Dory Sief (Alia Shawkat) has been through a lot in five seasons. She deserves a major final act more than most characters. The protagonist of “Search Party,” a TBS comedy that jumped over to HBO Max in its third season, gets that major final act in the fifth season bringing her crazy arc to a close in a way that even hardcore fans of this increasingly surreal satire couldn’t predict. In many ways, “Search Party” barely resembles the character-driven study of how easily a girl could disappear from this increasingly cynical world that it was in its first and second season. When it jumped to HBO Max, it got notably sillier, especially in a fourth season that turned Dory into a hostage and broke her down entirely. While it’s nowhere near as dark and dour as Season 4 (which is a good thing), Season 5 turns up the broad satire more than ever, bringing this series about identity to the world of social influencers, cults, and tech companies. Like the other HBO Max seasons, “Search Party” has a habit of bringing up interesting ideas or themes and then drifting away from them, like a girl distracted by a missing poster she passes on the sidewalk, but there’s something entertaining in how confidently this show goes off the rails in its final few episodes. Dory deserves nothing less.
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Dory barely survived being abducted by an obsessed fan in Season 4, and the new season opens with her being told that she had been dead for 37 seconds. She emerges from this intense experience and seems to be a new person. She claims to have seen not only her life flash before her eyes but discerned the meaning of it for everyone else too. Of course, this leads to her being quickly committed by her “friends.” Enlightenment is only for the crazy.
As Dory recovers physically and mentally, the three people that she has dragged through life on her twisted journey seem to move on. Drew (John Reynolds) and Portia (Meredith Hagner) start dating because “who else would understand what we’ve been through,” and Elliott (John Early) and Marc (Jeffery Self) decide to adopt a child together (from a character played by the first of many great guest stars this season, John Waters). The subplot about Elliott and Marc’s new son being a Damien-esque sociopath is one of the season’s best in the first half, but literally just drifts away as the Dory plot demands more attention. Dory always demands attention.
It turns out that even the doctors don’t think Dory is insane. More and more people start to believe that Dory really does know the key to enlightenment, including a tech mogul named Tunnel Quinn (Jeff Goldblum, totally on this show’s comedic wavelength), who wants to partner with her on a new project. To elevate their pitch, they bring in key social influencers to raise their profile. Within the Dory/Tunnel arc, “Search Party” flirts with some of the season’s best ideas. How do companies like this sell products to the masses? Tunnel’s idea to convince consumers that they need a product through social influence before it’s even developed is one of the smartest of the season, but the writing is constantly shifting. Without spoiling, the season starts to frame Dory as a cult leader—she even refers to the influencers as “disciples”—and the plotting wants viewers to question her motives. Is she a force for good? Do you know a lot of cult leaders who were?
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While the writing can feel flighty in a way that undermines what used to be a very smart show, the ensemble really makes this season more entertaining than the last (which made the grave error of dividing it for too much of the depressing arc). Shawkat is consistently underrated in everything she does, and she has crafted a clever air of mystery around Dory, a young woman who tried to find herself in Season 1 and now may be completely gone. In the HBO Max seasons of “Search Party” there’s been a stronger sense of danger around Dory every season, and Shawkat plays that well. The trio of performers that support her barely resembles their Season 1 iterations, but their comic timing remains top-notch. In particular, Early gets some big laughs this season.
However, most people will be talking about the guest stars. Waters and Goldblum are perfect, but they’re far from the only familiar faces. Kathy Griffin gets an arc with the hysterical Chantal (Clare McNulty) that sometimes feels like it doesn’t fit with the rest of the series, but that’s always been a bit true of Chantal. Aparna Nancherla has some amazing scenes with a heavily made-up John Early that can’t really be explained in a review. Other great comic actors pop up here and there, but enough of them are in the back half of the season that it might be considered a spoiler to name names. However, whoever talked Rosemary Harris into appearing on this crazy show deserves a raise.
Unlike a lot of last season, “Search Party” remembers to be funny this year. If it has a habit of presenting themes and then dropping them for another one, it almost fits for the final season of a show that’s been about how a search for identity can make everyone a little crazy. “Search Party” started with a quest for a missing woman, but it’s really always been about Dory trying to figure out who she is in this world, and how that search impacts everyone around her. Season 5 tries to take that concept to a broader canvas, questioning how people not only allow others to define them but seek out that kind of guidance instead of finding it in themselves. It’s as inconsistent as the show has ever been in terms of plotting and theme, but there’s also something riveting about its insane structure and ludicrous final episodes. Go with the flow. See where the journey leads you. Dory always did. [B]
“Search Party” Season 5 debuts on HBO Max on January 7.