No "Party Down" party ever goes as planned - not even an orgy party.

Credit: Starz

A review of tonight's "Party Down" (complete with some salty language, so click through at your own risk) coming up just as soon as I grab freedom with both hands...

 "Guys, you're kidding. Seriously. It's not the polite conversation room. It's the fuck room! Don't go in the fuck room and be surprised when someone wants to fuck!" -Nick DiCinto

Last week, an old college friend came to visit for a few days, and I decided to introduce her to "Party Down." We started with the pilot and the campus conservatives episodes (the former to intro the characters, the latter because she loves Jason Dohring). Then to seal the deal of her continuing to watch at home, I took a risk and went with "Sin Say Shun Awards Afterparty" over the sweet 16 episode and the celebration of Ricky Sargulesh.

The trio did their job, but there came a moment during "Sin Say Shun" - specifically, when Ron was displaying his impressive male member for a group of potential investors - when I had to turn to my friend and say, sheepishly, "It's not usually quite this filthy."

She said she believed me. I just hope there's a gap between our mini-marathon and whenever she gets around to "Nick DiCinto's Orgy Night," easily the show's dirtiest episode since "Sin Say Shun" - and, perhaps not coincidentally, the funniest episode so far of this young season.

We know the "Party Down" cast is pretty fearless, and we know the same of guest star Thomas Lennon, who spent six seasons on "Reno 911" packed into the tightest shorts legally allowed on television. So the combo of this show, this actor (whose rear end was on frequent display), and the premise of a poorly-planned orgy thrown by a bitter recent divorcee made for a lot of huge laughs.

We got the awkwardness of Nick trying to convince his surprised guests to give into orgy fever, and then the skeevy brilliance of Roman volunteering his service as orgy whisperer, talking of "fuck actives" and displaying his usual high standards about body shots. We got Ron giving Henry way too much detail about his ex-girlfriend ("She had a very rough tongue"), and Henry for a night getting drunk and acting more like his season one self. And we got the very funny but sad story of Kyle hitting on one of the topless servers, oblivious to how much higher his lows are than hers, and then in turn getting these un-self-aware words of encouragement from Roman:

"Who are you going to believe: some bitter wannabe who's pissed from working a shitty, dehumanizing job... or me?"

Because I had just watched the pilot again, Nick's nude frustration also evoked Enrico Colantoni's skinny dip in that episode, but things worked out a lot better here than they did back then, even if no actual sex occurred.

All that, and Casey busting out her Pacino impression? What's not to love?

What did everybody else think?

Alan Sepinwall
Sr. Editor, What's Alan Watching

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Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com