A review of tonight’s “Party Down” just as soon as I rehearse the “you have embarrassed me” speech…
“Cole Landry’s Draft Day Party” continued the hilarious roll the show has been on since Steve Guttenberg taught us about porcupines, and did perhaps the best job since that episode of giving everyone something funny to do.
Rob Thomas went back to the familiar but always-amusing well of Ron Donald dick jokes, here with Ron obsessed about his level of… well, let’s let Ron ask:
“When you have an orgasm, how much stuff comes out? Of your penis?”
(That he needs to state the second sentence is just perfect.)
So we had Ron running around and being punked by Kyle, and then inadvertently taking the prank too far by handing a semen sample to a guest. We had more relationship awkwardness between Henry and Casey (including two separate “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” references), the wonderful spectacle of Roman’s usual defensive preconceptions about the world being shattered by a football player who’s smarter and better-read on the subject of science fiction than he is.
Best of all, we had an episode where Lydia was understandably central to all the action. We’ve seen her look for a sugar-daddy before, and I liked the idea of turning her usual cluelessness on its head by placing her in a situation where she’s more at home and confident than her showbiz-obsessed colleagues. I’ve enjoyed Megan Mullally in fits and starts this season, but this episode does the best job of integrating her into the team and this world.
Of course, someone who knows as much about football as Lydia claims to would point out that someone in Cole Landry’s potential draft position would be actually at the draft and not enjoying finger food with his buddies at home. But you have to allow for a contrivance or two to set up the plot sometimes, and the payoff about why Cole kept dropping (complete with a Deadspin reference that felt organic) was worth it.
One more episode to go in the season, featuring the triumphant return of Jane Lynch as Constance Carmel. Either Thursday or Friday, I’ll post an interview I did with Adam Scott about the difficult time he had making the decision to leave the show, and after the finale airs, I’ll have an interview with John Enbom looking back over this season and trying to figure out when or if we’ll know something about a third season.
What did everybody else think?