The Afterparty Season 1 Review & Summary: Acknowledges The Bizarre And Deep Dives Into It

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Video Source – Apple TV (Apple TV YouTube Channel)

The Afterparty is an 8 episode murder mystery comedy series streaming on Apple TV+. The story revolves around a high school reunion. A class reunites for their high school reunion and as any typical reunion has its drama so does this. But at the Afterparty a murder takes place. They are all now suspects. Each suspect is told to tell their story and each episode is designed differently based on the suspect. The overarching tone of the comedy is set through but each episode is a different sub-genre, romance, action, suspense-thriller, musical, etc.

The Afterparty Season 1 Cast

  • Tiffany Haddish as Detective Danner
  • Sam Richardson as Aniq,
  • Zoë Chao as Zoë
  • Ike Barinholtz as Brett
  • Ben Schwartz as Yasper
  • Ilana Glazer as Chelsea
  • Jamie Demetriou as Walt
  • Dave Franco as Xavier

The Afterparty Season 1 Plot

Xavier, a pop star/actor is murdered in his own house at his afterparty following the reunion. At the party lots of people are present but a few characters are the suspect. Aniq, an escape room designer, Zoe the high school vice principal/ artist, Brett, Zoe’s former husband and high school jock, Yasper, the owner of an AV company and Aniq’s best friend, Chelsea, a receptionist at a veterinary clinic and former class president, Walt, someone who no one knows.

Danner (Haddish) is asked to collect evidence on the crime as the investigation is to be conducted by someone else in the morning. But she disobeys her orders and starts carrying out her own investigation she is equal parts competent and incompetent. Each episode reveals the night’s events and alludes to this mysterious St. Patricks’s Day party during high school. Each episode like a classic murder mystery plot reveals a little more about the characters, their motives, and keeps you guessing. It is set in Los Angeles in Xavier’s fancy house with an intriguing plotline full of some crazy insane characters.

The Afterparty Season 1 Review

This show is perfectly insane and an absolute ride to watch with 8 brilliantly written episodes and incredible acting. Haddish, Ike Barinholtz, Dave Franco, and Ben Schwartz’s comic brilliance needs to introduction. They did an absolutely incredible job playing their caricatured roles to perfection. The writing for this show is simple brilliance.

Also, if you are waiting for Only Murders in the Building Season 2, this is the perfect show to watch. It is a tad bit more eccentric and heavily leans into comedy but is incredible from start to finish.

The Afterparty Season 1 Review

In The Afterparty, Everyone Has Their Own Story

Each character is fresh and unique. It also fulfils the recent unquenched thirst for murder mystery all the while carefully balancing the tropes. The show doesn’t deliver a stale array of tropes that remind you of another show. It does this by doubling down on the eccentricity of the premise of each episode being a different genre. It also uses the simple calculus of a good murder show.

It’s a simple whodunnit. Everybody has their own story where they are the hero and it’s the detective’s job to figure out who did it. It also has an intriguing past that extends over the present social relations and dynamics among the group of characters. The main plot is revealed through the tying together of the side plots. They don’t exist as individual stories that deviate from the main one but what creates it. This is where the brilliance lies.

The characters are equally strange, with weirder jobs, an escape room designer, a receptionist at a pet clinic, and an AV company owner. It doesn’t have the traditional jobs and adds a layered craziness. Also the sheer amazing portrayal of a mega-rich douche by Dave Franco. Franco’s Xavier is annoying, creepy, and starved for attention.

The perfect hollow popstar. He doesn’t care about anybody but himself. Aniq’s an absolute teddy bear of a person and opening with his character’s story just sets the right tone for the rest of the show. Ben Schwartz stole the show though with his portrayal of the annoying best friend. In everybody’s but his own, he’s the annoying best friend. It’s amazing. He’s the side annoying character the buts into every major conversation and constantly causes problems. His musical episode was one of my favourite ones.

Everyone’s Night is Different

This comes to the next reason why I love the show. The premise of each episode represents a character’s state of mind. As detective Danner states their mind movie. Each person views their life and its events differently. The more times you hear the same story, the more angles you get. Each person starts and ends the story differently but hearing different sides in completely different contexts changes the way you view it/ As plotlines emerge contexts change but as genres change the story changes further. Everyone’s night is very very different and that adds a dynamic that has not been this well portrayed so far, in my opinion. Two of my favourite episodes have to be Zoe’s animated version of the night which adds a strangely introspection perspective. It’s also a fun visual escape and cuts across the dreariness of seeing people all the time. It was very Lizzie McGuire and I loved it. The other as I said before was Yasper’s, one was seeing the annoying best friend be the hero and the second was the amazing songs that emerged out of it.

Another genius move was the character of Walt. The quintessential outsider whose existence nobody acknowledges but is aware of everything. He has the most in-depth analysis of the group and presents it as a teen drama. He talks about the St. Patrick’s Day party and reveals what actually happens. His character is an incredible comic relief. As he relays his side of the events, we also learn he was there for a lot of the events that occurred. His character exists so completely outside that he has no opinions and just relays what happened. The writers themselves don’t recognise him and name the episode High School and not Walt. All other episodes are named after people. His entire existence is to represent high school. He reinforced the existing hierarchies and also portrayed the feeling of high school. All the while hilariously just saying Walt, hoping someone would recognise him. The Jennifers were the typical high school mean girls who never really left high school. They added some of the funniest scenes of the show.

The Movie Culture Synopsis

I guess it is pretty obvious what my opinion is. I do not know if I was biased or was just starved amongst a pit of repetitive crime dramas but, man, was this a fun watch. The show had a brilliant concept overlaid on a popular genre – a murder mystery. Murder mystery comedies tend to generally fail at toeing the line. This show wasn’t afraid to not toe the line.

While Only Muders in the Building toes the line between comedy and murder drama with beauty this show doesn’t even attempt it. It acknowledges the bizarre and deep dives into it. I would say it’s worth getting a subscription for Apple TV+ just to watch this show. Apple TV+ is still figuring out its niche amongst streaming giants and these are the kind of shows that will help establish it.