And yet, Search Party is unlike any other show that I’ve seen before. The synthesis of these familiar ingredients turns into something layered, different, and deeply impactful that you kind of need to check out.

On its surface level, Search Party is a show about the mystery of a missing girl, Chantal. You’ve probably gathered as much from any ads you’ve seen for the program. As a mystery, Search Party certainly succeeds on the merits of creating something suspenseful as Alia Shawkat’s Dory and company try to put together the pieces of what happened to Chantal. It’s also saying a whole lot more. Search Party effectively highlights the beautiful, chaotic nature of life, and brilliantly decides to filter that through a bunch of twenty-somethings. There’s something endlessly entertaining about seeing vapid individuals make someone else’s disappearance about themselves as well as exploring other spot-on millennialisms.

As I first started watching this show, I began to think that the missing Chantal was perhaps faking the whole disappearance to build publicity for her self-published book. Then I started to form conspiracies as ornate as the ones that begin to take over Dory’s life. Search Party is a show that demands to be discussed, whether with real-life friends or online ones.

This is also a series that is just straight up addictive. Clues are strategically given out making this a show that should be binged and actually benefits from TBS’ marathon-like airing approach for the show (as opposed to the binge tactic used for Angie Tribeca, which was nice, but hardly had as urgent of storytelling). You want to watch more, just like Dory and crew want to learn more about Chantal’s situation.

The show lives and dies by its characters. Alia Shawkat’s Dory is like if Nancy Drew and Daria had a lovechild. Her group of friends is the aimless, self-interested Scooby Gang of our generation. Sound a little like Kristen Bell’s Veronica Mars? Not even a little. Dory is the sort of person that would spill her drink on Veronica while awkwardly bringing up her absentee mother… right after sleeping with her boyfriend. Dory has more than a few issues to reconcile, but they’re deeply relatable problems that turn her into a character that’s as addictive as the mystery she’s trying to solve. She continually puts her foot further and further down her mouth and you want to scream at her to stop. She keeps making foolish—albeit passionate—decisions. While she can certainly be hard to watch at times, it points towards a well-developed character that you’ve gotten invested in.