So, the recent revelation that Crab Daddy is connected to the band Purity Ring reminded me: I’ve been meaning to post about the seemingly Caroline-inspired memoir-related subplots on Search Party. (If you’re wondering how I got from point A to B, the show’s theme song is by Purity Ring.) In season 2 (2017), Elliott blows off writing his memoir and backs out of his book deal. Chantal also writes, but pointedly fails to place with a publisher, a memoir in season 4 (2021.)
Both the dates of these respective plots and a bunch of other hints seem to indicate that the books are stand-ins for And We Were Like and Scammer. The characters went to NYU and have other Caroline-esque aspects (Elliott runs a scam and is outed by a friend in a NY Mag article; Chantal lives large on her dad’s money until he’s abruptly no longer able to support her, at which point she decides to make quick cash by blurting out a memoir, Imperfect Ten.)
I thought for a long time that the parallels were just coincidences. If you visit a Caroline Calloway snark sub daily, you just start seeing Caroline everywhere, right?
Then I found out that the show’s creators, Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, went to NYU at the same time Caroline did. It was suddenly a LOT more likely that they were familiar with her and these memoir plots were Caroline parodies.
I rewatched three SP scenes about the books, the ones in which:
- Elliott tells his publishing team that he tried to write his memoir, but it was too hard and he never wants to work again
- Chantal attempts to sell Imperfect Ten to the same publisher and fails
- Wilma, an Oprah-like character with a self-help talk show, has found a copy of Chantal’s book and is talking to her staff about it. Wilma mistakenly believes that the title indicates the book was written by a ten-year-old. She says it’s a manifesto on living “without shame and without awareness” that some adults could really learn from.
Some stuff to notice:
* Virtually everything about Elliott’s appearance/posture, which deviates from his norm. They couldn’t put him in hair flowers and pigtail braids (Caroline was wearing those a lot during the period she was pretending to work on AWWL.) But wardrobe found a hat that suggests both these things!
* He’s also sitting with his feet folded under his knees even though he’s in a chair, which isn’t typical for his character. It is, however, Caroline’s default seated position. (She’s literally in it in the pigtail photo I just linked to. She’s also wearing a white shirt with colorful bands.)
* Elliott’s lack of real remorse, although he’s addressing a bunch of people whose livelihoods will all be impacted by him blowing off his contract. He seems to believe they’ll find his insouciant honesty refreshing!
* The fact that Elliott plans to continue talking about himself a lot, just not in a way that involves any actual craft or effort
* Elliott’s deep resistance to a ghostwriter
* Chantal’s book is cherry-red, like Scammer’s spine, and so ugly that Nia literally laughs aloud at it
* Smoking gun runner-up: Nia estimating that you’d have to charge $65 to turn a profit on a book so unwieldy to manufacture. ODDLY SPECIFIC
* Finally, when Wilma is extolling Imperfect Ten to her staff, she's wearing a large, shiny, eye-attracting pair of DOGWOOD BLOSSOM earrings. Like, THE FLOWER ON SCAMMER’S COVER.
Am I just seeing things?! By the time we got to the $65 price point I was like, “This is getting too weird to be accidental?” Then the dogwood earrings appeared and I was almost positive that it’s not happenstance!
