Review: The Afterparty, "Danner's Fire" | Season 2, Episode 6

Some very funny dialogue can't fully compensate for an uneven episode

Photo: Apple TV+

There’s the time before you saw a man’s bare pecs get smacked with a pickle, and the time after, at least if you’re watching The Afterparty. Of course, that’s just one item of an entire fridge’s worth of foodstuffs that get wrangled by two very game actors in “Danner’s Fire,” where we learn what made Danner leave the force. And no, it wasn’t because she wanted to write a book so badly.

Danner’s vision of her past takes place in a steamy ’90s thriller, in which she’s seduced by an accused arsonist’s pop psychologist, who turns out to be the real arsonist all along. Who could have predicted that Quentin Devereaux was up to no good that whole time? The episode has an abundance of quotable, bizarre lines, all offered up with all the earnestness of an old-school Michael Douglas movie. It’s all very, very funny, although it lacks some of the visual verve prior entries had included. Sure, the costuming and Devereaux’s house look just right, but after the stellar cutting and ed…