The Afterparty

I was afraid the “Afterparty” formula might not click the second time around, but it works beautifully once again. You could say season 2 isn’t as finely plotted as season 1 and you wouldn’t be wrong — but ultimately it doesn’t matter. The fun is in the characters and their imaginations, as well as the comic actors who play them.

Once again, The Afterparty has a funny ensemble that plays to their strengths in a solid format.

It’s clear that the cast and crew of The Afterparty were having a lot of fun with their jobs. .... But, especially with this season’s episode order bumped up two from last season’s eight, it’s also clear that there are times when the writers were stretching.

More of a slow-burner than the first season, this is nonetheless an engaging, often charming and disarmingly funny mystery series that still holds its own space in the saturated world of whodunnits.

A playfully self-conscious caper that thrives courtesy of its uniquely diverse form as well as an excellent performance from star Sam Richardson.

A couple of the characters are thinly drawn and not as interesting as the rest of this wacky bunch — but the genre-spoofing is top-tier, done by artists who clearly love the very types of movies they’re satirizing.

The missteps this year are more than balanced out by the episodes that connect fully with this show’s odd funny bone.

The influences are as familiar as Hitchcock and Bridgerton and as art-house specific as Wes Anderson and the Chinese romance In the Mood for Love. [14 Aug - 3 Sep 2023, p.6]

The show’s collective charisma and self-amusement can only create so much intrigue in place of a delayed big reveal. But taken in total, as a binge for after a party, it’s still plenty of fun.

Even if it's difficult to imagine how this show might keep the title theme going for hypothetical future seasons (in this case, much of the action takes place before, during, and after the actual wedding ceremony and reception), the moment-to-moment thrills more than justify another several hours spent with some of the broadest and funniest archetypes to appear in any recent whodunnit.

Season 2 devotes most of each character study to backstory, relationships, and emotional baggage (aka possible motives) that predate the actual wedding, scattering focus and isolating players from the bigger picture. It’s an experiment; a chance for “The Afterparty” to widen its scope — but maybe a lesson that future seasons shouldn’t.

Despite some improvements that streamline the storytelling, there’s still a sense that The Afterparty is trying to do a little too much all at once.