For four seasons, the TV series
Search Party has used its cast of New York millennials as a microcosm of imperfect generational behavior. Its main character, Dori Sief (Alia Shawkat), is a directionless late-twentysomething whose lack of ambition or professional qualifications have kept her life in banal stasis. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Drew Gardner (John Reynolds), is a prototypical Midwestern “nice guy” whose passivity and sensitivity are mercurial and fraught. Her other two college friends Elliott Goss (John Early), a queer man-about-town, and bubbly actress Portia Davenport (Meredith Hagner) are equal parts clueless and self-involved. Together they represent the well-educated, financially comfortable, self-satisfied urbanites who are the implicit subjects of myriad anti-millennial opinion pieces and Twitter threads. If avocado toast (the convenient political symbol, not the food item) could be personified, it would resemble
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For over a decade, Michaela Watkins has been one of film and television’s most reliable comedy knockouts, making hay out even the smallest walk-on role. Her dedication to the craft ensuring that every single syllable, every facial tic counts stems from a foundation in sketch and improv, as well as years in the service industry, which Watkins used as fodder for her own well-observed character work at LA’s famed The Groundlings theater. In 2008, Watkins earned sketch comedy’s holy grail: A call from
Saturday Night Live, making her then 37 the oldest woman hired to the long-running show’s cast. Unfortunately, that time with