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The Afterparty Recap: Pride & Prejudice & Fast Company

Season 2 Episode 2 Editor’s Rating3 stars ***

Photo-Illustration: Apple The lizard did it! No, just kidding. But wow, Edgar really loves his pet lizard, huh? So much so that his last words on this Earth may have been, “I love you … Roxana.” Ouch for Grace, his new wife of about eight hours, who had to hear that and then find him dead in the morning when his stupid smartwatch alarm wouldn’t stop beeping.

But let’s backtrack a bit. Let’s backtrack all the way to Regency era (this is an educated guess based on consuming Pride & Prejudice and Bridgerton) England, which is where Grace’s story to Danner and Aniq takes place (even though it’s also modern-day California, where our Afterparty story is set).

Yes, Grace’s “mind movie” story is a period piece romance, in which she details her and Edgar’s six-month courtship, leading up to the morning after the wedding when she found him dead in their marital bed. It’s sweet and sad and still somehow funny, too.

We find out that Grace and Edgar’s meet-cute occurred at Grace’s antique booth, where Edgar has come to purchase a typewriter for his sister’s birthday gift. As a Silicon Valley titan, he abhors antiques and loves technology, but Grace — who, to use Zoë’s words later, “hates anything made after 1985” — describes the beauty of the typewriter and its tangible product to him. They are clearly intrigued by one another, and Edgar impulsively invites Grace to attend Hannah’s birthday party with him. There’s even a hand brush and Darcy-esque hand flex by Edgar for all the P&P fans.

At the party, Grace learns from Hannah — who is SO excited to meet her, of interest to us as she hasn’t seemed particularly friendly toward Grace during the wedding weekend so far — that Edgar is one of Silicon Valley’s most eligible bachelors, and Grace and Edgar bond in a surprisingly sweet and touching dancing scene. It occurs in private on the porch because Edgar doesn’t dance in public and is interrupted by Sebastian, who calls Edgar away for business matters — something that happens repeatedly throughout the rest of the story. Sebastian also notes that Grace seems to have bewitched Edgar, and it’s hard to tell if he’s pleased about that or not. Sebastian is hard to read, and that doesn’t help his case when it comes to the murder situation at hand in the present-day story, as far as I’m concerned.

The rest of the courtship is a whirlwind, with clashing families (Isabel really is a snot) and a proposal during a rainstorm that includes this gem by Edgar: “Fast Company is inquiring about next month’s most eligible bachelors list, and I would like very much not to be on it.” Can you blame Grace for swooning? Honestly, these two seem like a lovely, awkwardly charming and quirky pair, and the blend of the period piece styling with lines like, “Did you not Google me?” is pretty funny and delightful.

At the bachelorette party, though, Zoë’s sisterly radar goes off, and she starts poking holes in Grace’s romantic fantasy, asking questions about whether her sister is truly happy. Edgar is often away on business, it seems. And we learn that he’s obsessed with biohacking and wants to live to 140, which involves going to bed at the exact same time every night, except one time on New Year’s Eve when Grace gave him Adderall, and he stayed up until 5 a.m. playing Connect Four against himself. Apparently, the sportsmanship was appalling and he never takes pharmaceuticals aside from that night. Edgar: more fascinating with every detail we learn about him, no?

This is important because Grace claims that what Aniq saw her putting in Edgar’s drink before the afterparty was crushed up Adderall. See, she says she was actually having doubts and feeling unhappy before the wedding. Edgar’s off-the-cuff vows to her in their vow box (I just … that was … yeah) assuage her a bit, and she manages to get him to agree to a first dance even though he hates dancing in public … but then he leaves her mid-dance when his watch beeps and he says “Roxana!” and bolts. (Ulysses steps in to finish the dance with Grace, which is sweet. Also, was this when Aniq had lost Roxana and was searching for her in the white chocolate fountain? Or did something else befall Roxana that night?) All Grace wanted was a fun wedding night with her love, so she manages to convince Edgar to stay at the after-party for one drink — shirking his typical bedtime — and then spikes that drink with Adderall so he’ll stay up.

But something goes wrong along the way: Edgar ends up hammered at the after-party and calls everyone “demons” (after Travis gets in his face and yells, “I know what you’ve done, and I won’t let you do it to Grace! You’re going to die tonight!”), and then passes out after saying he loves Roxana. Grace cries, sleeps in her wedding dress, and then wakes up to find her new husband dead. But she didn’t poison him, she says!

Grace’s story is compelling, but a few details remain that don’t do her any favors. Like: she didn’t want to sign the prenup (though to be fair, Edgar only sprung it on her right before the wedding). And: she was pretty unhappy. And: it’s not a great look to spike your husband’s drink, even if it wasn’t with poison. But time will tell, I suppose. I’m not convinced any of these details add up to her murdering Edgar.

Luckily — or maybe not — Zoë and Travis, an unlikely pair, are also on the case. After Danner kicks Zoë out of Grace’s questioning because she and Grace keep fighting, Zoë decides to check out the crime scene, and Travis decides to help her. This involves some excellent physical comedy of the prying-Edgar’s-eyes-open-to-hack-into-his-smartwatch variety. They also find an Adderall prescription, his phone, breath mints, lip balm, and one cufflink in his jacket pockets.

Why did Edgar have an Adderall prescription on him when he claimed he never touched pharmaceuticals? Why did he have one cufflink in his pocket when he was already wearing cufflinks? Could that have something to do with his crypto keys? Remember, Edgar and Sebastian were fussing with cufflinks and crypto keys in the vault when Aniq arrived to help Edgar tie his bowtie in the first episode…

Things are starting to come together … kinda! The details just get funnier and weirder as we go, and I look forward to seeing more of the puzzle pieces fall into place as we get to see some more mind movies this season.

Clues Clues Clues

• Suspect Watch: Travis is obviously looking pretty suspicious at the moment, considering he told Edgar he was going to die and also has a file full of Edgar news clippings, but I’ve also got my eye on Sebastian, who was the one to prompt Grace to push Edgar on the first dance issue. Why? So he could slip away and do something nefarious? And Isabel, who took one of Grace’s Adderall pills before the wedding, has been horrid throughout this story.

• I will now be ending all parties like Edgar ends his wedding reception: “It’s time for the evening’s grand finale, in which you drive in your cars back to your own houses.”

• In Grace’s story, she and Hannah got very close as quickly as Grace and Edgar did. But so far in the present-day story, they haven’t seemed particularly tight. What’s up there? I love Anna Konkle, so I can’t wait for more of Hannah’s story in general, but that does seem strange to me as far as the mystery goes.

• We may be gearing up for a War of the Moms: when Isabel maybe-on-purpose prints the wrong name on the rehearsal dinner napkins (Gail instead of Grace), Vivian is PISSED. Isabel is a witch. At least everyone seems to recognize it, including her own son.

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