Search Party 2016

I do understand why people would be more and more annoyed with this show with each passing season - especially the last - but I'd argue they were watching it from a different perspective that might have reduced their enjoyment. The first two seasons were played as slightly outlandish, but still realistic, so viewers are possibly expecting that to continue, but as soon as the trial began in the second season I unconsciously shifted my focus to the fact that this story is not about the lives of a group of self-absorbed friends as it was first presented.

I believe this story is about clinical narcissism combined with other untreaded and serious mental health disorders degrading over time. I haven't fully worked this show out, and maybe never will, but I don't trust anything past the murder of the first season to be literally 'true' in the universe initiated in the first episode.

Serious mental disorders often manifest at around the age Dory is, especially after a traumatic life event. I think that all events after the murder is a study of a mind tearing apart, yanking reality – either symbolically or within Dory’s head – along with it. You can only guess what is real, what is not, or if this entire story is simply intended to be mental illness put to paper.

Every action and piece of dialogue serves only one purpose – to tell Dory’s story. Scenes and (almost) entire episodes that don’t contain her presence are told as if Dory herself wrote it during a psychotic and/or manic break –meaning the personal lives of her friends ultimately all eventually tie back into the story about her. It’s as if her friends were the dolls made by Chip in season four.

The second season shows how her mind deteriorates to the point where she can solve any problem – even at the cost of a human life. The trial in the third season is told as if Dory created an entire hero story about how she conquered the legal system, bending the entire state to her will. The fourth season shows she believes her presence on Earth is so great that it will literally create people so in love with her that they go crazy. These takes are just basic opinions, I’m sure you could analyse each one and come up with a different result.

The final season’s fault, in my opinion, is that the story they wanted to tell was too long for the season length they had. In the first half, Dory’s narcissism continues to the point that she becomes one of the biggest celebrities in the country and has her very own cult. She all but believes that she is the second coming of Christ. Unfortunately, our society doesn’t help people like her who desperately require it, instead these narcissists band together at the very top of society and bend us to their will. This story probably needed to be a season long to chart out the story of how she rises to this delusion of grandeur. Even Dory discovering that abandoning her ego was the path to enlightenment ends up being a story about how her ego led her to believe that.

The second half is what I think is supposed to be a complete mental break. Zombies are symbols of her non-believers closing in on her, destroying her psychotic dreams and picking off her disciples one by one. The spread of the zombies isn’t about humanity, it’s about the world banding together (by biting one another) to hunt her and only her. The monsters are coming, your mind is falling apart, everyone is out to get you. The monsters even talk to you sometimes. In other words, an unspecific disorder containing symptoms like schizophrenic paranoia.

I don’t know what the ending could mean. She wins because she always wins? Maybe she gets the help she needs, and can live happily in a smaller world with guards around the outside willing to stop the monsters from getting to her (medication and hospital care). Staring at the missing posters is something I don’t understand. Again, it seems like this story needs needs more time to tell this story adequately.

I’m aware that this post is long, but Search Party has fascinated me. Perhaps the writing on this show did simply deteriorate and the story became silly. I don’t know, and don’t want to know, what the behind the scenes was like. For me, every episode of this show was superb and made me sit back and think for well after the credits had rolled. At the end of the day, I don’t think it matters. Something great is still great even if its creation was an accident.

I implore those who have watched it to not think of it as a literal story about a woman who murdered someone, and more about how a broken mind cracks under extreme pressure. I come at this as someone with a seriously broken mind, and seeing it depicted this way resonated with some of the ways it can manifest itself in me. I hope some others are able to find all five seasons to be funny, enjoyable, and thought-provoking.