Watch Adam Scott in Parks and Recreation and you’ll want him to be your boyfriend, uttering “I love you and I like you” with a besotted smile. Watch Severance instead, where he plays a man so haunted by loss that splitting his consciousness into a sheltered work ‘innie’ and a tormented after-hours ‘outie’ is his coping method, and you’ll want to help him find the answers and solace he’s so desperate for. Switch to Step Brothers or The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, though, or The Good Place, and you’ll see Scott as obnoxious, perhaps with surprise at how well (and gleefully) being a jerk fits. Fancy the charm, yearning and cantankerousness combined? That’s where Party Down comes in.
Scott was already 15 years into his career, largely hopping between smaller parts in search of a big break, when he scored what should be the easiest gig in the world for an actor: portraying one. He’s also playing a cater waiter in Party Down, complete with the uniform of a white shirt, black trousers and pink bow tie to prove it. But the series’ ragtag crew is stacked with aspiring Tinseltown talents, all slinging d'oeuvres to pay the bills until their moment arrives — be it musicians, comedians, screenwriters and managers in the show’s first two seasons, which premiered in 2009 and 2010, or content creators in its 2023 third season.
Maybe mixing drinks and wielding trays of canapés at shindigs across Los Angeles will also serve up networking opportunities with Hollywood hotshots? That’s the dream. When season one begins, Scott’s Henry Pollard is holding out far less hope than those around him: rebellious funny-woman Casey Klein (Lizzy Caplan), optimistic actor/model/alt-indie front man Kyle Bradway (Ryan Hansen), cynical sci-fi writer Roman DeBeers (Martin Starr) and veteran bit-player Constance Carmell (Jane Lynch). Later in the series, the same proves accurate with Jennifer Coolidge’s psilocybin-dropping ring-in Bobbie St. Brown and Megan Mullally’s manic showbiz mum Lydia Dunfree. Henry is also unshakeably jaded by the shortcomings that he can’t escape. His main claim to acting fame? A national beer commercial that made him just recognisable enough, with a catchphrase that keeps being parroted his way.
Are we having fun yet? No matter how many times that line is shouted at Henry or he’s asked to repeat it with a grin, the answer is rarely positive for him or his coworkers (particularly the sole caterer who isn’t at Party Down as a day job or side gig, Ken Marino’s proud-but-bumbling team leader Ron Donald). For audiences watching this endlessly bingeable gem, however, “yes” is the only response.
Created by the fresh-from-Veronica Mars trio of Rob Thomas, John Enbom and Dan Etheridge, plus ageless actor Paul Rudd — who was in the pilot, dropping out due to film clashes when the series was picked up — Party Down is a laugh-a-minute workplace comedy. It boasts a who’s who level ensemble and guests, and is built upon a deeply relatable starry fantasy-versus-bleak reality dynamic. And yet, there’s one specific reason that it’s an all-timer of a comic delight: Scott and his exquisite performance.
Party Down asks viewers to buy Henry as a minor celebrity, as he once was thanks to his ad, and as part of the furniture, as cater waiters are expected to be. Playing someone that everyone can’t help noticing, even when paid to blend in? Scott is a natural. Again, that’s often what occurred in his pre-Party Down work. In his performance as Henry, he’s also the calmest port in a storm of constant chaos, as his team try to keep folks fed, boozed up and merry at two weddings and a funeral, plus dinners, seminars, birthdays, reunions, retreats, film promos, opening nights and an orgy. Into a portrayal that is as layered as it is lived-in, Scott also folds in every dish on his wide-ranging acting platter — including likeable and loveable, conscientious and committed, sarcastic and slacker, arrogant and unsympathetic, and everything in-between.
At the end of the 2000s, Scott’s resume spanned 55 on-screen credits, covering a wealth of hit TV shows from the mid-90s onwards (ER, Boy Meets World, NYPD Blue, Party of Five, Six Feet Under, CSI: Miami, Thomas and co’s Veronica Mars, Law & Order) and ample movies (Hellraiser and Star Trek sequels, Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, indies aplenty, forgettable horror The Return, comedies Monster-in-Law and Knocked Up). One-season HBO series Tell Me You Love Me from 2007 was his meatiest television role to-date; to most viewers, he was best-known for antagonising Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in Step Brothers. Spotting a layer of art-imitating-life with Scott at the time and Party Down’s Henry isn’t hard, then. He was the striving, jobbing actor immediately before he nabbed a career-defining role with that exact description. Casting someone familiar with Henry’s path wouldn’t have been difficult, but with Scott, Party Down got bone-deep been-there-done-that, dramatically gripping, comedically gifted and an ideal everyman, all in one package.
Even in 2009, the everyman factor had long proven crucial for Scott. It still is now. Ben Wyatt and Mark Scout/Mark S. are so beloved because audiences can indeed see themselves in each, although that’s only part of the story. At its finest, being relatable also means being able to fill all manner of shoes — so, being believed as both a calzone-loving ex-teen town mayor and an office worker so grief-stricken that he’s taken drastic action, as Scott so memorably delivers with Parks and Recreation and Severance, and as Big Little Lies’ attentive husband, Loot’s egotistic billionaire, Hokum’s grouchy writer and more. Taking over a character from Bradley Cooper in Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later? That worked for Scott, too, as a result.
The Emmys and Golden Globes only started nominating Scott courtesy of Severance, and the Actor Awards (formerly the SAG Awards) with season two of Big Little Lies. While his contribution to Parks and Recreation was wrongly overlooked before that, snubbing his efforts on Party Down is the Hollywood awards machine’s most glaring Scott-related misstep. As the returning-to-hospitality Henry of season one, the disappointment of failure and the apathy of swapping passion for a paycheque seep from his pores, as does the unexpected excitement of hitting it off with Casey. Then, as the boss-for-the-perks Henry of season two, he segues into locked-in on catering life but battling heartbreak personally and professionally, so struggling to carve out a new normal that he can truly accept, is flawless. And, in the decade-plus-later season three, as a high-school English teacher back moonlighting behind the party bar to pay alimony, his quiet grappling with an older, wearier Henry’s mid-life crossroads is as thoughtful as TV comedy can be.
There’s a standout moment in the third episode of Party Down’s third season, in fact, that has Henry explaining acting to a couple of his students. He’s been roped into directing the school play, and these two specific teens have only just discovered his old profession. One wants to quit the production because she doesn’t like her character. “Some people suck, but they’re still people,” Henry tells her. “That’s what was always interesting to me, as an actor — good or bad or whatever, finding that piece of humanity in the character that the audience connects with.” Scott isn’t playing someone who sucks in Party Down, but his entire performance in this sidesplittingly funny series couldn’t better epitomise Henry’s words.
Party Down seasons 1-3 are now streaming at SBS On Demand.
