For some reason or another, comedy and mystery go together like chocolate and peanut butter: Both great on their own but they each make the …
For some reason or another, comedy and mystery go together like chocolate and peanut butter: Both great on their own but they each make the other better. They work together because there’s so much comedic potential in both the suspects and the detectives doing the investigation. Phil Lord and Chris Miller have likely been fans of this genre for ages; how else can we explain how well they nail it with their new series The Afterparty? Opening Shot: We see a man driving into a hotel where a high school reunion is taking place. “Class of 2006” is on a banner. The Gist: Aniq (Sam Richardson) is nervous but excited to go to his 15th reunion, because he and his recently-divorced crush Zoe (Zoe Chao) have been in touch and she can’t wait to see him. “Nothing can ruin this night,” he says. Then we cut to a man in a purple suit and no shirt falling to his death on the beach below a massive house. Investigating the murder is Detectives Danner (Tiffany Haddish) and Culp (John Early). Danner’s boss wants her to wait until a more experienced detective arrives in the morning, but she’s determined to solve this murder that night. The dead person is Xavier (Dave Franco), a pop star and actor who went to that reunion and had the afterparty at his house. At the house are bot Aniq — soaking wet and with cat features drawn on his face — and Zoe, but there are a number of other classmates there, too. As Danner begins to question people — she’s more of an observational detective than one who zeroes in on blood splatter — she tells the people in the house that everyone tells their side as if it’s a movie they’re starring in. For instance, the artsy Indigo (Genevieve Angelson) implicates Aniq as if it’s a black and white arthouse film. Aniq’s story, of course, is more romcom. He meets up with his good buddy Yasper (Ben Schwartz) there, and then has a sorta-meet-cute with Zoe on the way in, involving a balloon arch and his twisted view of just how unawkward that accident was. They also see Chelsea (Ilana Glazer), who was the “most likely to succeed” in class, but now what she mostly does is get drunk. As Aniq and Zoe connect, Xavier literally helicopters into the reunion, and tells Zoe to sit with him at a table that has no room for Aniq.
