While Netflix's Gilmore Girls revival was the talk of Thanksgiving weekend, TBS quietly dropped one of the year's best shows: Search Party. It aired on TBS from Monday through Friday Thanksgiving—two episodes a night—for a total of ten episodes, all of which are available right now on the TBS website. (Hot tip: you can also choose uncensored versions of the episodes if you watch this way.) For those still coming down from the thanksgiving "high" (can a spiritual and physical low also count as a high?), it's the perfect bingewatch.
Search Party follows a group of friends who, for one reason or another, find themselves obsessed with the disappearance of a girl that only some of them knew peripherally. Over the course of the season, the show veers seamlessly between screwball comedy, hardboiled detective thriller, high drama, and not an insignificant amount of horror. I've seen it described as both "genre-bending" and "a black comedy," neither of which seems totally accurate, and does a disservice to just how perfectly balanced Search Party is scene to scene.
Alia Shawkat plays Dory, an aimless and unambitious twentysomething who becomes obsessed with the mysterious circumstances surrounding Chantal's sudden disappearance, since, why not? She doesn't have much else going on, save a thankless job as an assistant for a rich yuppie and an unhealthy, unsatisfying relationship with her sweet, weird boyfriend Drew (John Reynolds). Rounding out the gang is Portia (Meredith Hagner), a white blonde actor who somehow has landed a role as a Latina detective in an exploitative procedural; and Elliot (John Early), a self-involved, manipulative millennial (yeah, yeah: ugh) who spends half his time hawking a heavily branded, amusingly short-sighted startup that provides clean water to impoverished nations (complete with an expensive-looking chic bottle design that rivals Voss in its bald-faced uselessness). There are also plenty of supporting characters, all with their own quirks, motives, and secrets, just as any good noir mystery demands: Rosie Perez shows up as a short-lived friend, Ron Livingston appears as a private detective, and Parker Posey plays a mysterious store owner/possible cult leader.
Without exaggeration, Search Party's structure and storytelling is genius: clues lead to more clues, dead ends, and red herrings. Evidence is uncovered realistically, either through blind luck or people just talking to each other. To spoil any major reveal, or the mechanisms leading up to them, would be a crime. There's such elegant, respectful realism in how the plot unfolds. It earns its twists and shock reveals; Search Party strikes more than one sucker punch that, by the time you're done watching, will make you want to restart the whole thing again right away.
Of course, the mystery is just a part of it. Search Party is also funny as hell. There's not a single moment that isn't either darkly compelling, or extremely funny. Often the two are employed side by side. Even in the heaviest, most disturbing moments (and there are a few), a laugh isn't far behind. This is part in thanks to creators Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, best known for last year's excellent Fort Tilden. Responsible for writing/directing the vast majority of the entire series, Bliss and Rogers maintain a tone throughout, matching a growing sense of dread with some of the funniest beats and character work you'll see anywhere.
Then there are the performances, in a cast of standouts, there's no MVP. Everyone is so fully realized, so powerful and sad in their own way.
Shawkat, naturally, is peerless as Dory. In a career littered by real, vulnerable roles, Dory is probably her best work yet. Headstrong and heartbreaking in equal measure, the enthusiasm with which Dory throws herself into a mystery she has barely any personal stake in is telling of her character's hopelessness. Her relationship with Drew goes about where you'd expect it to, until it doesn't. In the first episode, Drew gently discourages her from pursuing the mystery of Chantal, and a funny-but-sad sex scene punctuates just how doomed their relationship is. And yet Drew, initially condescending, bumbling, even a little mean, outgrows just another "bad boyfriend" character to become one of the more enlightening, complicated parts of Dory's life. It's masterful relationship work between Shawkat and Reynolds, who–without spoiling anything–end the series in an emotional reality no one in their right mind could have possibly predicted.
Search Party is richer than any genre label can describe. It's doubtless a sitcom, with sure-footed forays into other genres along the way. In fact, it's as much a horror-thriller as anything. An episode in which the gang tries to infiltrate a weird, new-age cult evokes everything from Rosemary's Baby to this year's tightly-wound, agonizing The Invitation. Ron Livingston's Keith, who veers from fun to intense to unhinged and back again, is reminiscent of the pitch-dark Joel Edgerton in The Gift, or even Creep's Mark Duplass, who he's totally a dead ringer for.
It's easy to see why Search Party aired all at once: it's both infuriatingly addictive, and transforming into an entirely different story once the whole twisted mosaic falls into place. The wonderful, hilarious, and gutting finale is fully satisfying and also leaves plenty of room for discussion, if not a convincing case for a second season. That's fine, we don't need it. Search Party is a flawless oddity, a once-in-a-lifetime piece of art. It's not the weekend's best show, it's the year's best.
