Search Party is a dark comedy starring Alia Shawkat as Dory Sief whose life gets turned upside down when she decides to investigate the disappearance of an acquaintance from college, Chantal Witherbottom (Clare McNulty). She ropes her boyfriend, Drew (John Reynolds), and her two best friends Elliott (John Early) and Portia (Meredith Hagner) into the investigation. Search Party premiered on TBS in 2016. After three seasons on TBS, the series moved to HBO’s streaming service for two more seasons. The fifth and final season premiered in January on HBO.
Seasons 1 - 4 Recap
In the search for Chantal in Season 1, Dory encounters another private investigator, Keith (Ron Livingston) also looking for Chantal. Keith provides a complication as he and Dory begin an affair and the season ends with Dory “accidentally” killing Keith to save Chantal.
When Season 2 begins, so does the coverup. It turns out covering up a murder wears on your soul as well as your relationships. Paranoia starts to creep in as Drew’s neighbor April, (Phoebe Tyers), starts blackmailing the group revealing she knows everything. She meets Dory on the Staten Island Ferry and threatens that she will haunt her and her friends forever. In a moment of rage, Dory pushes over the side, killing her. When she returns to the city, she is arrested for the murder of Keith with the understanding that one of her friends must have ratted her out.
Season 3 takes on a courtroom drama-style season as Drew and Dory are put on trial for Keith’s murder. Elliott winds up selling out to a conservative news network for a big payday. Portia is overwhelmed by guilt for testifying against Dory and Drew for immunity. After a religious awakening with a Christian group and a near kidnapping by an obsessive fan, Portia shows up for the verdict to support her friends. Ultimately, Drew and Dory are acquitted, but all the friendships have been effectively destroyed. At the end of the season, Dory is abducted and wakes up in shackles with her head shaved.
In Season 4, Dory is now a hostage of that same obsessive fan, Chip Wreck (Cole Escola), that tried to kidnap Portia in Season 3. Under the impression that Dory has left them all behind, they all go their separate ways angry at their ex-friend. Portia has been cast as Dory in a movie about Dory’s life and Drew is hiding out in a theme park away from NYC. When Elliott sees an Instagram post by his ex, Marc (Jefferey Self) posing with Dory in Upstate NY, Elliott sends out a distress call to the friend group that Dory’s “trip around the world” may be an illusion. The friends reunite to see if she is in actual danger. By the time they figure out where she is, it is too late. Dory appears to die in a fire at the end of the season and all the past versions of herself from previous seasons watch her funeral. However, in the final seconds of the season, she is revived.
Season 5 Overview
After her near-death experience, Dory ends up in a psychiatric ward as she claims she has been enlightened by said near-death experience. Once able to escape from the hospital, Dory decides to find her friends and forgive them. Through Instagram Live she becomes a viral sensation and becomes a cult-like obsession with online followers. With funding from tech billionaire Tunnel Quinn (Jeff Goldblum), Dory assembles a group of scientists to develop a pill known as “LYTE.”
Enlightenment in pill form will bring society the happiness it so desperately needs. Dory recruits a band of disciples as an experimental group to learn her message and send it to the world through their huge social media following. When the lead scientist Benny (Aparna Nancherla) has a strange reaction to the pill sample, the Tik Tok scientist disciple decides to take up the development. What could possibly go wrong?
In other news, after reconciling with his ex, Elliott and Marc have decided to adopt a child. When they go through a boutique adoption agency run by Sheffield (John Waters), they are sent home with their new son, Aspen who makes horror movie demon children look like Care Bears. Lost soul Chantal has fallen under the influence of a conspiracy theorist, Liquorice Montague (Kathy Griffin).
Portia, who’s always been pliable to whatever is hot at the moment, becomes obsessed with Dory’s enlightenment and begins an affair with her. Drew also falls back in love with Dory and also begins an affair with her. In the spirit of free love, the three happily engage in polyamory.
The End… of the World
So do the enlightenment pills work? Not exactly. In fact, they cause the zombie apocalypse. (Yes, you read that right). The group decides to take the pills, but Elliott switches the main four friends to placebos at the last moment. One by one, the influencers transform into flesh-eating zombies. Drew and Dory, unaware they are on a placebo, distribute the pills to Dory’s followers.
As they are trying to escape Brooklyn, which has now become overrun with zombies, they are saved at the last moment by one, Chantal Witherbottom. Maybe saving her in the first season was all worth it in the end. The only problem is Chantal and Dory are both claiming to have caused the destruction proving that no one has learned anything. Because even as the apocalypse is nigh, it’s all about those likes.
The world is now in a post-apocalyptic society. Drew and Dory are married, and the group lives in one of the safe zones established by the government. The series ends with Dory staring at a board of missing people, much like she stared at that flier of Chantal in the first episode. Was this all in Dory’s head? Did she really die at the end of Season 4? Or did she genuinely cause the zombie apocalypse? That is where the series ends, so we are left to wonder. The entire season plays with a bunch of different topical genres such as horror, cult documentaries, Q-Anon, and influencers. There’s even a hilarious nod to It with mentions of a secret group called the "Jesper Society" which involved cameos from Illeana Douglas, Lou Diamond Phillips, Denise Cormier, Michael Ian Black, and Scott Adsit.
Every season dealt with a different theme and led the group to strange and unusual places. One thing is for sure, it always kept us guessing. They were never afraid to take chances which evolved into a brilliant satire on so many topical issues. And in watching these self-involved characters fail to learn from their mistakes and grow as people throughout the series, it is entirely believable that they could cause the literal end of the world.