This article was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
The Afterparty on Apple TV+ has been delightfully spinning its way through season two, treating us to a Wes Anderson-esque episode, a heist, a noir episode, and my personal favorite, a Regency romance a la Pride and Prejudice. This week’s show focused on Detective Danner and followed an erotic thriller format with a refrigerator-centered homage to 9½ Weeks.
Tiffany Haddish had fun with Danner’s backstory–even if a plot about her last case felt a bit like treading water when what we need to do is keep on collecting clues to solve this case. What happened to sexy thrillers, anyway? Can we bring those back after the strikes are over and writers and actors are allowed to make original movies again because the people have won and the producers have learned that “IP” is no substitute for a brand-new sexy/scary mysterious idea?
ANYWAY, the silver lining to spending this episode in a flashback to Danner’s last case is that she was actually on the police force then (unlike now), and you know what that means…it means we get to see Detective Culp, her old partner!
If I have one complaint about this season of The Afterparty, it is the lack of Detective Culp. I love Aniq, but in his role as Danner’s sidekick, he simply doesn’t have the same hilarious/incompetent energy that Culp does. Aniq would never interrupt his scolding of her to go on a tangent about someone’s dick size, for example.
God, I’ve missed him. We all know Danner isn’t really going to write her book–and I’m assuming that Aniq will do it for her–so can we just get her back on the force in time for season three so Tiffany Haddish and John Early can spend the next murder inappropriately fucking things up along the way?
