First, the TV show Search Party returned this week as a title on the HBO Max service. I adored the first two seasons of this show (as well as Charles Rogers' excellent movie Fort Tilden) and am glad to see it return after it bounced around in network limbo for a bit. It lands somewhere between noir and comedy but is told from a millennial point of view in a good way, balancing the “that’s fucked up, I wonder what will happen next” breadcrumb trail with over the top silliness. It’s hard for a show to do that while maintaining the integrity of both, but doing exactly that is Search Party’s calling card. Rebecca and I blew through the first two seasons of the show shortly after discovering it and the waiting for the next installment was tortuous at first. Then it inexplicably got dropped by TBS and I stopped thinking about when it would come back.
The good news is that it did and the third season they already in the can could then be quickly released. This season is a huge pivot tone-wise, moving from the more noir tendencies of the first two seasons to a courtroom drama this year. A lot of interesting new influences were brought in this time as well and it seems like the show is growing in a cool and interesting way. Kind of an 80s John Waters vibe to a lot of it, especially in looking at society’s obsession with celebrity and media with a healthy scoop of camp.
Really can’t recommend this show enough. After making a movie that completely sums up the millennial zeitgeist in Fort Tilden and following that with a show as sharp and well-paced as Search Party, it feels like Charles Rogers will be someone everyone will love in ten years. Also, he has one of my favourite accounts on Instagram and is so consistently hilarious.
Second, this week I finished an 8-year-long watch of Cheers.
Whenever I have a piece of media that I care deeply about, I always feel the need to write some long saccharine essay about it on IMU. I know that it’s fine and normal to do that, but part of me also feels kind of embarrassed after the fact about having these odes to TV shows and albums on here. For that reason, I’m currently resisting the urge about writing a long-winded thing about how Cheers weirdly hit me at the exact right time in my life and I formed a weird emotional bond with it right away.
I guess, just know that I did.
Yeah, I was sad and watched a lot of Cheers in the summer of 2012. It was a nice escape. Since then, I’ve on and off worked my way through the entire series, because watching all 275 episodes felt like something I had to do. It's from such a different time in sitcoms and the episodes go down like water. There’s something so satisfying about the by-the-numbers storylines, that seemingly every sitcom has a version of, and the premise-set up-punchline nature of every joke. Rebecca began to joke that Cheers was my go-to “happy show” that I would put on whenever I had a shitty day or needed something to pick me up. Sam and Diane forever.
In all eight years of going through it, I never skipped the theme once. The build up to the chorus gets me every time.
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