By the time the cult sitcom “Party Down” began airing on Starz in 2009, after a six-year search for a network home, it had become a Great Recession comedy. Set at a different gathering or celebration each week, the show followed Los Angeles’s worst catering crew—a ragbag of struggling actors, writers, and comedians glued to their flip phones, who approach basic hospitality like an exotic custom. Naturally, their clients are even less sympathetic. In the second episode of the series, the servers attend to a group of college Republicans. With then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the part of Godot, the workers are forced to make chitchat with the conservatives while they wait for the guest of honor to arrive. Henry (Adam Scott), a bartender whose brief stint as the star of a ubiquitous beer commercial effectively killed his former acting career, rolls his eyes at the overconfident twerps preaching hard work and perseverance. But the students find an acolyte in Henry’s dopey boss, Ron (Ken Marino), who dreams not of fame or fortune but of rise-and-grinding his way to managing a franchise of a soup-centric chain restaurant. With the exception of Henry, each member of the Party Down waitstaff is hopeful (or delusional) enough to think that meritocracy will work out in their favor. But only Ron is naïve enough to believe in capitalism.
Despite its cancellation after two under-watched seasons, “Party Down” had something of a Midas touch. The pioneering series launched the careers of Scott and of Lizzy Caplan (who played Casey, Henry’s sardonic love interest), while anticipating the subgenre of the “sad-com” and the wave of glum, insidery Hollywood satires, such as “BoJack Horseman,” “Barry,” and “The Other Two.” Created by Rob Thomas (also the creator of “Veronica Mars”), John Enbom, Dan Etheridge, and Paul Rudd, “Party Down” universalized the plight of the wannabe: At what point does a dream curdle into self-deception? And when does practicality harden into calcification?
But, for all the show’s cultural influence, a revival, set a decade after the original run, wasn’t an intuitive pitch—even in our era of relentless I.P. extension. The feel-good vibes inherent in a comedy reunion—recall all those gatherings of TV casts past, especially during the early months of the pandemic—clank against “Party Down” ’s pessimism and acerbity. The third season, which premièred last week, victoriously defies the usual results of such comebacks: dissipated cast chemistry, pointless new story lines, once prescient characters who seem too rooted in another time to transplant to the current moment.
I’ll admit it: I wanted “Party Down” to make me feel bad. Since the show’s first two seasons, it has become harder to sustain the illusion that either Hollywood or the economy at large doles out its shrinking perks fairly. I wanted to catch up with how this batch of characters, who have always had to lie to themselves about their chances of success, grapple with their crushingly ordinary fates. The revival does not disappoint, setting a new standard for series resurrections by being unafraid to tackle the low-grade dismay of financial precarity and middle-age failure. The show’s emotional center (and economic barometer) is still Henry, who in his early thirties found himself torn between the riskiness of his true passions and the solidity of suburban comforts. He begins Season 3 as a married fortysomething English teacher, with Casey, now a comedy star, just another celebrity he watches on TV. (Caplan does not appear in the first five episodes of the six-part revival.) But middle age is when stability starts disintegrating under one’s feet. In a reflection of the intensified economic gloom in the past decade, the duelling impulses that once defined Henry are moot, perhaps even quaint, now that many formerly middle-class professions, such as teaching, require moonlighting to pay the bills. Before long, Henry is back in one of Party Down’s pink satin bow ties—the equivalent of the universe sticking a “Kick Me” sign on his back.
Henry’s not the only one returning to a job that he supposedly left behind years ago. Kyle (Ryan Hansen), a cheesily handsome, empty-headed actor, also returns to Party Down, after his almost-career as a cinematic superhero gets derailed by a problematic video of him that surfaces online. Back at work passing out appetizers, he squabbles with Roman (Martin Starr), his old foe, a sci-fi screenwriter with the style, and soul, of a drowned rat. (Bitter that he has never stopped waitering, Roman voices a thought that’s probably crossed the mind of every Hollywood striver with a more successful rival: “You make it big in this cultural void, it only proves that you suck on some level.”) Meanwhile, Ron, maniacally optimistic as ever, purchases Party Down from its corporate owners using all the money he has and, when that’s not enough, a loan from loopy Constance (Jane Lynch), a former employee. He’s thrilled to finally be his own boss, only for the pandemic to hit just as he is closing the deal.
It’s unclear how Party Down could land any gigs at all; one imagines its Yelp reviews to be a fire hose of profane rants. At their best, the staffers are inattentive and intrusive; more often, they’re agents of entropy—anything and everything that could go wrong inevitably does. Ron, who has lost his sense of smell after multiple COVID infections and exudes a corresponding body odor, showers at the home of an A-list client (James Marsden) and his producer girlfriend (Jennifer Garner) while working a birthday party. He’s caught by one of his recent recruits, the aspiring influencer Sackson (Tyrel Jackson Williams). Uniquely entrepreneurial among his team, Sackson is no more committed than the others to handing out hors d’œuvres. But the dance videos he films—often at work—draw the contempt of the aging actors in the crew, who can feel the culture gravitating in directions they don’t understand. The clout-chasing Sackson is an excellent update to the cast, as is the avant-garde chef Lucy (Zoë Chao), who serves as a delicious vehicle for foodie parody, a satirical fount untapped by the original seasons. A designer of dishes like “ambient cod fog” and Camembert-flavored birthday-cake bites that spark a “rumination on mortality,” Lucy considers the external approval that her co-workers seek, whether from casting agents or social-media views, to be “bourgeois bullshit.” She’s determined to feed only her soul—an ethos that has got her fired from every other job she’s had.
Despite its gifted, well-jelled cast and its hefty genre innovations, “Party Down” has never fit comfortably in the prestige mold—it has always been too crude for that. (Reportedly, Starz execs initially pushed Enbom, the showrunner, for more female nudity—but “not sad breasts.”) Where there’s food, there will be food poisoning, and one incident—involving Ron and some gnarly sea urchin—gives Marino an opportunity to display his knack for frantically flopping about like a fish just yanked from water. But this gross-out humor always sat awkwardly alongside the show’s more sober-minded themes, and that tonal contrast is exacerbated in the revival, as the series has grown heavier with the characters’ regrets. Lydia (Megan Mullally), once a guileless server, who is now a savvy momager, has some wonderfully dramatic moments, as she allows herself to contemplate the darker side of child stardom. An episode that draws parallels between the viral needs of modern activism and the vagaries of the entertainment industry takes aim at today’s squabbling political factions. But the character beats are disrupted by the series’ now creaky commitment to broader gags. It’s a letdown, and a long-winded one at that, when the show follows up its most piercing episode with an improbable group psychedelic trip in the middle of a catering job. Bring on another tray of ruminations. ♦
