Party Down: Season 1

Sometimes you just buy something on a total whim. Though this show has aired two seasons on Starz over the past two years, I'd never really heard anything about it one way or the other. Then last weekend at my cousin's wedding, a separate cousin asked me, out of the blue, if I'd seen this show. He described it in that oh-so small-talky way that twenty-something guys use on one another: "fuckin' hilarious, man." Noted. And lo and behold, a few days ago, there was the first season on DVD at Best Buy for just $9.99. And ten episodes later, I'm ready to recap. The show is good, but it isn't great. Like, I'm glad I bought it, but I'm also glad I only spent a tenspot on it and that it was only ten episodes long. The premise is that a bunch of Hollywood part-time actors and nobodies are working in a catering company to pay their bills. Each episode is set at a different party, and these range from a Sweet 16 to a wedding reception to a "congratulations for being acquitted on those murder charges" blast thrown by Russian mobsters. The humor in the show comes from the realistic banter and shenanigans of the six-person staff. Adam Scott (the douche bag little brother from Step Brothers and now a regular on Parks and Recreation) plays a thirty-or-so ex-actor who has given up on his dream to get by in the catering service. He's really the straight man of the crew, the round character that stands out among the much wackier cast. I don't need to drone on about the rest of the cast, but it features Martin Starr ("Bill" from Freaks and Geeks, but ten years older - weird) as a sci-fi screenwriter with typical nerd angst. Jane Lynch also lends her talents for the first eight episodes, and is replaced by a new character portrayed by Jennifer Coolidge for the final two; both were about as good as you could expect them to be, and perhaps even better. The other three actors were ones I was not familiar with. Anyway, as I said, this wasn't a fantastic show. It worked well when the overzealous boss was the butt of the jokes and Jane Lynch also had plenty of memorable lines, but the big overarching storyline was that Adam Scott's character has great chemistry but a complicated lack of results with a struggling female comedian. It just got really stale before the end of the third episode. Fortunately there was enough humor to extract from various lines, conversations, and scenes to prevent the show from being a total bust. I'm glad there's only one more season of this show for me to watch - it was canceled after its second - but that doesn't mean I regret the ten bucks or five hours I spent on the DVD set. I do look forward to Season 2, but not with any sort of eagerness.