‘Search Party:’ a Quick Refresher So You Don’t Have to Re-Binge Season 1

Season 2 premieres on TBS on Nov. 19

Calling all amateur sleuths: it’s time to step away from your hipster coffee, don your hipster glasses and return to the wild world of “Search Party.”

Spoilers ahead for Season 1.

Alia Shawkat, John Early, John Reynolds and Meredith Hagner return to TBS for Season 2 on Nov. 19, and this time, the stakes are much, much higher … considering the foursome low-key committed murder at the end of Season 1.

If you’re like me, you binged all 10 episodes in a weekend, a year ago, and so it might be time for a refresher. Here you go:

First of all, the whole premise is going to have to change because the missing girl — Chantal Witherbottom (Clare McNulty) — is finally found. The whole first season was about Dory (Shawkat)’s obsession with Chantal’s disappearance and finding out what happened to her. Through some major Nancy Drew moves, Dory follows Chantal’s trail all the way from Brooklyn to Canada, where she discovers Chantal safe and sound and actually so happy to be away from social media for a while.

Through her Nancy Drew sleuthing, Dory leads her friends to a house in Canada where Chantal is hiding out. Keith (Ron Livingston), the faux P.I. who gets Dory to believe Chantal’s parents hired him, follows the crew up North. He surprises Dory in the kitchen to confess his love for her, so she tasers him and he hits his head on the island.

In a Clue-esque move, Drew comes into the kitchen where the two are struggling, whacks Keith with a candlestick, and the deed is done. The trailer for Season 2 shows the whole squad trying to bury Keith’s body, so we expect a central part of the continuing story to be “How to Get Away with Murder: Hipster Edition.”

OK, putting a pin in the whole murder thing, let’s now take a look at where the relationships stand.

So Dory cheated on Drew with Keith, but she’s also been hanging out with her ex Julian (Brandon Michael Hall), who also happened to expose Elliott, who lied about having cancer as a kid, in New York Magazine. Elliott is horrified by the PR disaster until his publisher asks him to write a book about it. The whole incident caused a riff between besties Elliott and Portia, but all has been forgiven. And as Portia says in the trailer: “we’re all bonding!” after this experience.

We can safely say that Dory and Drew are in a bad place at the end of Season 1. But we all know how relationships can go, and we wouldn’t be surprised if the two, who live together, don’t completely cut ties … even if they are broken up by the time Season 2 starts. In the S2 trailer, we see Drew getting it on with formerly-missing Chantal. Is he trying to get back at Dory, or move on?

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