Every Friday Chris hand-selects a streaming recommendation for your weekend.
This Friday’s Featured Flick
Party Down on Hulu
THE CLIP
THE DETAILS
CREATOR: Rob Thomas
CAST: Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Ryan Hansen, Martin Starr, Lizzy Caplan, Megan Mullally, Jane Lynch
GENRE: Comedy
RUNTIME: 30 min episodes
YEAR: 2009-2010
THE PLOT (via Hulu)
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.’
THE REASON
You probably know Adam Scott for his role as Bey Wyatt on Parks and Recreations and Jane Lynch as that gym teacher or whatever in Glee. You may even know Martin Starr as Bertram Gilfoyle – one of the greatest characters currently on television – in Mike Judge’s HBO show, Silicon Valley, and Lizzy Caplan as Virginia Johnson in Showtime’s Masters of Sex.
But back when those characters were each just a twinkle in some screenwriter’s eye the actors were servin’ cocktails and slingin’ hor d’oeuvres in Party Down.
The brilliance of this show was its simplicity and versatility. As a catering staff in Los Angeles the ensemble of burnouts, has-been actors, wannabe screenwriters, and overall handsome people work everything from house parties to to funerals, porn award shows to bat mitzvah. They even cater George Takei’s wedding reception!
Speaking of George Takei, Party Down stacked up an incredible roster of guest stars in its short two season run, including Kristen Bell, J.K. Simmons, Kevin Hart, Ken Jeong, Rob Corddry, Josh Gad, and Steve effin’ Guttenberg.
With just twenty half-hour episodes you can burn through this series pretty quick, so binge it this weekend on Hulu.
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