“Search Party” started as the story of a search for a missing girl who never really wanted to be found. Everything that’s happened since that series premiere has been a repercussion of a decision to look for someone who no one seemed to care was missing. At its best, the fourth season of the show serves as something of a mirror image of that inciting incident in that the searcher has become a missing girl herself. Will anyone try to find Dory Sief? And will she too eventually not want to be discovered?
READ MORE: 65 Most Anticipated TV Shows & Mini-Series Of 2021
Kidnapped by her stalker at the end of Season 3, Dory (Alia Shawkat) opens the year in his captivity as he tortures, abuses, and mentally dismantles her in ways that would impress Buffalo Bill. After a tonally disastrous start, the season settles into a better groove both comedically and narratively, but it never quite comes together like the best of this show. Once again, creators Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers are exploring issues of identity in an Instaworld, but some of their best ideas feel just out of their reach, and the season is ultimately at its best when it’s going for purely for laughs, which makes it feel thin in terms of character and theme. The best seasons of “Search Party” have deftly balanced the dark humor, social commentary, fascinating characters, and legitimate stakes. That balance is simply off to start the season and doesn’t quite ever come completely back together. There are highlights, including some great guest stars, but a season that’s about identity struggles for the first time to find its own.
After she was acquitted at the end of Season 3, Dory was kidnapped by Chip Wreck (Cole Escola), who just wants her to be his BFF, even if that means keeping her in captivity to do so. If season three was about Dory’s slide into sociopathic behavior over her denial of her role in Keith’s death, Season 4 opens with what feels like a punishment for that behavior. The writing pulls out of this bad turn, but the first few episodes have a cruelty and viciousness toward Dory that’s downright unsettling. It’s an impressively risky move on one level, but also a little baffling why the show would build Dory up into such a strong character only to destroy her with physical and emotional abuse. It feels like the kind of moral punishment—if the legal system couldn’t get to Dory, something else will—that one wouldn’t really expect from a show that has often allowed its characters to be relatively awful people.
READ MORE: The 25 Best TV Shows & Mini-Series Of 2020
The immediate problem for Dory is that no one is really looking for her. Her friends have moved on, content to believe that Dory has left them behind to travel the world. Drew (John Reynolds) has found a new job at a theme park and even has a new girlfriend, but he can’t stop thinking about Dory. Elliott (John Early) becomes an unexpected star on the Conservative talk show scene when the producers of his political “Frontline”-esque program decide they don’t want two opposing political opinions as much as one loud and red one, and Elliott is very good at giving people whatever they want, even if it goes against his actual beliefs (one could question if he really has any of those). Meanwhile, Portia (Meredith Hagner, disappointingly underutilized for the second season in a row) gets a part in a hideous-looking TV movie about the saga of Dory Sief, and stunt casting leads to her taking the role of Dory herself. There are costumes and facades everywhere in Season 4 of “Search Party.” Elliott is saying things on TV he doesn’t believe; Drew is literally making a living as a costumed character; Portia is playing Dory and getting accused by her director of doing it poorly; even Chip puts on a wig and dress when he goes outside to pretend to be someone else to the neighbors and townspeople.
The third season of “Search Party” made the unexpected decision to separate Dory from her three friends, and that trend continues into the fourth year. Without spoiling anything, a vast majority of Shawkat’s scenes this season are with Escola, and it’s easy to miss the chemistry of the four principal characters from those first two years when Chip is playing crazy for the fifteenth time. The thematic play of the first few episodes may be interesting, but they’re less entertaining than “Search Party” has ever been. There’s something about watching Dory shit herself because she’s being tortured by a maniac that pushes the dark humor of this show into just darkness.
A lot of the early action of Season 4 feels almost like the writers are trying to decide what they think of Dory Sief. The question of if viewers are supposed to like Dory anymore came up a lot in interviews about Season 3, and the narrative here seems to confront that issue directly, even allowing Dory to question her own actions and that of her friends in ways that she never did while she was on trial. The problem is that “Search Party” is at its best when it’s surreal and plot-driven, allowing character development and commentary to come from the narrative instead of forcing it into unbelievable and uncomfortable places as in the worst parts of this season.
The good news is that highlights do start to emerge as the season goes along and the tonal balance is mostly regained. Great guest stars pop up to add flavor, including Ann Dowd, Griffin Dunne, and Susan Sarandon. And the momentum of the season really comes together when Drew, Portia, and Elliott are reunited with a purpose, finally allowing the show to feel like it did in those first two seasons again. It’s then that the fourth season of “Search Party” feels like it’s finally…sorry…found itself, and it really sticks the best season finale since the first year. It’s unclear now if there will be a fifth chapter in the saga of Dory Sief. Let’s hope that the writers haven’t lost her forever. [B-]
“Search Party” Season 4 debuts on HBO Max on January 14.
