We know better than to count on Ron’s dream coming true, not only because the system is rigged against him, but because Ron is Ron. Actually, Ron is Ronald Wayne Donald, so he’s had a deficit to make up from birth. In the premiere alone, Ron finds out the company sale may get held up due to an oversight by his incompetent lawyer; he has to dig himself out with a loan from former employee Constance (Jane Lynch), now a widow so rich she thinks the “10 grand” he asks for means $10 million, but whose investment at the smaller amount still comes on the condition that she insert herself at every event; and just when it seems like this might be the one time Ron comes out on top, we find out when the season-opening party is taking place.
The other characters have their troubles through the season: Henry gets divorced between the first and second episodes, requiring that he return to Party Down to pay his alimony; Roman (Martin Starr) sells his best hard sci-fi concept to a streaming service that immediately goes under, taking his IP with it; Lydia (Megan Mullally) learns for the first time that child stardom screws people up later in life, and worries for her own daughter/client, Escapade (Liv Hewson); Sackson gets his biggest TikTok hit with a hard fall on an escalator; chef Lucy’s artistry is appreciated only by a literal Nazi; and Kyle gets canceled for seeming like a Nazi, on the eve of headlining a superhero movie. But no one loses more often, and in more ways, than Ron.
We were not graced with a new Party Down episode today. We may not get another episode, ever. So let’s look back on Marino’s glorious season through Ron Donald’s many disasters, and appreciate that there truly is nothing Marino will not do to bring this character to life, in all his pitiful dimensions.