The Afterparty – Season 1 Episode 4 “Chelsea” Recap & Review

Chelsea

Episode 4 of The Afterparty begins with Yasper spooked and believing he’s found something big. Convincing Danner to follow him, it turns out what he’s seen is just a cardboard cutout. False alarm, guys!

Danner eventually interviews Chelsea for her side of the story. The thing is, Aniq happens to be hiding out in the room and hears everything. For Chelsea, the tone of her story shifts across to a psychological thriller, with emphasis on the paranoia consuming her prior to attending the reunion.

Her motive for attending comes from getting revenge on Xavier. She has a serious grudge with him, linking all the way back to a St Patrick’s Day party. She’s also there to find out who’s sending her threatening messages too, but is convinced that whoever that person is, they’re at the party.

Now, Chelsea isn’t exactly winning any popularity contests and a lot of the people there aren’t exactly fond of her. It turns out Chelsea was actually having an affair with Brett, which Aniq hears from the other room. This is also the reason a lot of people have a problem with her at the reunion.

It does appear that the constant threatening messages she receives is linked to this affair. After intentionally spilling her drink on Aniq, Chelsea approaches Zoe and asks if she’s the one sending the messages. She claims she’s not, but that also leads her to bumping into Brett and telling him she’s going to settle her score with Xavier. But why? What has Xavier done?

We don’t actually find out, as it happens, but Chelsea does reveal that she’s got tranquilizers in her bag which Aniq ended up taking by accident. This explains why he passed out at the party.

When Chelsea receives a photo of herself at the afterparty from that unknown number, she realizes the culprit is there with her. Chelsea is the one who left the message on Aniq’s hand, telling him “I’m sorry”, but mostly for the tranquilizer mix-up.

Fast forward to her encounter with Xavier and Chelsea reveals all. Her true intentions for the night stemmed from wanting to drug him, get him naked and post pictures up over the internet. But then Xavier has already leaked naked pictures of himself so for him, this isn’t so much of a big deal

We don’t learn a lot else here but apparently Xavier left Chelsea at the St Patrick’s Day party and stranded her. When Xavier heads out to the balcony, Chelsea heads downstairs and speaks to Zoe in confidence. She apologizes for what happened between them and admits she regrets everything. They also share a nice little joke about Brett’s terrible lovemaking too.

Danner is not convinced by Chelsea’s story. Something doesn’t add up. Why did Chelsea have a change of heart? She deliberates over Aniq’s choice of words when he woke up too, specifically regarding Xavier doing this to him “again”.

As Danner decides to bring Aniq in to get to the bottom of this, Culp sets to work trying to find the guy. Only, he’s obviously not in the party. Of course he’s gone! He’s in the other room and now he realizes his time may be up.

The Episode Review

After last week’s flurry of energetic, palpable episodes, this week slows down to show Chelsea’s side of the story through the lens of a psychological horror. The trouble is, unlike the first three episodes, we don’t actually learn much more about the killer or what happened at the party. Sure we get a few little tidbits, including the tranquilizer, Chelsea writing “I’m sorry” on Aniq’s hand, and the weird texts she received but beyond that, there’s not much else going on here.

The episode is still enjoyable  but compared to the last week’s chapters, this one feels like a step down. With next week’s chapter titled “High School”, it looks like more of the past is about to be fleshed out which hopefully will fill in the blanks over what we may be missing.

The genre hopping is still great fun but the lack of comedy and distinct dramatic beats this episode is a definite downer. Hopefully next week’s foray into the past will pick up the pace.