Party downer: Ron's 10 most humiliating moments on Party Down

Ron lives a brutal experience. Like Sysusphis, he’s forced to push the rock of dehumanizing punishment up the hill every day. In season one, his only glimmer of hope was the off-chance that he would one day run a soup concept called “Soup R’ Crackers,” the fastest-growing non-poultry, non-coffee franchise in all of Southern California. Despite Soup R’ Crackers naturally lending itself to the massive economic downturn of the Great Recession, evoking images of soup lines, the company went bankrupt. For Ron, living his dream was now [chokes back tears, pulls back hair] “a great experience.” Showing up at the Jackal Onassis gig, with a new girlfriend and a bitchin’ Camaro, he’s ready to swallow his pride and lie about his time running the eatery. Poor Ron. Even mediocrity exceeds his grasp.

When we catch up with Ron in season three, things haven’t gotten any better for our chipper team leader. Ron has begun spray-dying his sideburns silver in a desperate attempt at gravitas after a comment card asserted he “seemed like a child.” He also demolishes his pinky finger from punching his van. But all this comes down to the embarrassing reason Ron thinks bad things happen to him: He was cursed by spirits after taking a shit in a haunted house. Ron says, “I slave away for 10 years to buy this company only to be tied to a hippy-dippy looney tune from planet ding-dong,” he says. “Oh, why is this happening? It’s like I’m cursed—oh my God. I never should’ve gone to the bathroom in that old house.” Not only is Ron unable to take responsibility for his failures (see: next slide), he thinks these bad things happen because he followed through on a dare to poop in a haunted house. This man is a child.

There are few things sadder than an events specialist with decades of experience living out of his party van. But taking money from Nazis certainly doesn’t help. Making his way through the pandemic, Ron takes a job at the First Annual PI2A Symposium, an assemblage of neo-Nazis and alt-right chuds attempting to launder their half-baked conspiracy theories and xenophobic scapegoating into the culture. “Morals? What does that have to do with anything? This is just business,” Ron says. Party Down is behind on payments, and Ron might lose his penis van if they don’t hold their noses and “work for the Nazis.” Nevertheless, Nazis or not, Ron would still like to sadly “snag some referals,” indicating that he’d do another event for them. Nazis, Ron? C’mon.

The Sin Say Shun Awards afterparty is a situation someone as accident-prone as Ron has no business attending. And yet, when given the opportunity to utilize his god-given talents (e.g. his monster hog) and get a “fluff job” from the wickedly talented, one and only Stormy Daniels, things go horribly awry. And it’s not just Casey, once again, . When Daniels and another performer argue over who deserves the Best Blowjob award, the statue sets a collision course with Ron’s poor penis. He’s left in his natural state: lying in the fetal position with a bruised, um, ego.

Ron’s romantic life has always been a dismal affair. As if we needed more examples than him asking “how many jiggers of ejaculate is normal” and vomiting on his high school crush. Still, when he misreads some signals sent by his employee Lydia (Megan Mullally), he leans in for the kiss and gets a face full of mace. An instance of Ron getting what’s coming to him, his dalliance with workplace sexual harassment is another humiliating entry in the Book of Ron. Imagine explaining this to Alan Duk. Ron’s never getting that Soup R’ Crackers back off the ground.

Who other than Ron would attempt to recreate the most humiliating moment of their life in front of their whole high school? The man is resilient, we’ll give him that. Taking on the degrading job of catering to his high-school reunion, Ron spends the night re-capturing some of his youth. But after finding himself in the ever-familiar friend zone with the prettiest girl in school, Melinda Weintraub (Molly Parker), he decides to do something he couldn’t do 20 years ago: chug a bottle of whiskey in front of the whole class like he was Bluto from . Very cool. Or, at least, it would be. Mere moments after declaring himself a “success now,” Ron collapses in a puddle of his own vomit, choking on chum as he bubbles through the words “call an ambulance” right in front of his crush. There’s no coming back from that one.