The Afterparty takes a dark turn with a corrupt L.A. cop procedural

The Afterparty is really revealing that the stealth subject of its story is depictions of Toxic Types of Dudes. As such, the Danner episode of the show finally makes clear why she’s been so anxious about the impending arrival of Detective Germain: Her past experience with him suggests he’s more interested in case clearance rates than finding who’s committed a crime.

Germain is worse than just that, though. He’s the type of polished-seeming handsome white guy who everyone likes, who skates upward through life with a smile for everyone—until anything at all threatens his success, at which point he turns vicious. He’s friendly enough to Danner when they meet in their cadet days, but even then his kindness is shallow, and has a lot more to do with what he needs from her in any given moment. His specific variety of awfulness is revealed in a cascading series of scenes that eventually force Danner to leave Los Angeles, from his arrogant dismissal of her upon her arrival at a crime scene to the payoff of the gross nickname he’s given her.

That nickname is perhaps the nastiest part of the whole episode, if not the season, an epithet that starts at condescending and racist and eventually and inevitably ends with the threat of violence. It’s almost too much for the tone of the show, which has otherwise stayed relatively light even as it touched on darker matters. Despite the fact that the show is at its core about a murder, The Afterparty has typically softened its various darker genres with satire. But long stretches of the Danner episode are without jokes entirely, before jarringly jumping to something quirky and comedic, like when she gets distracted by how to make the perfect deviled egg in the midst of her triumphant clearing of the delivery thief. It’s a too-bracing jolt of reality for a show like this, really. Yes, the LA cop drama usually involves some racist, crooked cops. But hearing a white guy call a Black woman “Mad Dog” repeatedly and then threaten to put her down is downright disturbing, and no matter how accurate it might be to the experience of a woman like Danner, it’s a leap for a show like this to make amidst its usual shenanigans.

As a dark LA crime drama, it hits most of the notes you’d expect, minus the part where her partner is either corrupt or the only one who has her back or both (instead, he’s just a buffoon). She’s the one good cop in a corrupt system, hamstrung by superiors who don’t care about justice and are chasing TV fame. And as with the rest of these characters, it’s hard to separate her fantasy of who she is from what we see in reality. So far, she’s seemed somewhat complacent and goofy, and even apart from Germain getting sent in to manage a high-profile case, it seems like her boss has lost patience with her. Is she actually the smart and capable cop of her flashback? Or is she the person who couldn’t find her way out of an escape room, as we learned all the way back in the pilot? Since she says she’s solved the mystery, it looks like we’re about to find out…unless Germain shows up and derails the whole thing before she can interrogate Zoe and Brett’s daughter.

The episode is also a little sparse on Aniq, relegating him to some light air pod-related shenanigans with Zoe, who’s surprisingly chill about the fact that he illegally eavesdropped on her conversation with Danner. Really, the episode is light on the reunion characters overall, opting instead to keep the focus squarely on Danner and her reasons for hating Germain. It’s a bit of a shame, since we’re about to say farewell to all of these folks. Or hello, in the case of Jennifer 2, who’s now been missing for most of the season.

• I’m open to the show convincing me that any of these folks could be the killer in the finale, although in my opinion, Walt is the only one so far whose behavior is odd enough that it could include murder. The fact that Aniq says Zoe and Chelsea should have seen someone go up the stairs, but also does not notice Walt sitting next to him while he’s talking to Zoe could have been foreshadowing. Or his entire character is a season-long red herring.
• Nice callback to how Brett is a turd in a leather jacket.
• Not much on this earth is more awkward than Yasper’s excruciatingly long impression of Xavier’s orgasm song.
• Poor Reid Scott. I mean, not really, because he’s a successful actor, but he always gets stuck playing these absolute monsters.
• Did anyone else check to see how long this episode was after Danner complained about how TV depicts policing in a “corny-ass 44 minute package”? They’re safe—it’s under 40 minutes long.
• Wait, is the show also going to solve the older murder? Or was that a Fred Savage cameo just for the fun of it?