Party Down

2009

Seasons & Episodes

  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
  • 0
8.2| TV-MA| en| More Info
Released: 20 March 2009 Ended
Producted By:
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.starz.com/us/en/series/party-down/2011
Info

A group of struggling actors and dysfunctional dreamers wait for their big break while they are stuck serving hors d'oeurves for a Hollywood catering company 'Party Down.'

Genre

Comedy

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Party Down (2009) is now streaming with subscription on Starz

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Party Down Audience Reviews

Mjeteconer Just perfect...
Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
BertMacklin_9 Its a real shame that the very best shows that ever aired on television got canceled so soon. Shows such as 'Arrested Development' and 'Freaks and Geeks.' 'Party Down' is another one of those shows. So smart, funny, innovative, yet, gets yanked off the air because of low ratings. Sad.'Party Down' revolves around a party-catering company. The structure of the show is very simple yet effective. Each episode takes place at a certain event with certain types of people. This gives each eccentric character a chance to interact with all of the party guests in so many awkward, unusual, and flat-out hilarious ways. A major theme of 'Party Down' is young people trying to have breakthroughs and make it into the film industry. They want so badly to become noticed, yet, they work for others every week and have no satisfaction. This is one of the many genius pathos that drive this very thoughtful comedy.As a whole, 'Party Down,' obviously, was very underrated. But something very underrated is the cast of the show. 'Party Down' has one of the very best comedic ensembles I've seen on TV. The main character is Henry, played by Adam Scott. Henry is a very hopeless and apathetic actor who made it somewhat big with a famous catch-phrase on a beer commercial. Now, though, he can't seem to find his breakthrough, so to get by, he works for the Party Down company as a bartender, but has no interest in it at all. Adam Scott is one of the very best young and comedic actors around. He plays the part very subtle and small, making the character really speak to us. He plays the 'straight-man' to all of the eccentric characters, yet he has this relaxed humor that doesn't come off as over-the-top. Scott's performance reminds me a lot of Jason Batmane's in 'Arrested Development.'The supporting characters here are all so interesting and wonderfully weird. There's Casey, a character who's very similar to Henry. She's a comedian trying to strike it big and Lizzy Caplan plays the role very subtle but has a biting delivery as well. Her and Scott's chemistry is something so sweet and honest to watch. Ken Marino plays Ron, a character who's so cringe-worthy but yet so addictive and funny. Ron is the company's leader who we learn used to be into drugs. He becomes clean, and now parades around his coworkers making sure they know just how much of a good person he is. Ron is a good person, but he's so painfully honest and does everything for the best of his team, which takes the character into some hilarious situations. There's Roman played by Martin Starr. Roman is a character who reminds me of Dwight Schrute from 'The Office.' He's very nerdy, intense, but yet kind of driven. Roman is a science-fiction screenwriter hoping to get noticed. He's very eccentric and makes for some very funny moments. There's Kyle, played by Ryan Hansen. Kyle is your typical Hollywood pretty boy actor. An actor who may become famous just because of his long blonde hair and good looks. He thinks he has talent, but is so oblivious to what he really is. Then lastly there's Jane Lynch as Constance and Megan Mullally as Lydia. Both of these actresses and characters are very similar. They are very big comedic performances that offer some scene-stealing moments. These characters are the oldest ones of the group, and play as each young person's mentor. These actresses are obviously two hilarious and very talented women, and both of these characters are so wonderfully weird.'Party Down' has a very quiet, subtle, and smart sense of humor. Its very character-driven, which is something you don't get quiet often. The situations and pathos in each episode are very true and seem so real. 'Party Down' is also filmed in a very interesting way for a comedy as well. Its basically a hand-held camera, but the filming techniques here simple and effective. The directors let each scene roll in a relaxed way so each actor/actress can really let loose with their lines and get really creative with their characters. The complete series, which consists of only 20 episodes, is available on Netflix. If you're into intelligent comedy with real, interesting characters, 'Party Down' is something you should experience.
copperncherrio Is it just me or is everyone from Veronica Mars recycled through this show? It's not a show that I set aside time to watch. You miss a few episodes and not missed much. However, the show does sit in its awkward moments delivered by one-dimensional but good characters. It's a bit slow for me, but The Office and Arrested Development crowd would eat this up.There are some great female comedians in this show though. But I hate the love interests and the main characters even though they are suppose to be neutral. I see why it was canceled. Sorry.
MovieAddict2016 "Party Down" is pervasively bleak - and even depressing at times - but it is also riotously funny. In a sense, it's the perfect show for our troubled times - at the height of an economic recession, with all these disasters occurring over the past few years, never has apathy and pessimism seemed so natural. As such, the show really taps into a broken-down, bitter attitude, using the LA wasteland as its source of inspiration...but it remains strangely optimistic because of the relationships between its cast members, whose characters struggle with their awful catering job but, at the end of the day, stick by each other. There's a sense of family amongst these broken-down rejects, and that's why we love watching their weekly miseries.Adam Scott (a seriously underrated actor) is the "straight man" for the show - he enters season one as Henry, a new employee of Party Down Catering. He's a failed actor out of Hollywood who has finally accepted that he's too old and past his prime to ever achieve his dreams of becoming a star, so he has resorted to bartending for the company. Scott is wonderful at playing apathetic, and gives some of the best facial expression reactions I've seen in comedy. I'm used to seeing him as the meaner or wackier characters in titles like "Step Brothers" or "Eastbound and Down," but here he plays a very empathetic and human character, and is really the heart of the show.Lizzy Caplan is the other relatively normal character in the show. She plays Casey, a stand-up comic treading water. As the season progresses, she becomes romantically involved with Henry, who is essentially her (and our) anchor amidst all the other crazy and eccentric people they encounter.Ron Donald (Ken Marino) is the manager for Party Down, but the show avoids giving us the clichéd mean boss: he is painfully nice and sincere, with a perfectly goofy Brendan Fraser-style haircut that looks like someone just evened off the top rather lazily. Toward the end of season one he has a bit of a relapse with liquor and by season two his hair has grown out and he's smoking pot and drinking all day and lamenting his failed love life.The rest of the cast consists of geeky Roman (Martin Starr), an aspiring elitist sci-fi writer whose writing actually rather sucks; Kyle (Ryan Hansen), a vain pretty-boy with another ridiculous haircut; and Constance (Jane Lynch), who exited season one to join the cast of "Glee" and was replaced in S2 by Lydia, a character played by Megan Mullally, who, it must be said, actually did a pretty good job filling in the void.News spread yesterday that "Party Down" was canceled after the season two finale because it barely nabbed 700,000 viewers. Starz mishandled this show from day one, from not securing actors' contracts correctly (Adam Scott, unsure of whether the show would be renewed months ago, joined "Parks and Recreation" instead, and Ryan Hansen was also rumored to be moving on) to not really advertising it very much -- and then relying solely on viewing numbers instead of Netflix streams or illegal downloads. (Because they were dumb enough to NOT provide legal downloads on iTunes, which probably would have worked really well for them.) I've heard a lot of positive word-of-mouth lately, with everyone I talk to streaming it on Netflix's website. I don't know a single person who even subscribes to Starz. I'd say 700k views for a season finale on a premium channel that no one watches is pretty good! But I'm actually kinda glad that they went out on a good note rather than running the show into the ground. They provided two very consistent seasons, and with Adam Scott's definite departure from the show, it really just wouldn't have been the same. Hopefully the show will pick up some more word-of-mouth and become a cult hit on DVD, and Starz will do some kind of special a couple years down the road (like Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant did with the British "Office") - then the full cast could return. Even though I'm glad the show didn't outstay its welcome, I liked these characters enough to be interested in where they'd be at in a few years. "Party Down" is destined to be one of those titles you'll see on critics' "canceled-too-soon" lists over the next few years, right up there with "Arrested Development" and "Freaks and Geeks." It was a pleasure to watch every week, oddly reassuring in its pessimism, finding humour in the strengths of likable and empathetic characters, even when they were suffering through some pretty rough times. I feel like much truly great comedy finds the truths in common human weakness, causing us to laugh at misfortunes that we can relate to, and "Party Down" excelled at doing so.
Corey Pellizzi What's funnier than the show itself are the people on this board that think they understand what they are talking about. I watched this show for the first time the other day, and I do have to say that it is very entertaining. The writing is really good and well thought out, and I love what the actors do with it. Most of the people talking smack about this show are probably over 45 years old, and think that two and a half men is the funniest show in the world. This is definitely a show for the young people. All in all, this show definitely has it's place, and has a decent enough fan base that it won't be effected by the 2 or 3 bad reviews that are written on this site.