Summary
“Danner’s Fire” is the funniest episode of The Afterparty Season 2 thus far, but it’s also the least impactful as far as the overarching mystery is concerned.
This recap of The Afterparty Season 2 Episode 6, “Danner’s Fire”, contains spoilers.
“Danner’s Fire” has the unusual distinction of being both the funniest episode of The Afterparty Season 2 but also the worst, at least in terms of how little it moves the wider plot along or even matters in the grand scheme of things.
Coming hot on the heels of Episode 5, which felt like it had put various pieces together as neatly as possible and teed up nothing but fresh revelations in the season’s back half, this can’t help but feel like an unnecessary – if intermittently entertaining – diversion.
The Afterparty Season 2 Episode 6 Recap
As hinted at in the previous episode, the focus turns to Danner here, who wants to explain, in a rather roundabout way, how her leaving the force and focusing on being an author relates to the current case.
This half-hour takes the form of a 90s erotic thriller, and Michael Ealy even guest-stars as a therapist with a few kinks that give Tiffany Haddish an excuse to evoke the Girls Trip role that made her famous in the first place.
The “twist” is obvious from the beginning, though one gets the sense it’s supposed to be, and the ultimate cautionary lesson – that Aniq is too close to Edgar’s death because he’s predisposed to side with Zoe and her family – doesn’t seem worth an entire episode of reiteration.
But here we are. Haddish and Ealy are at least having a tremendous amount of fun, and it’s mostly pretty contagious as we navigate a predictable arson case that scapegoats one of Ealy’s pyromaniac patients.
Why did Danner leave the force?
Leonard Vurr (a frazzled Paul Scheer) seems an obvious choice for a string of arsons since he has already been convicted of starting fires and makes no secret of his near-sexual enthusiasm for flames. But it’s immediately obvious that Vurr isn’t the real perpetrator, but instead a convenient fall guy for Ealy’s psychiatrist character, Quentin Devereaux.
It’s obvious to the audience, if not necessarily Danner – or even Aniq, to whom she’s relaying the story – that Quentin is guilty. When Danner and Quentin strike up an exceptionally bizarre relationship, it delays the reveal but provides an excuse for physical comedy and riffing on genre tropes.
The “reveal” itself is handled in that hilariously soapy way that such things usually are, with Danner finally putting together clues that were breathtakingly obvious in the first place. It’s deliberately unsophisticated and designed to highlight, I think, that Danner isn’t that good of a detective. Quentin escapes in the end, Danner’s life is saved by Culp, and she blames herself for the case’s failure – as well she should.
The Afterparty Season 2 Episode 6 Ending Explained
Why is Danner revealing this intimate personal failure? Well, because she rightly believes that Aniq can’t see the forest for the trees when it comes to Zoe and her family possibly being involved in Edgar’s murder.
Of course, she’s right, but we already knew that. Nevertheless, “Danner’s Fire” confirms it anyway in the present-day sequences, which see Travis conducting an experiment into the Devil’s Trumpet flower by “micro-dosing” enough to gauge the difficulty of brewing the poison.
As it turns out through Travis’s mild but amusing trip, it’s very easy – all that’s required is a teapot and hot water. And who should have access to a teapot but Grace, who, along with Hannah, once again became the prime suspect in Edgar’s murder last week when it was revealed that the two of them are continuing to hide something important from Aniq and Danner.
Zoe, fearing the worst, decides to hide the teapot, confirming Danner’s suspicions that she’ll put her family above all and that Aniq might have to confront that reality sooner rather than later.
You can stream The Afterparty Season 2 Episode 6, “Danner’s Fire”, exclusively on Apple TV+.
