The Afterparty solves its murder with a season-best finale
Hopefully Sam Richardson has finally gotten all of that marker off his face.
TV Reviews The Afterparty
When you think about it, it really wasn’t that great of a party. No one was having much fun at it, and that was before someone got murdered and they all had to pull an all-nighter to figure out who it was.
But we have our answer now, some 47 twists later. As mysteries go, it can be nice to have them be at least a tiny bit more solvable than this one was—what fraction of the audience noticed that Yasper came into the room from the other side in his version of the story? On the other hand, if you wanted to be the Danner of this scenario, you probably could have made a list of all the matched elements of each narrative to catch that type of inconsistency in between the musical sequences and fight scenes. But the finale is also just a fun, suspenseful run-through of what Danner has been pulling together all this time, a fast-moving, coherent conclusion that works well dramatically and emotionally.
And thankfully, Danner is a lot closer to the reality in her own narrative than she is to the bumbler suggested by the woman who couldn’t solve an escape room. Instead, she’s actually been using all of those cockeyed narratives to build together a clear picture of the night, and also gambling on their assumption of her incompetence to encourage them to reveal more than they should. She’s been way more observant than any of them noticed, even Aniq, who has been doing his best to follow everything along.
Does Yasper make sense as a killer? Sure, why not. He certainly makes more sense than the bizarre effort to make it seem like Zoe might be the killer, after it becomes clear that it isn’t Walt, who has indeed been a season-long red herring, we know it’s not Aniq, and Brett is simply too obvious. Is there a reason for this last minute feint that suggests a far bleaker show than this one is? Why does Zoe look so nervous during the finale denouement before the big reveal? Sure, it makes sense that she would be unsettled that the final two candidates are either her ex or the guy she likes, but the show really goes all in on it, almost making it seem like she’s about to leap in with a confession or something. It’s ultimately pretty silly, especially since it makes her something like the fourth red herring in this episode. Misdirection is one thing; throwing in extra misdirection at this point is just stalling for time.
Given the other candidates, Yasper is probably the most emotionally satisfying result here. We know it isn’t Aniq, and the conclusion that either of Maggie’s parents is a murderer would be really depressing. And while Walt certainly would make some dramatic sense, there wouldn’t be much emotional payoff to the guy no one paid attention to that whole time. Yasper being the culprit means that this all still has emotional weight for Aniq—the concept that Yasper was trying to help him this whole time while being fully capable of instantly clearing his name is a really low blow. And as entertaining as it might have been fun for one of the Jens to have done it, there would have been absolutely zero emotional payoff to that conclusion.
Plus, Aniq and Chelsea are the only ones whose grudges against Xavier would have given them equivalently strong reasons to hate him, and neither of them has ever seemed like the villain. Brett is a ragey jerk, but he never really seems that invested in a feud with Xavier. And to be blunt, nothing about any incarnation of Brett suggested someone clever enough to pull this off.
The Afterparty could be really hit or miss, with far too few moments that really made it appointment viewing. It never quite pulled together to be more than the sum of its parts. But even at its lower moments, a cast this impressive always made it worth following.
Stray observations
- I’m not sure we exactly needed Maggie’s story, but I did like that puppets kept popping up in hers.
- Poor Danner is going to need to buy new shoes after tonight. There’s no coming back from stepping in amniotic fluid that many times.
- Speaking of, a little bit of a letdown on the Jen 2 front? Kind of a boring reason to eliminate one of the characters for most of the season.
- So Fred Savage really got away with murdering his wife on this show, I guess.
- Brett is a terrible parent, and should not be allowed to be alone with a child until he’s taken some parenting classes.
- I hope another season happens following the construction of Aniq’s new escape room, Spooky Dookies, which remains the funniest joke of the entire season.
- Bless Ben Schwartz for fully committing each time he had to yell “How great is this party??” For his sake, I hope people do not choose to yell this catchphrase at him for the foreseeable future, especially since the whole point of it is that it’s a terrible catchphrase.
21 Comments
I thought it might be Yasper because he kept claiming he was down in the recording studio, and I thought we saw him in other people’s stories at that time (though I guess we didn’t, if he was hiding in the closet). I thought Walt was a little too pathetic to murder someone, but I agree he was a season long red herring. I do think this show is probably better binged – I forgot week to week the story from the person before, and I bet it would be more fun to pick up on the inconsistencies in their stories if you watch them all back to back.
The Reddit Afterparty community had TOTALLY picked up on clues like Yasper entering the room from the wrong direction and switching phones throughout. They went through all of this evidence prior to the finale, plus there were a lot of meta clues that the AVclub reviewer didn’t seem to be aware of. For example, there’s some hidden message eliminating suspects in each episode. In Danver’s episode, the bulletin board behind her spells out “NOT THE BEAR” at one point (Zoe), in Zoe’s episode, spotlights on a billboard spell out “NOT THE CAKE EATER” (Chelsea) etc. There are a lot more clues like that, apparently the show creators worked with puzzle makers, or something. I found the show more fun once I learned about the extra clues (there’s another one about the first initial of each name in Danvers first murder case & this one, and probably a lot more I missed). But yeah, Reddit has been convinced it’s Yasper for weeks but I’m convinced some of those folks were watching the episodes on repeat to scan for clues.
Somebody also pointed out an unual color wheel in one episode in which purple and green were opposites instead of purple and yellow (the usual way color wheels are), and that Yasper and Xavier were associated with the colors green and purple.Although, fair warning, I caught the attention of a troll when I brought up the clues on another thread here
I always assumed this was a limited series. But are we to believe there could somehow be more? Would probably have to be an anthology with Tiffany Haddish working a completely different case with different stars, no?
I think they made that pretty explicit: If Apple thinks there’s enough demand, Aniq and Danner will be back, solving another murder in the future.
Honestly, the acting cast was the best part of this show, and I’m game to see at least the two main characters return again for, hopefully, a bit sharper writing.
They have confirmed that the next season will see Danner solve a new mystery with a new cast
Awesome. That could work. What’s another group of young, funny talent we could brainstorm (into existence) being in it? … I could see, for example, like a Jimmy O. Yang? … Isla Fisher?
Can we please have Tim Robinson?And Nathan Fielder if we’re lucky!
Oh my God — BOTH of those are great calls.
It could be fun if it’s another mystery related to Fred Savage so we get some closure there, too. Maybe someone gets killed at a cast party, and the costumer is also a culprit, and the murder of his wife becomes a backstory/motive much like the infamous St. Patty’s Day party.
I thought they did a really great job of leaning into how well Danner could intuitively read people and set them at ease even in potentially stressful situations— particularly Willow in her own episode, and how she was pretty irritated at some of the weird affectations of a bunch of the main potential suspects while going soft when she got invested in the emotional sides of their stories.That said, there was way more time spent on this ensemble so it’s a little weird they presumably have to go a Knives Out route moreso than bring back any of the characters that did have more screentime. (Though it’s not impossible they could loop basically any of them back in, other than the Jennifers or Ned?)
just simply did not feel like they told the story well.
Eh, I think there were tons of clues that made it solvable, whether concrete or just superficial. Even just for narrative impact I feel like it had to be either Yasper or Zoe.
Yasper clearly deleted the video footage so he’s been my main suspect since then.But really though, Xavier kind of deserved it. They should of all just stuck together and said Xavier jumped.
How did Yasper “clearly” delete the video footage? The reveal he did it from Xavier’s phone wasn’t until the finale. Where we to assume he did it by psychic powers prior to then?
Because he pulled out the phone and was using it when the footage got deleted. This was an obvious clue that I and many others have been talking about since that episode aired.He had the phone clearly in his hand so no psychic powers were needed.
I’m not sure we exactly needed Maggie’s story, but I did like that puppets kept popping up in hers.This reminded me of the 30 Rock episode where we see that Kenneth sees others as muppet-like characters, as well as the one where the high def camera for Liz’s “Dealbreaker” talk show has Kenneth as a muppet. (Yes I watch and re-watch 30 Rock a lot.)
Maggie pushed all of the controls on the mixing boards to the max at a critical moment in everyone else’s stories, upsetting Jasper’s timeline (I guess). Jasper would have to reset the board before using it or he would have revealed his presence in Xavier’s upstairs studio just before Xavier went over the rail.
Who’s this “Walt” character the author references?
Fred Savage didn’t get away with murdering his wife, did he? Danner explains that she figured out Yasper’s text thing because she figured out Fred Savage was able to get his wife to come to the door by texting her…and then Kat from Euphoria was free to go.
I just can’t figure out what Indigo had to do with anything. Got like one joke. Her character has no purpose and wasn’t used, so why have her at all?