Perhaps the hardest thing about reunions, past getting them to happen in the first place, is convincing the world that the effort was worth it. Whatever excitement news of a revival generates among fans is inevitably accompanied by the suspicion that it won't live up to what made them love the original. At the same time, there's the question of whether it can speak to a new audience in a world that's moved on — is it just replaying the old hits for the sake of nostalgia, or does it have something fresh to say? Is it a cynical cash grab, a lazy recycling of intellectual property, or is it a genuine attempt to make something good, out of love, or for fun, or the feeling of just not being done?
It's unlikely that anyone not directly involved with the Starz series "Party Down" had been thinking about a third season, but we have one (premiering Friday, again on Starz), 13 years after the end of the second. And speaking as a fan of what came before, what's here now seems very much worth the effort, of a piece with its splendid predecessor in style and humor — there are no formal innovations for the sake of formally innovating — but not in any sense outdated. (Whether the kids will care, who can say? But they should.)
A hectic dark farce cum social satire set among a team of L.A.-based caterers, "Party Down" was, and remains, a mobile workplace comedy, each episode based at a different sort of event in a different location, where things inevitably go wrong for the hosts, the guests or the people hired to serve them — not so much a movable feast as a movable food fight. Its original cast, returning almost entirely intact, seems even more impressive now, retrospectively a supergroup: Adam Scott, Jane Lynch, Martin Starr, Lizzy Caplan, Ken Marino, Megan Mullally, Ryan Hansen — only Caplan is missing from the new season, on account of a work conflict. Able new members Tyrel Jackson Williams and Zoë Chao provide generational breadth, with Jennifer Garner coming in as the romantic interest for Scott's luckless everyman, Henry.
