Last Saturday, Fox premiered Party Over Here, a new half-hour sketch show that is executive-produced by the Lonely Island (Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone) and comedian Paul Scheer. The show looks fabulous on paper. It stars three women, including one person of color: Nicole Byer, Jessica McKenna, and Alison Rich. Its producers are funny people. The Lonely Island has waned in cultural prominence since Samberg and Taccone left Saturday Night Live in 2012, and so it’s nice to have them—their bravado, their shamelessness—back. But Party Over Here turns out to be a Lonely Island-produced sketch show with none of the Lonely Island’s charms.
The Lonely Island have had their greatest success executing dumb ideas with insane confidence. That’s one reason they’ve favored rap as a medium: It leaves little room for hesitation or doubt. Their songs are jubilant (“Get the fuck up, this boat is real!”) and confrontational (“I’m not a part of your system!”), committing so fully to their absurd premises that they challenge you to share in the joy of having no point at all.
Party Over Here is a different story. It’s wildly self-deprecating, right on the surface, as in the studio segment where the cast members address the Lonely Island as “our three dad-husbands.” The men are sitting silently, in suits, in a balcony above the audience. Bryer pleads with them: “Do you think I’m funny? I could be funnier! I’ll do anything you want. I’ll shit my pants.” Then she, McKenna, and Rich shit their pants.
That fearful exchange isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but it’s oddly meaningful: Party Over Here is scared. “In an age where most millennials don’t even know what a TV is, we are really excited to be getting into the TV business,” said Scheer sarcastically in an early press release. That sense of defeat pervades the premiere, which is comically framed as the first episode of the show’s 26th season—as though the producers hoped to avoid the elevated expectations of a real debut.
It is a very skimpy debut indeed. Interstitial animations take up an inordinate amount of time. There are only four non-studio sketches. Their premises seem to have been drawn from a list of topics palatable to millennials: political apathy, Disney princesses, vocal fry. In one, a suffragette reveals that she is too lazy to vote. This is supposed to be a hilarious and relatable irony. In another, Belle from Beauty and the Beast discovers that she has had sex with a different beast who is a real animal. This is supposed to be a hilarious insight about Beauty and the Beast.
Worst of all, and most surprisingly for a Lonely Island-produced show, the writers don’t seem invested in their own jokes. Take the closing gag, in which the performers announce that they’re going to sing through the entire credits, like they’ve done at the end of every episode for 25 (fictional) seasons. It’s an excellent threat—but they don’t follow through on it. Instead, they get sidetracked by a second bit: Rich begins romancing the location manager. It’s only the first episode, and Party Over Here has time to grow. But before anyone loves it, it will need to learn to love itself. Until then, it’s a sinking ship.
