“You Found Me”: On “Search Party”–Season 4

“Search Party” and the accountability game

Spoilers ahead.

The whites of Alia Shawkat’s eyes, despite their size, blind and flood the screen, in contrast with the actress’s olive skin tone, painted Seurat-esque with freckles, her head cut and her body dusted in soot. Her eyes, they’re cream-colored, a blank canvas, white enough that if you were to look into them, you would be staring into the other side. And you do, the blackened lungs of Shawkat’s character, Dory, expelling fear and self-loathing, the smoke and bilious parts of herself boiling over. I can still hear her.

Alone in a trunk, alone in a room, alone with yourself. This is all a fever dream, a nightmare. Or, as the ninth episode’s title might call it, an inferno. Or purgatory.

As the people around Dory incrementally confront the ills they’ve committed — selling one’s soul for a little bit of fame (on a Republican network), pretending the past never happened as they lead a new love to the edge (at a cringey family theme park), cosplaying (poorly) the trauma of your best friend (and getting fired for it) — there’s always away to find detachment, distraction, a way out. Not for Dory.

Not for Dory. When she’s been kidnapped by the Twink, Chip (Cole Escola), she’s got nothing but…