There’s No Enlightenment, Just Psychosis: ‘Search Party’

❉ ‘Search Party’ is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel, writes Robin Bunce.

“Search Party is crazy, but equally, it is rooted in reality. Yes, the characters in Search Party do absurd things, and lie through their admittedly perfect teeth to cover their tracks. But is this any crazier than the cult of QAnon, or more outré than Trump posing with a Bible during the George Floyd protests? Of course all of this craziness is essentially American. Yet, recent events indicate that the UK is ready for Search Party.”

Search Party is stunning. It’s piercingly good. I turned on for Alia Shawkat and stayed for everything. Search Party is Scooby Doo meets The Name of the Rose, it’s Black Mirror off acid, it’s got all the drama of Traitors (US) and all the narrative complexity of Twin Peaks. It’s a comedy about victimhood and trauma, about shame, narcissism and denial, a comedy that will take you from utopia through dystopia, to the apocalypse. It’s deep and shallow, it’s impossibly mad and hyper-real. Like life itself, Search Party is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel.

Created by Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, Search Party is a critically acclaimed genre bending dark comedy, which launched in the US back in 2016, and ‘dropped’ on iPlayer at the beginning of the year. The show follows a group of millennials on an existential quest. Ostensibly, the show starts out as Dory’s (Shawkat) search for a missing friend. She’s accompanied in her adventures by Drew (John Paul Reynolds), Portia (Meredith Hagner), Elliot (John Early), a group of adorable and resourceful narcissists.

Ultimately, Dory’s search for her missing ‘friend’ is about something more complex. Dory lives a purposeless life performing inconsequential tasks. Worse still, as a PA she’s dealing with somebody else’s trivia. And on top of this, Dory inhabits a world devoid of meaning. There is a generational dynamic here: the world of Search Party seems to be run by and for rich white boomers – men who are so unreflective they don’t question a system designed solely to make wealthy men richer. The show’s Gen Xers response to the meaninglessness of the world is more cynical. Theatre director Elijah (Jay Duplass) and Mary Ferguson (J. Smith-Cameron), candidate for the New York State Senate, use superficially meaningful projects as a pretext for manipulating and seducing twenty-somethings. It’s Dory’s sense of being lost that propels her search for Chantelle (Clare McNulty). The first season is full of adventure. Dory and ‘the gang’ discover a cult, they stumble upon what appears to be a conspiracy, and fall in with a private investigator. Season 1 is brilliant throughout, but the ending is to-die-for. You can only experience it for the first time once. Savour it.

At the beginning of Season 2, the party is over, but the search continues. Paradoxically, Dory’s search for herself leads to increasingly complex forms of self-deception. Appropriate to Trump’s America, Dory and her friends prefer narrative meaning to mundane truth, and embrace self-serving stories of their own victimhood rather than face the reality of their guilt. For all the show’s moral and philosophical intricacy, it’s also brilliant comedy. Shawkat is always at the heart of the action, and Search Party is, perhaps, the first project to truly showcase her range as a performer. Dory’s friends ‘nay, the gang’ are endlessly funny, whether they are finding God, getting honeyed, punching twinks, or blackmailing middle aged men. Recuring characters also make their mark on the show.

Much of Season 3 has the feel of a courtroom drama. Enter Cassidy Diamond (Shalita Grant) an ambitious, savvy, if inexperienced, attorney. Grant, who studied voice at the Juilliard School, a celebrated New York performing arts conservatory, bring superb vocal and physical comedy to the role. Comedian Cole Escola’s Chip Wreck, AKA ‘the Twink’, the sinister, bratty and vulnerable antagonist of Season 4, has the same larger than life hyper-real quality. Whether actors are on screen for a single scene or appear in every episode, the comedic characterisation is always rooted in something real. As a result, Search Party is populated by characters with depth, comprehensible motivations, every one of which appears to be at the centre of their own drama.

What’s true of its characters is true of the show more generally. Search Party is crazy, but equally, it is rooted in reality. Yes, the characters in Search Party do absurd things, and lie through their admittedly perfect teeth to cover their tracks. But is this any crazier than the cult of QAnon, or more outré than Trump posing with a Bible during the George Floyd protests? Certainly, many of the characters seem obsessed with social media, easily distracted by trivia such as the amount of ketchup on a sandwich, or the Duchess of Windsor’s nipple slip. But is this any stranger than the on-going obsession with the Kardashians, or the rage over the ‘woke’ redesign of M&Ms? Of course all of this craziness is essentially American. Yet, recent events indicate that the UK is ready for Search Party. In many ways Liz Truss would be perfect on the show. Truss, after all, spent her time as Chief Secretary to the Treasury mastering Instagram filters, and was the Prime Minister who trashed Britain’s economy only to resign claiming she was ‘more convinced than ever’ that she had been right all along.

You get the impression with Search Party, that everyone brought their A-game, and more than that, that Bliss and Rogers consciously made something ground-breaking and worthwhile. Fort Tilden, Bliss and Rogers’ award winning independent comedy contains the observation that true artists ‘take risks, and are honest with themselves’, that making art is hard but immeasurably valuable. Rogers is on record stating that ‘art is life or death.’ Search Party is made in this spirit. The show signals this with a technique as old as The Quatermass Experiment. Within Search Party we catch glimpses of artless plays, lazy television shows, and risible films, not least Savage: The Dory Sief Story. The contrast with Search Party could not be sharper.

While Dory never finds what she’s looking for, Search Party contains a truth for those who want to see it. Its alluded to throughout the show, but it comes into focus most clearly in the very final scene. In Season 5 Search Party embraces S-F, and all hell breaks loose. The show’s message flashes up on the screen as ‘the gang’ enter post-apocalyptic Brooklyn. Characteristically, Dory and her friends miss it. Its prosaic and thought-provoking, and, perhaps, something that they knew all along.

Unlike Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power, which makes something mundane out of profound source material, Search Party starts with the banality of everyday life and creates something deep. Search Party is for all the complex liars out there, for all the narcissists, for the imperfect tens, for everyone who has a complex relationship with themselves, and anyone who strives to be authentically fake. If you can get past your rage at the M&M redesign, binge it, feel your serotonin levels rising, let it sit with you, and go back for more.


❉ ‘Search Party’ is on BBC iPlayer.

Robin Bunce is Fellow in Politics at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. He has written on politics, S-F, and contemporary culture for the Huffington Post, the New Statesman, the London Review of Books, the Independent and the Guardian. He recently published a biography of Diane Abbott MP with Samara Linton. Together with Paul Field, he was also a historical consultant on Steve McQueen’s film Mangrove, Rogan Production’s recent documentary on Black Power, and Sky Atlantic’s Michael X: Hustler, Revolutionary, Outlaw. Together with Trip McCrossin he edited Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy. He is Cambridge University’s expert on the Daleks.

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