Party Down is one of those secret shows that is truly impressive but can’t seem to find a real audience. The arc of the first season was very strongly about knowing when to give up your dream, and why that’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world. The second season, based on the most recent episode, Steve Guttenberg’s Birthday, seems to be exploring the idea that dreams never die, and why that’s probably the best thing in the world.

Henry, played by Adam Scott, is an actor who gave up on his career after giving it his all for as long as he thought he could last. Each episode centers around a party or event being catered by Henry’s new employer, a catering company whose employees are mostly people struggling for their first big break in Hollywood.

Along with Henry¹ are: Casey, a potential up-and-coming comic; Roman, a hard science fiction writer who feels above anyone and everyone; and Kyle, a pretty-boy actor. In the first season Henry is portrayed as the end result of Hollywood, someone who’s given up on their dreams. But despite this seemingly grim theme, season one is about Henry finding a place for himself without that all-encompassing passion. He finds someone to care for with Casey and finds himself more and more comfortable with being a caterer for the rest of his life, so long as there’s someone there to share it with.

But season one ended with Casey leaving him to follow her dream, to look for that big break somewhere else, him being promoted to manager of a team of caterers, and essentially no passion left in him. It was funny to see, but also tragic. We all look for some meaning in our life, and just as Henry had adjusted to a new meaning, it left to be a stand-up comic on a six-month long Alaskan cruise.

Season two brings us back around six months later and Henry is still recovering from the hurt Casey gave him and the sadness of his humdrum existence. In this episode, Steve “The Gute” Guttenberg happens to have a movie in his DVD collection that Henry had a small role in, which perks Casey’s curiosity. At the same time, The Gute encourages the crew to perform a reading of Roman’s recently rejected script, in the hopes of giving Roman ideas for improvement. These two plots manage to pack in a lot of really great themes and character growth into a few short scenes.

By Casey sneaking off to see Henry’s early work as an actor she realizes that he’s actually a really great actor, one who probably shouldn’t have given up on his dream. Casey’s desire to see Henry follow that dream is probably related to her recent success via a small role in an Apatow movie, but it nonetheless points to that larger idea.

And when Henry performs the improved version of Roman’s script — earnestly performing the material due to Casey goading him into it in order to, in my opinion, see if he can still act as well as he once did — we also learn that he’s actually a great actor. More than that, we see that he obviously misses it.

The question you have to ask now — well, this is a half-hour comedy so I guess you don’t have to do any of this analysis but this is what I live for — is what it is that gives us meaning. In the first season, Henry was looking for it in the people around him, and in love. Now, it’s not so clear that that’s enough.

I know that Adam Scott will have, at best, a limited role in any potential third season of the show, which has probably driven some of my thoughts and speculation about the direction of the season, but it seems to me that a really smart way to end this season would be to have Henry reaffirm his desire to be an actor and go off to pursue that dream. Or if they push that earlier in the season, maybe ending the season with his new big break, the one that will catapult him to real fame (and maybe next season he’ll host a few parties so he can hang with his old catering buddies). But whatever they do, I hope the show continues to explore these sorts of interesting themes in a new season, even without Henry there — though, at the moment, I can’t imagine the show being anywhere near as compelling without him there.

Party Down is a light-comedy centred around real characters and that juxtaposition makes it, like Parks and Recreation, one of those subdued comedies that manages to make you laugh at the same time as they explore romance and life in really important ways.

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Footnotes

1. There are other regular cast members but these particular characters exemplify the themes I’m exploring in this post. [↩]