Photo: Apple TV
Things are really cookin’ this week on The Afterparty, and I’m not just saying that because of Travis’s “you know what they say about hot stoves …” line. (“Get too close and your pubes get burned,” is what he says “they say” about hot stoves, by the way.) No, the combination of this being the third episode of the season, which means we’re getting more information and starting to get a fuller picture of the wedding/murder, with Travis’s film-noir mind movie, means things really feel like they’re moving along after the first two episodes of (necessary) set-up and background fill-in.
In Travis’s account this week, we learn that he thinks of himself as a “truth guy” (not a “conspiracy guy” as Danner refers to him) and are treated to a buffet of 1940s-style visuals and snappy dialogue as he takes Danner, Aniq, and us through his account of the wedding and the time leading up to it. Starting with: when he received the wedding invitation and immediately thought it was a cry for help from Grace, then found a code in the RSVP card: TECH SCAM (found by circling letters in the meal options of “steak,” “chicken,” and “scampi”). He does uncover something that seems real via extensive internet searching: The five biggest investors in Edgar’s new cryptocurrency are shell companies owned by Edgar, meaning he’s artificially inflating the value of his crypto using his own money. That’s legit shady, Aniq agrees. (Danner, who has no interest in hearing blockchain explained by Travis, is content knowing that if Aniq understands crypto, she doesn’t have to.)
Travis decides he must warn Grace that her betrothed is a scam artist. Of note: Travis lost all his money in another crypto scam (Coinus Interruptus), so he’s particularly sensitive about this. He also has fond feelings toward Grace from their “carefree steampunk days,” though he says he has a girlfriend and doesn’t have romantic feelings for Grace anymore. (Do we believe him? Danner and Aniq do not.) He crashes the rehearsal dinner but strikes out in all his dirt-digging attempts (including being slapped many times by Isabel) until Hannah takes a shine to him by the bar. Unfortunately for her, once he discovers she’s Edgar’s adopted sister, he blows her off, assuming her loyalties lie with Edgar.
Eventually, he sneaks off to root around Edgar’s study — which begs the question, does Edgar live at this vineyard with his mother? Will Grace have to live there with his mother once they’re married? — and is caught by Sebastian, who reveals that Edgar’s crypto is named after Alexander the Great’s horse, which his father was obsessed with. Revealing this information sparks an epiphany of some kind in Sebastian, who runs off (suspicious!), but Travis is more concerned with the sheet of paper covered in numbers he finds in the desk. Later at his hotel, thanks to a full-blown conspiracy board and some free associating wordplay, he deduces that Edgar will fake his own death the night of the wedding and leave Grace to deal with the fallout of his crypto scam. (Which, he says, is why he said “you’re going to die tonight” to Edgar at the after-party.)
Aniq and Danner are … unconvinced. Aniq allows that it’s not definitely wrong; it just doesn’t seem … right. However, he does admit that the paper full of numbers appears to be a code.
There’s more to Travis’s story, of course, including that on the day of the wedding, Hannah seems interested in teaming up with Travis to stop it. Also, in Travis’s retelling, he confronts Edgar at the after-party in a perfectly eloquent and cool way, only to have Edgar “boop” him on the nose and rant about his face melting and everyone being “devils” (which syncs up with what we’ve heard from others, that he was yelling about “demons”). Maybe Edgar was tripping at the after-party?
Travis’s conclusion is that Edgar was planning to fake his own death and run away, but someone got to him first. Danner and Aniq remain unconvinced, and Travis admits he knows how it looks — like he’s the loser who got suckered out of his own money. Like he’s dumb. He admits he went out on a limb for some of the evidence in the folder but says he knows Edgar was a bad man (because of the shell-company stuff), and he couldn’t sit back and let Grace get hurt. Yes, Travis is a Reddit board conspiracy theorist who makes crude jokes about boners and pubes and kinda-maybe still loves his ex and made a scene at her wedding, but he seems genuine here. Am I being suckered like he once was? I guess we’ll see …
While Danner and Aniq are being treated to this tale, Zoë is making up with Grace and enlisting her in figuring out the extra-cufflink situation. Grace begrudgingly lets her sister back in and quickly tells her that G cufflink isn’t a cufflink; it’s a typewriter key. And who collects typewriters? Hannah! (“Oh my God, she would,” says Zoë.) So it’s off to Hannah’s yurt to snoop! She does have a typewriter with a missing G key that matches the one Zoë found on Edgar, but more importantly, the physical comedy chops Zoë Chao and Poppy Liu display when they spy Hannah coming and need to hide/escape? A-MAZ-ING. So good I rewound to watch it again. Twice.
Once they escape, they realize that Hannah’s garden is filled with poisonous plants. (So Hannah also lives at the vineyard permanently, then?) Three kinds, according to Zoë’s plant identifying app, she tells Aniq and Danner (and Travis). And, because Aniq and I are on the same page, he asks if any of them cause hallucinations since Edgar did not seem normal at the after-party — and one does. Devil’s Trumpet, which was in the centerpieces made by Hannah, can cause hallucinations if mixed into tea … and if strong enough, it can be fatal 30 minutes after hallucinations occur. Which matches the time of death Zoë discovered in Edgar’s phone.
• Suspect Watch: Hannah is obviously looking pretty suspicious by the end of this episode, but doesn’t that feel too obvious now? I’m still watching Sebastian, who ran off in the middle of a sentence the night of the wedding, according to Travis. Also, Grace wasn’t looking so innocent when she asked Zoë how Aniq and Danner caught the killer “in her last murder.”
• There are so many good lines in this episode, and here are two of the best: Aniq telling Travis, “You’ve been acting a little super weird all weekend,” and Isabel slapping Travis one million times and then telling him, “How dare you … wear white to a wedding.” Finally, her snobby obsession with tradition leads to some humor! Honorable mention to John Cho’s perfect delivery of “That’s not hygienic” when Travis sips straight from a liquor bottle at the after-party. Even in Travis’s own retelling, wherein he has cast himself as a cool gumshoe, people react to him with disdain.
• I also loved Edgar saying this as Grace leads him out of the after-party: “That knight is wearing skorts … that’s progress!” Edgar has delivered a different parting line in each of the after-party accounts so far, which is interesting and perhaps means everyone was a little drunk themselves, hmm?
• Still rooting so hard for Zoë and Aniq to make it. They’re adorable at the start of the episode, going over clues, and Aniq doesn’t mind how cheesy Zoë’s “find the cufflink, find the killer” line is, and she doesn’t mind when he tells her the inside of his glove is really sweaty. They’re a perfect match! Though he doesn’t yet seem 100 percent convinced that Grace didn’t kill Edgar.
• The way Travis keeps offering people “Hams” as a bribe really got me.
• Travis’s account of the rehearsal dinner is so cool. There’s a big swing band and everyone looks awesome. I want to go to that party.
• In this episode, we see one of the first instances of shifting perspectives bringing different meaning to a scene. When Grace says, “I was hoping you’d read between the lines” to Travis, he takes it as “Oh great, you understood my coded message,” while in her telling, she meant it as “I was hoping you’d realize the invite was just a courtesy and not attend.” I’m not sure this has anything to do with the mystery, but it’s a great example of how the fun format of this show can twist things up.
