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Jessica is a journalist, editor, TCA critic, and multimedia storyteller with a decade of experience covering pop culture, film, TV, women's sports, lifestyle, and more. She earned her degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington with a focus in creative writing before moving to N.Y.C. and getting her start at The Huffington Post. (She still misses those nap pods.) She's covered multiple film festivals, recapped some of your favorite series, worked too many red carpets to count, and even yapped on a podcast or two. When she’s not interviewing your favorite showrunner or ranking Ryan Gosling's best roles for places like UPROXX, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, The Daily Beast, and Cosmopolitan, she’s busy being a full-time hype woman to her cat, Finn. You can find her on Bluesky and, sadly, Twitter.
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If you’ve somehow avoided Search Party until now, congratulations, you’re about to be introduced to the most aggressively strange, narratively unhinged shows about millennials who brunch to ever exist on television. Dory Sief (Alia Shawkat), a twenty-something drifting through a dead-end job and an underwhelming relationship, decides to investigate the disappearance of a college acquaintance named Chantal (Clare McNulty). The cast is rounded out by faces that should feel familiar — John Early, Meredith Hagner, and John Reynolds — all of whom embark, whether they want to or not, on a journey with Dory to locate this woman they barely knew.
The sharply written comedy series, which got its start on TBS before being picked up by HBO Max, flew relatively under the radar. Thanks to its excellent performances and fresh storytelling, the series garnered a loyal cult following until the end, and even a companion podcast. By Season 5, the seemingly straightforward premise had evolved into something that was anything but simple, and went from lightly absurd to straight-up unhinged. It's the season that proves the show (now streaming on HBO Max) as one of the most fearless comedies to grace our screens, one that torched the rule book and quietly set the bar for narrative risk taking that no other series has managed to top yet.
'Search Party' Was Incredibly Original From the Start
When Search Party premiered in 2016, it billed itself as something deceptively benign: a missing-person mystery starring four aimless Brooklyn millennials with too much free time and not enough purpose. Dory Sief latches onto the disappearance of a college acquaintance, less out of altruism than desperation for meaning, and drags her friends along for the ride. They brunch. They stalk Instagram. They complain about work while not really doing any. They suffer through candlelit vigils set to Kelly Clarkson bangers. It plays like a sharp satire of millennial inertia, people raised to believe they’re special, now stuck refreshing their feeds and waiting for life to start. The mystery is almost beside the point; the real tension is how badly these people want to feel important.
Still, even early on, Search Party was never just a cozy millennial whodunit. Its creators, Charles Rogers, Sarah-Violet Bliss, and Michael Showalter, were openly pulling from places like Alfred Hitchcock and The Silence of the Lambs and the sticky dread of true crime, letting paranoia seep into what initially looked like a joke about hot yoga-loving hipsters. Dory, in particular, was framed as something more dangerous than your average TV protagonist: obsessive, self-mythologizing, and increasingly unmoored from reality. She was persuasive in a way that felt unsettling. The show’s first big trick was making psychological horror feel like a natural extension of millennial anxiety, positioning Dory as a modern madwoman long before the cults and doomsday scenarios showed up.
'Search Party' Season 5 Changes Dory in the Most Dramatic Way
Image via HBO MaxWhile every season played with worthwhile themes and genres – from true crime parodies to courtroom dramas and hostage thrillers – it’s the show’s fifth season that really cashed in on all that storytelling potential. Dory survives some terrible circumstances (a kidnapping, attempted murder, the threat of serious jail time, and an inferno), then reemerges convinced she’s been chosen to save humanity. Naturally, she forms a cult, courting apocalyptic visions, a tech billionaire eager to monetize enlightenment, and a genetically engineered jelly bean that promises transcendence while quietly ending the world. It sounds deliriously random, but it’s not.
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The show leans all the way into the bizarre while staying locked on the same emotional engine it’s always run on: selfishness disguised as connection. Dory’s transformation from survivor to cult leader feels horrifying and, also, inevitable; her best friends Elliott (Early) and Portia (Hagner) become total shit-stirrers at the peak of their comedic powers, and her boyfriend Drew (Reynolds) remains the show’s most painfully human figure. (He’s got a moral compass, he just can’t find the time to follow it amidst all of his girlfriend’s hijinks.)
Image via HBO MaxThe horror was always there. Murder, guilt, paranoia, and the fear of being exposed have haunted these characters since Season 2, and the zombie outbreak is just that dread manifesting in a literal way. Search Party understands that millennial disillusion doesn’t need a monster; it just needs time. Unemployment, hollow identities, and the constant sense that everyone else is doing better quietly rot these characters from the inside out, so really, what’s a bit of molting flesh in comparison? Dory’s cult and the influence of a narcissistic tech mogul named Tunnel Quinn (Jeff Goldblum) are exaggerated but, also, painfully familiar versions of real-world archetypes, those charismatic leaders offering meaning and community in exchange for obedience. The show’s genius is in realizing that pushing these ideas to the brink sharpens its comedy. The darker and more absurd things get, the funnier and more revealing they become.
Season 5 also gives Search Party its biggest, boldest set pieces, and every one of them serves a purpose. Goldblum’s Quinn skewers tech culture’s obsession with disruption and messianic CEOs. Kathy Griffin's Liquorice Montague embodies influencer culture’s fevered hunger for relevance — even at the end of the world. The laser-tag massacre, the zombie chaos, the apocalyptic mess — they’re outrageous, yes, but they’re also deeply character-driven. Dory’s descent into power reaffirms her dual role as villain and Final Girl, while Portia, Elliott, and Drew remain selfish and strangely grounded in their need for one another. In the end, all the spectacle circles back to the same existential question the show has always asked: what happens when people who desperately want their lives to mean something finally get the chance to prove it?
How 'Search Party' Became One of the Boldest Comedies of Its Generation
Image via HBO MaxBy the time it ends, Search Party has completed one of the strangest and most impressive evolutions on TV. What began as a millennial satire mutated into a genre-hopping dark comedy that flirted with a dizzying number of genres without ever losing its sense of self. Season 5 pushes boundaries most prestige shows wouldn’t dare, not to mention network fare, daring to be grotesque, unserious, and emotionally insightful all at once. This is a show that would rather swing wildly, and that risk is exactly what cements its place as one of the most inventive comedies of its generation.
The show’s fifth and final season is the best example of that, a culmination of every WTF storyline slapped onto the screen for us to marvel and cringe at. And its ending doesn’t offer any tidy resolution, mostly because, despite all the strangeness, a stroll into the sunset would seem the most implausible of all. There’s acceptance without growth, survival without transformation, a shrug at the chaos they helped create. Even at the end of everything, Search Party understands its characters too well to redeem them (or judge them), opting instead for a conclusion that’s bleak, hilarious, and completely earned.
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