murderer-Walt is named “Slamps” and asking Aniq if he’s ever heard of pilates. Brett’s Fast and the Furious spoof doesn’t land quite as well, though we will all probably be haunted by that disturbingly long literal pissing contest. It’s funny that this guy imagines himself in an action movie even when he’s trying to find his daughter’s misplaced toy, but there isn’t a whole lot more to the bit than that, and the resolution to his arc, where he abruptly learns to be a better person, is a pat ending to everything we’ve learned about him so far.

The other downside to all of this? All of these funny people are mostly only funny in their own episodes. Haddish gets to do some endearingly odd work in the premiere, and then gets stuck playing it straight as she questions Brett and Yasper. She’s Tiffany Haddish! Why is she so muted here? Ilana Glazer’s Chelsea may be up next, but has otherwise been drifting around in the background, as has Tiya Sircar, who made the absolute most of it every time she popped up on The Good Place. Is it a little noticeable that the women don’t get as much to do in the first three episodes? In fact, it is.

Still, we’re only three episodes in, and there’s plenty more opportunities for the women to have their moments in whatever genres fall to them. Here’s hoping they get a first shot, again, to strut their stuff.

Stray observations

• Really hoping that the bizarre, diarrhea-themed game Aniq is putting more and more thought into continues to be a running bit. The single line that made me laugh the most so far on the show is him saying “Thinking about calling it ‘Spooky Dookies.’” Even typing it out right now made me laugh.
• Richardson may get the lion’s share of the funny lines so far—I cracked up at him whispering “A person is here” to attract Jennifer 1’s attention while she’s meditating.
• I spotted Will Forte’s name in the credits but missed that he was Xavier’s co-star in the apparently very popular Hungry Hungry Hippos movie. Hoping we get to see more of this and the Hall and Oates biopic co-starring Channing Tatum.
• “What if a human butt could wear a jacket?”
• Before Haddish got stuck doing yet another variation on “cop who’s seen it all,” I really enjoyed Aniq’s dawning horror as he realized the detective he was depending on to clear his name couldn’t solve an escape room called Santa Claustrophobia.
• Speaking of Tiya Sircar, I’m choosing to interpret her excitedly telling Aniq that her child was conceived in Australia to his total indifference as a callback to her excitedly telling Ted Danson she worked on an Australian accent for one of his Bad Place efforts. Why won’t anyone let Tiya Sircar show her appreciation for the great country of Australia?
• OK, what even was that hat? Is that a real hat style or did their costume department just craft a bizarre half-beanie, shiny…thing?
• Just going to politely say that some of these people look like they could be 33 and some assuredly do not, to the point that I almost wish the show would just acknowledge it already. Also, are 15 year high school reunions a thing? I thought we did 10 and then waited it out until 20 or 25.