Party Down, "Precious Lights Pre-School Auction": Rumpled Stiltskin

A review of tonight's "Party Down" coming up just as soon as you know the difference between you and James Van Der Beek's parrot...

"You'll never work in this town again!" -Leonard Stiltskin
"I know." -Henry

Rob Thomas(*) has told the story many times of how he, John Enbom, Dan Etheridge and Paul Rudd pitched "Party Down" to HBO, only for the HBO execs at the time to decide that they had conflicting visions of what a Hollywood comedy should be. And so HBO ultimately gave us "Entourage" (about Hollywood insiders who get everything handed to them on a silver platter) and Thomas and company eventually found a home for "Party Down" (about Hollywood outsiders who struggle for everything and fail far more often than they succeed) at Starz. And an episode like "Precious Lights Pre-School Auction" - which namechecks "Entourage"(**) while featuring the return of JK Simmons as foul-mouthed movie mogul Leonard Stiltskin - is a reminder of why the outsiders' perspective is so much more fun.

(*) Rob, by the way, spent a year at the start of his career writing for "Dawson's Creek" and has taken opportunities in the past to have fun at the expense of The Beek, here with the phrase "James Van Der Beek's parrot."

(**) Love that Roman is a phony who will say "F--k 'Entourage'" while at the same time knowing and caring about the show enough to be indignant at Kyle's suggestion that Roman would be Turtle, when Roman clearly knows, "I'd be E, and you'd be Turtle."

So here we have the members of Party Down once again attending a function they'd never be allowed into as guests in a million years, though Casey comes closest by running into a comedian-turned-mom who's basically Casey a few years down the road. (***) Stiltskin and his wife are there to taunt them about how far all the characters haven't progressed in the last year: Henry never got to play Young Abe Lincoln, Kyle is still nowhere (and, unsurprisingly, Mrs. Stiltskin has chosen to forget their time together), Roman is at best proprietor of a a prestigious blog, etc.

(***) And in a meta touch, the character was played by Andrea Savage, who played Casey in the original homemade pilot shot in Thomas's backyard. Savage couldn't do the series because, appropriately enough for this character, she got pregnant.

Kyle's still trying, and still believes in himself enough as an actor to enjoy gaming Roman, while Henry is slipping so deeply into his new manager job - with the Taco Bell view that accompanies it - that he tears into Ron with the kind of speech he'd have laughed at a year earlier. (He tries to play it off as acting, but you can see the self-loathing on his face afterward.) But they're all running in place, and Ron, with his disgusting 'pit stains and loss of his barely-legal girlfriend, is actually going backwards.

But for once we get a small victory, as Casey nails her audition for a small role in a Judd Apatow movie(****), dissuading her from following Savage's path for at least a little while.

(****) Between Lizzy Caplan's early role on "Freaks and Geeks" and the amount of crossover between the Thomas and Apatow repertory companies, what other director could it be?

Structurally, "Precious Lights" didn't have the comic build that the best "Party Down" episodes do, but it still had plenty of great one-liners, whether it was Stiltskin explaining that he once drank ape sperm to get a game with Tiger Woods, or Roman's line about The Beek's parrot, or Casey lamenting all her bad auditions, including the time she was told she was "'too Jew-y'... and I was reading for 'The Diary of Anne Frank.'" And the tip jar gag was a nice role reversal from the episode last year where team leader Ron insisted on putting out the tip jar over everyone's objections, only for the partygoers to cheap out on them.

What did everybody else think?

Party Down, "Jackal Onassis Backstage Party": Really Roman

I wrote about the new season of "Party Down" in general in today's column. Some quick thoughts on the season two premiere coming up just as soon as you have a conversation I'm not going to participate in...

As I said in the column, the two real issues I had with the season is that Megan Mullally takes a while to fit in, and that Henry becoming team leader seemed like one of those ideas that seemed better as a season-ending cliffhanger rather than a season-starting status quo. TV shows like to do these "everything you know is wrong!" finales and worry about the consequences later, and the consequences tend to be 3-5 episodes spent/wasted on returning things to exactly the way they were before (because, after all, we liked things the way they were). Henry running the team - and being in a relationship with Uta just as Casey returns from her cruise ship gig - does have some promise that pays off in spots, but the balance of this episode felt off.

So because I didn't love the new arrangement, and because Mullally was largely off to the side, it was left to the Roman/Kyle duo to largely carry things. And, fortunately, Roman's complete and utter loathsomeness was up to the challenge, as he discovered that women preferred Kyle to him even when he was disguised as a popular, lady-killing Marilyn Manson-type rock star(*).

(*) Played by Jimmi Simpson, aka the lead McPoyle on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

Nice cameo by Danny Woodburn (aka Mickey from "Seinfeld") as the waiter fired to make way for Casey's return, and while I prefer my Ron Donald to be uptight and oblivious, Ken Marino did have fun playing a drunk, self-destructive Ron.

This is definitely the weakest of the season's 10 episodes, and I know some of you who already streamed it on Starz's website said that means the rest of the season must be pretty great. And it is.

What did everybody else think?

'Party Down' season two review: Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review "Party Down" season two, and talk about the bittersweet nature of watching a show that's so funny, knowing that one of the main reasons for that (Adam Scott) won't be back full-time if there's another season.

I'll have a short review of the premiere up tonight at 10:30.

Adam Scott to Parks & Recreation - so what happens to Party Down?

Yesterday offered a development in TV that's the epitome of a good news/bad news situation. The good news: the very funny, versatile, likable Adam Scott is joining the cast of "Parks and Recreation," which is probably my favorite comedy on television right now. The bad news: this means Scott won't be available to be a regular on "Party Down" (one of my favorite comedies from last year) if Starz orders another season after the one set to debut on April 23.

Some thoughts on this - plus a comment from "Party Down" producer Rob Thomas on where this leaves his show - coming up after the jump...

Because "Party Down" is on a cable channel that's really just getting into the scripted TV business and isn't yet throwing around a ton of money, they've had to be creative about how they get actors. So the entire "Party Down" cast signed one-year contracts for the first season, which gave each actor the flexibility to go do something else (i.e., something more lucrative) if an offer came along a year later, rather than being locked in to a below-market contract. That's why the show lost Jane Lynch to "Glee" after the first season, though Lynch will guest star in one episode of season two.

The actors were again on one-year deals for season two. I interviewed Scott and co-star Lizzy Caplan back at press tour, and one of the things that was on both their minds was what they were going to do about pilot season this year. Starz just brought in a new chief executive in former HBO boss Chris Albrecht, and Albrecht hasn't seemed to be in any hurry to renew the show. And that, in turn, left the show's actors in a pickle: do they sit out pilot season and hope Albrecht would renew it down the line - and, therefore, risk not having a steady job of any kind next season - or do they go for another, possibly more secure job, even if it means abandoning a show everybody enjoys making?

Well, Scott clearly, and understandably, made his choice, and one show's loss is another's gain. He seems to make Paul Schneider redundant on "Parks and Rec," as he can do most of the stuff Schneider does, only funnier, but his dry, earthy style should be a really good match for what Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman and company have been doing this season.

And what does this mean for "Party Down"? Again, there's an entire season in the can with Scott as the lead. (I've seen the first five episodes, and they're very funny.) But losing the show's central, point-of-view character seems tough, so I asked Rob Thomas what his options are going forward, should a third season be in the cards:

"Adam will be allowed to do three guest star spots for us," Thomas said. "We can definitely still do the show without Adam, though we're all collectively entering about the third stage of grief over here. We'd much, much prefer to be doing the show with him.  Adam hated leaving the show, but they made him an offer he couldn't refuse, and in a world where our 'Party Down' future isn't guaranteed, he understandably felt like he needed to take the offer. We've been told that in order to return for a third season, our second season numbers need to come up from where they were. We're praying that, even with Adam gone, Starz continues with a big marketing campaign for Season 2."

I want to be optimistic, but the way Albrecht has dragged his feet on this - knowing full well that something like this might happen - doesn't fill me with hope. It's an unfortunate fact of Hollywood life that when a new administration takes over a channel or studio, they become invested in pushing their own projects, rather than supporting the stuff that existed before they got there. If "Party Down" were to turn into the cable-sized hit it deserves to be, Albrecht wouldn't get much credit, because it pre-dated his arrival.

So enjoy the season two episodes and hope for the best, but brace for the worst. And, if nothing else, three episodes of Scott in a hypothetical season three would be better than only one of Lynch this year.