The first season of the Apple TV+ series The Afterparty brought together an extremely talented group of actors for a genre-bending comedy-mystery hybrid, presenting the same events from a different character’s viewpoint, and in a different style, in each episode. Continuing to find that same success is no easy feat, yet season two manages to pull it off, assembling an entirely new supporting cast and framing a fresh murder to be solved with the assistance of multiple visual and storytelling styles.
Aniq (Sam Richardson) accompanies his girlfriend Zoë (Zoë Chao) to the wedding of her sister, Grace (Poppy Liu), hoping desperately to make a good impression on her parents, Feng (Ken Jeong) and Vivian (Vivian Wu). That doesn’t go all too well, but things get considerably worse when the groom, Edgar (Zach Woods), turns up dead in the morning. Eyeing the inner circle of family and friends, including Zoë and Grace’s uncle Ulysses (John Cho), Grace’s ex-boyfriend Travis (Paul Walter Hauser), and Edgar’s mother Isabel (Elizabeth Perkins), adopted sister Hannah (Anna Konkle), and best friend Sebastian (Jack Whitehall), as suspects, Aniq calls in the person he believes is best suited to help: Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish).
After an opening episode told in a relatively straightforward manner from Aniq’s perspective, it’s great fun to see where the show goes in offering complete and compelling backstories for each of the characters. Jane Austen, Wes Anderson, and classic Hollywood genres are among the clever ways in which audiences get to know the players and to understand what baggage they were carrying as they showed up for a wedding that would ultimately end in the murder of the groom. It feels like more than just a convenient way to provide extra information, and instead a challenge to mimic a particular style while simultaneously deepening and enriching the story.
The return of Richardson, Haddish, and Chao in the cast helps to ground it within the same universe, and much of Aniq and Danner’s work is merely to interrogate and then react to the various wedding party members as they recount what happened on that fateful night. Just as in season one, Danner gets her own episode, one which may be the most outrageous yet somehow magnetic of all, featuring a memorable guest appearance by Michael Ealy. It’s nice to see Chao in a different context, no longer the object of affection for two men but instead someone trying to be happy for her sister when she knows that Edgar isn’t the right man for her (before he dies, of course).
While fans of the first season will surely miss the energy of Ben Schwartz, Ike Barinholtz, Jamie Demetriou, and others, the new cast is more than capable of picking up the slack. Two particular standouts are Liu and Wu, whose characters are often underestimated by both family members and new acquaintances but who have plenty more to show when they’re the ones in the spotlight. Konkle and Hauser, two reliable performers who have established a solid television presence with roles in Pen15 and Black Bird, respectively, among other projects, seem especially well-suited to these roles.
Season one contained just eight episodes, and the addition of two more half-hour episodes is a treat for season two. The one lamentable part of watching the season unfold is that it will eventually be over and these characters will mostly disappear, even if a third season is (hopefully) commissioned with just a few players returning. This is certainly a vote of confidence in the direction of the show’s longevity, demonstrating that the concept works again in a new setting and with a fresh ensemble, something that can – and should – be repeated again once this mystery has been solved by season’s end.
Grade: B+
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New episodes of The Afterparty premiere weekly on Wednesdays on Apple TV+.