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The Afterparty
Sebastian
Season 2
Episode 5
Editor’s Rating
Photo: Apple TV
We’re officially halfway through The Afterparty’s second season, so it tracks that things feel like they’re falling into place this week. Not necessarily in terms of the murder making sense yet, but rather, different bits and pieces from the stories we’ve heard so far are coming together to form a fuller picture of the wedding weekend.
For example, with this fun heist-movie-style episode, we learn why Sebastian was running naked around the vineyard grounds after the rehearsal dinner (as seen in episode one), why he pushed the first dance on Grace (episode two), how he came to pick up Feng’s relatives at the hotel (episode one), why he ran off mid-conversation with Travis (episode three), why he showed up in Hannah’s yurt after the rehearsal dinner (episode four), the meaning of the SEC4 paper … AND a callback to an offhand comment made by Vivian in Grace’s story from episode two. All this starting to click, plus a heist-mind movie with all the great heist-movie hallmarks? Thanks, I love it.
Of course, with five episodes left to go in the season, it still feels safer to bet on the house — meaning, there are definitely some twists and surprises left to come. “Sebastian” has two whopper surprises, though: (1) Sebastian is not British! And his American accent is so weird to hear after four episodes of his British one! (2) We get to see The Afterparty season-one killer, Yasper (Ben Schwartz), in a pitch-perfect cameo!
No. 1 is more important to the story at hand, so let’s start there: After attempting to blow Aniq and Danner off by saying he’ll only talk to “the real police,” Sebastian caves when the two inquisitors explain that they know Edgar fired his “arse.” And we get his big reveal: He grew up in San Bernadino, California, and has been pulling cons since he was a kid knocking off a corner store for baseball cards with his cousins Jaxson and Judson. Eventually, Sebastian conned his way into a fancy boarding school, where he adopted a British accent and met Edgar. Right away, the two roomies played a Connect Four (“The poor kid’s chess,” Sebastian calls it) game for a prized baseball card of Sebastian’s (it’s a misprint, so the player’s last name is spelled “Turder,” which is hysterical to a couple of tween boys, even Edgar, though he doesn’t actually laugh). Edgar wins, and Sebastian realizes Edgar is “the house,” as in: At a casino, the house always wins. And if you can’t beat the house? You have to “become the house.”
So Sebastian and Edgar team up to con the world! Edgar is the brains, and Sebastian is the face … and the ass … and the abs (his claims, not mine; Danner agrees, Aniq is less wooed). After college, they launch a totally legal con called a hedge fund, and life is good. And rich. Things only take a turn when they get into crypto, and Edgar fires Sebastian for holding back 20 percent of their funds as a risk-averse play. Since Edgar coldly expects Sebastian to still attend the wedding as his best man even though Edgar’s just severed their business partnership, Sebastian decides to go for one last score at the wedding.
With a sweet Ocean’s Eleven–score soundalike backing his story, we see Sebastian round up his crew (cousins Jaxson and Judson, whom he springs from prison — which is when we also see Yasper, who feels like he’s served enough of his life sentence already and has finished his album while behind bars) and set his plan to break into Edgar’s safe during the wedding.
After embedding Jaxson and Judson as catering staff and DJ, Sebastian plays his role of best man perfectly at the rehearsal dinner — flirting with the maid of honor, introducing special guest Uncle Ulysses — before sneaking off to plant a recording device in Edgar’s office (and run into Travis, as seen in episode three). He still needs the final code to the safe, though, and after realizing it’s the name of Edgar’s father’s horse (which is when he bolted mid-conversation with Travis), he tries to woo it out of both Hannah (seen in episode four) and Isabel (which leads to the naked run).
He eventually gets it from Isabel while walking down the aisle (it’s Nutmeg, FYI) and convinces Grace to push for a first dance as a distraction set piece. He still has to kidnap Roxana for the retinal scan (i.e., when Aniq noticed Roxana was missing in episode one), and then he’s off to the races, with assists from his cousins — Judson, who vamps for an extra 40 seconds to stretch out the dance distraction, and Jaxson, who clubs Travis on the head (Travis wasn’t lying about that in episode three!) when the detective wannabe mentions that something criminal is going down and the cousins misunderstand what he means.
Right as Sebastian gets into the safe — taking what he really wants, the Turder baseball card — Edgar appears (having run off from the dance, as seen in Grace’s story in episode two). They play one last tense game of Connect Four (the SEC4 paper? A running scorecard of all their games! SEC4 = Sebastian Edgar Connect 4!) for the card. Edgar wins and rips the card, and Sebastian seems sad. But! Aniq realizes what’s up: Sebastian secretly replaced the card with the dupe he’d planned to put in the safe after taking back the misprinted one.
“So, I didn’t kill Edgar. I left millions in that safe. And this card is worth, what, mid-six figures? It’s basically just sentimental value. We done?” These are Sebastian’s final words to Aniq and Danner before hopping on another business call as his British self. The two are torn as to whether the con man was involved in the murder or not; Aniq is 100 percent biased because Sebastian flirted with Zoë, and also he’s trying really, really hard to clear Grace’s name for Zoë and get Zoë’s parents to like him. He doesn’t want to go down the rabbit hole re: Sebastian’s mention that he heard Edgar and Vivian discussing a secret of Vivian’s, nor his claim that Ulysses was doing something to a glass behind the bar at the after-party. Danner calls out his allegiances and sits him down to tell him the real truth about why she left the force … which I assume we’ll get to hear/see next episode.
While Sebastian has been weaving his tale for Aniq and Danner, Zoë is still spinning out–slash–pursuing her own investigation with the rest of the suspects/wedding guests … but this week, so is Isabel, who thinks Grace killed her son and that her whole family helped her. Her theory gains traction when she discovers Feng and Vivian fighting in a room with all the rehearsal-dinner centerpieces, which they took and which, you’ll remember, contained the Devil’s Trumpet that likely poisoned Edgar. When Isabel rounds everyone up, though, Grace and Zoë start laughing and explain that their mom is just cheap (their word; Vivian refers to it as “frugality”) and didn’t want to waste the flowers. In episode two, Vivian made a comment while wedding planning that they could reuse the flowers from the rehearsal dinner at the wedding. Isabel had scoffed at the suggestion then, so Vivian took it upon herself to save the centerpieces, it seems. The suspect group is at a stalemate, everyone too blinded by personal biases to really investigate thoroughly, though Grace does note (out loud) that the Devil’s Trumpet from one floral arrangement is missing — meaning it almost definitely is what killed Edgar.
Stalemate or not, things are progressing by the end of the episode, when Zoë witnesses her sister and Hannah canoodling by the pool, which Hannah is cleaning. What Zoë doesn’t hear but we do, though, is Hannah telling Grace that she told “Aniq and that lady” about their relationship — but she didn’t tell them everything. What?!
What’s Vivian’s secret? What was Ulysses doing behind the bar? What didn’t Hannah tell Aniq and Danner? Are Hannah and Grace still very much together? Was putting all of these smaller pieces together just a distraction from something bigger? Was Sebastian playing one big sleight of hand with this story? The theme of this show is that nothing is as it seems once the perspective shifts. A lot fell into place this week, if Sebastian can be believed, but there’s more to find out … and I can’t wait.
• Suspect Watch: Danner’s eyeing Ulysses and Vivian with some questions after hearing Sebastian’s story, but she hasn’t yet learned that Grace and Hannah are holding something back. And was Sebastian’s story yet another con? He did keep one AirPod in his ear the whole time, which is suspicious. Really, everyone’s still a suspect, as far as I can tell.
• There are a lot of heist-scheme names dropped in this episode. They are: the Spanish Prisoner, Norseekee Twist, Mwamba Shuffle, Fatboy Slim, Pudding Slinger, Lee Majors, and Don Juan Honey Stick.
• The Edgar of Sebastian’s story is cold, ruthless, and calculating — quite different from the Edgar of both Grace and Aniq’s tales and even Hannah and Travis’s. Once again, the shifting perspectives keep things interesting!
• Right before Hannah drops her secret-keeping bomb to Grace, she delivers this hilarious line, apologizing for Isabel being “as they say in French … a bitch.”
• Something was definitely going on between Edgar and his mother. When Sebastian tries to get the horse’s name from her, she’s convinced Edgar put him up to it as some kind of test about her memory.
• And on that note, Sebastian is not as smooth as he thinks he is. “I want you to ride me the way your dead husband rode … what was the name of his horse again?” does not a successful Don Juan Honey Stick make.
• We still don’t know why Sebastian hates Roxana so very much. It could be nothing. It could be everything. Hmmm …
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