Only Murders in the Building Boss on [Spoiler]’s Long-Awaited Cameo and the Debut of the ‘Doppelg?ngers’
Warning: The following contains spoilers regarding Season 4, Episode 1 of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building.
Three years after Oliver first mistook Charles for Scott Bakula, the Golden Globe winner takes a quantum leap into the world of Only Murders in the Building.
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In the Season 4 opener, Charles approaches Bakula at a lavish L.A. shindig. At this point, TV’s Brazzos is unaware that Sazz Pataki, the stunt double that he shares with Bakula, took a bullet for him, so when he sees Bakula from behind, donning a porkpie hat, he assumes it’s their stand-in. Once they come face to face, Bakula tells Charles that he also hasn’t heard from Sazz. Even weirder, he says, “she was supposed to double me on this pilot we shot last week, but she never showed.”
It’s not until Charles, Oliver and Mabel return to New York that they discover that Sazz has been killed, and her body has been dumped in the Arconia’s incinerator. All that remains of Jane Lynch’s alter-ego is a metal shoulder joint she had implanted in Bulgaria.
For series co-creator John Hoffman, having Bakula on set doubled as a reunion. The pair worked together on the HBO dramedy Looking, on which Hoffman was a writer and co-executive producer, and Bakula recurred as Murray Bartlett’s love interest. As for whether Bakula was aware of all the times he’d been referenced on Only Murders — in Season 3, for instance, we learned that Bakula is romantically involved with Charles’ ex-girlfriend Joy — Hoffman tells us that he was “completely aware of it. He had been told by many friends, ‘Hey, you keep coming up on this show,’ and he’d say, ‘Yes, I know… but I’m not sure why.'” Once they reconnected, Hoffman caught his former colleague up to speed.
“I saw Scott in a fantastic musical [The Connector] in New York that he was doing right before he came to shoot with us this season,” the EP tells TVLine. “I had a nice chat with him about all of this, and he was so game. He was like, ‘I’m so excited to be a part of it, even in this small way,’ which was basically all we could get with him [for Season 4]. The real coup is that there are a couple of surprises we’ve withheld this season — he’s one, right at the top — and he happily agreed not to talk about it until Episode 1 airs.”
In addition to Bakula, Tuesday’s installment marks the debuts of our beloved trio’s big-screen counterparts. At the aforementioned soiree, studio bigwig Bev Melon (played by Molly Shannon) announces that Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis and Eva Longoria have been cast as Charles, Oliver and Mabel in a feature-length adaptation of their Only Murders podcast. The “doppelg?ngers,” as Hoffman lovingly refers to them, will recur throughout Season 4 — and along the way, we’ll see how Charles, Oliver and Mabel get along with Levy, Galifianakis and Longoria, individually.
“I like that they all come to be in their own distinct relationships with their partner — their trio member — but I wasn’t prepared for how funny they would each be as a duo,” Hoffman teases. “That, to me, was the most interesting part of this casting…. Who might ruffle [Charles, Oliver and Mabel’s] feathers in ways, or match up and compliment them in ways, or make them crazy in ways? There was just great comedic fodder in all three.”
What did you think of Only Murders’ Season 4 opener? Grade the premiere via the following poll, then leave a comment below.
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