Review: The Afterparty, "Travis" | Season 2, Episode 3
Aniq and Danner face some competition from a private eye, as Travis tries to blow this whole thing wide open
We’re just a tiny bit closer to figuring out what happened to Edgar, having zeroed in on the possibility that a toxic flower from his sister’s garden might have been used to kill him, especially given the bizarre nonsense he was shouting just before he died, suggesting he was hallucinating.
Of course, none of that has anything to do with the detective work of amateur gumshoe Travis Gladrise, whose noirish misadventures make up this week’s episode. Travis, who is definitely not interested in Grace and has a real human girlfriend living in Poland, has come to the wedding because Grace sent him a secret message in the invitation that she fears her fiance is a scammer. Sure, it certainly sounds far-fetched, but it makes perfect sense for his particular worldview, where he’s cleverer than everyone else, and the only honest guy who can straighten out this whole mess.
It’s actually all pretty darn funny. If anything, I wish his episode had come later in the season, so we could have gotten a little more buildup of him doing his detective nonsense along the sidelines. But as is, the show finds constant humor by answering the question, “What would happen if someone wandered around acting like a 1930s-style gumshoe detective?” with a resounding, “they would think he was an idiot.” Travis does seem to have the seed of an idea about what Edgar might have been up to with a cryptocurrency scam, but he spends much of his time trying to get various bystanders to help him with his mission to absolutely no avail. It might be because he keeps trying to bribe people using old timey slang for money instead of talking like a normal person.