Apple TV+’s Murder Mystery Spoof The Afterparty Is Not Dead Yet in Season 2

It’s clear that the cast and crew of The Afterparty were having a lot of fun with their jobs. Paul Walter Hauser, whose bread and butter are stupid and/or scary criminals, nails it as Grace’s ex-boyfriend who fancies himself the next Philip Marlowe. John Cho, who stars as Grace and Zoë’s long-lost “funcle” Ulysses, fully embraces his inner Stanley Kowalski through a rain-soaked interpretive dance. And Elizabeth Perkins is the perfect antidote to a Hitchcock blonde as Edgar’s steely and suspicious mother Isabel. Even some of the guest stars, like Stumptown alum Michael Ealy, who shows up in a later episode as someone from Danner’s past, seem delighted to be here.

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. It makes sense to have the whimsy music, symmetrical framing, and tailored costume design that are ubiquitous of Wes Anderson movies for the episode centered around Edgar’s adopted sister Hannah (Anna Konkle). As does turning Grace into a modern-day Elizabeth Bennett to describe how she, a fun-loving middle class woman, found a connection with a socially awkward millionaire. But I’m not sure what the theme was for Jeong’s character’s episode, which was made to look like like it was shot largely through smartphone footage, besides “older people don’t understand social media” or “this episode will make our corporate daddies happy because actors will be holding iPhones the whole time.”

It’s also shocking how toned down some things feel. The episode centered on Edgar’s business partner Sebastian (Jack Whitehall) is a caper a la the George Clooney version of Ocean’s Eleven and yet it feels… vanilla (Not usually the adjective that comes to mind when describing the directing stylings of Steven Soderbergh). Plus, while last season saw Franco’s Xavier plummet to his death from a balcony, this season has Edgar decomposing in the next room. You have Woods, a comedic actor fully aware of how to use his body and facial expressions as reaction shots, at the ready and you don’t make more use of him in this manner?

Everyone from Knives Out’s Rian Johnson to The White Lotus’ Mike White to Only Murders in the Building’s Steve Martin and John Hoffman will tell you that we’re in a golden age of murder mysteries that love to hate on murder mysteries. On August 29, we’ll also have the Hulu drama A Murder at the End of the World, which is created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij and stars Emma Corrin as a houseguest of an eccentric billionaire who is forced to put her amateur detective skills to work once someone ends up dead.

But if none of these stories have anything unique to say, are we just killing time?

The Afterparty Season 2 premieres its first two episodes Wednesday, July 12 on Apple TV+. Subsequent episodes roll out weekly.

Whitney Friedlander is an entertainment journalist with, what some may argue, an unhealthy love affair with her TV. A former staff writer at both Los Angeles Times and Variety, her writing has also appeared in Cosmopolitan, Vulture, The Washington Post and others. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and daughter.

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