‘Only Murders in the Building’ Is Now Only Guest Stars on the Screen
Midway through the fourth season of Only Murders in the Building, NYPD Detective Williams (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) complains once again about how true-crime podcasters Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) keep stumbling their way into and through murder investigations. Her objection isn’t just to these three civilians consistently putting themselves in danger and interfering with the work of real police, but with the shoddiness of their sleuthing, which this time around has produced so many suspects that they need multiple murder boards to fit them all.
“This is a lot of suspects,” Mabel soon admits.
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What Mabel and Detective Williams are picking up on is a problem for the show as much as it is for these characters: There are too many suspects because there are simply too many high-profile guest stars and recurring players on this season of the Hulu comedy. (Randolph herself is returning to the show with some serious hardware as the reigning supporting actress Oscar winner for The Holdovers.)
In addition to our main trio and their neighbor/unpaid assistant Howard (Michael Cyril Creighton), the new season brings back Meryl Streep as Oliver’s actress girlfriend Loretta, Jane Lynch as Charles’ former stunt double — and this season’s main murder victim — Sazz, plus some actors I’m embargoed from naming. In addition, the new season brings in Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis, and Eva Longoria as themselves, who are cast to play our heroes in a movie inspired by the first Only Murders season. There are also ongoing or one-shot appearances from Melissa McCarthy (as a woman from Charles’ past), Kumail Nanjiani (a neighbor from the less reputable west tower of the Arconia), Richard Kind (ditto), Molly Shannon (an exec overseeing the film), Griffin Dunne (a rarely seen but oft-discussed Arconia resident), and Scott Bakula (also playing himself). Not long after Mabel acknowledges that this story is getting overstuffed, Oliver runs afoul of a gratuitously cameo-ing John McEnroe, where the hotheaded tennis legend shows up just long enough to deliver a variation on his “You cannot be serious!” catchphrase.
To some, this might seem like the most high-class of high-class problems. Who wouldn’t want to have this many gifted actors appearing at one point or another in the same show? Especially when that show has already made room in past seasons for the likes of Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Amy Ryan, Sting, Amy Schumer, Jesse Williams, Michael Rapaport, and more?
And, to be fair, this collection of talent does at times yield strong results. There’s a delightful piece of slapstick in an early episode, for instance, involving old pros Martin, Levy(*), and Kind. Short and Galifianakis get some nice bits of business together, including Oliver explaining to his future portrayer, “The key to an Oliver Putnam story is that you want it to be true. It should take place between 1960 and 1980. It should involve a celebrity who you’re shocked to discover is still alive. And the best ones take place in a nightclub that’s now an Applebee’s. Or involve a drug that no longer exists.” And the seventh episode, the last one critics were given in advance of the season, puts our heroes and most of the Very Special Guest Stars into the same suburban Long Island house for some amusing hijinks, including an extended brawl between Streep and McCarthy.
(*) Even allowing for the fact (acknowledged within the text) that Galifianakis and Longoria aren’t exactly perfect matches for Oliver and Mabel, Levy makes sense as a stand-in for Charles. That said, it’s disappointing that Levy interacts so little with his former SCTV co-star Martin Short. (Then again, fellow SCTV alum Andrea Martin also mostly played scenes with Steve Martin when she appeared in earlier seasons. But if Rick Moranis or Catherine O’Hara turn up in a hypothetical fifth season and also don’t work much with Short, at that point it’ll feel intentional.)
More often, though, Season Four is too busy, and too focused on dynamics other than the durable one among the three leads, to be as satisfying as Only Murders is capable of being. It’s what happens when a show has been around long enough, and is successful enough, that it doesn’t want to let go of anyone who appeared previously — even dead characters like Sazz keep returning in flashbacks and dream sequences — despite continuing to add more, more, and more.
Much of the season premiere takes place in Los Angeles, where Charles, Oliver, and Mabel have traveled to consider the movie idea. For a few moments, it feels as if Only Murders is, in fact, willing to reinvent itself a bit, by taking our heroes away from their home base and focusing on a largely different group of players. Heck, Oliver even abandons his usual dip-only diet and insists on going to In-N-Out Burger while they’re on the West Coast! But by the next episode, they’re back at the Arconia to look into Sazz’s murder — and to figure out whether she was the target, or if being a dead ringer for Charles(*) is what made her simply dead. And pretty soon, all the L.A. characters are hanging around the building, too, and Martin, Gomez, and Short practically have to elbow their way into focus on their own show.
(*) One disadvantage of the new season focusing so much on Sazz, and on her long personal and professional relationship with Charles, is that the mystery this year depends in large part on the two of them being indistinguishable. But the more we see of Martin and Lynch together, the harder it is to ignore how little they resemble one another, even from a distance while wearing identical outfits.
At the same time, it’s hard to blame the Only Murders producers from leaning so heavily on any and every famous face they can get to sign on. Individually, both comedies and mysteries are awfully hard to keep fresh by the time you get to a fourth season. When a show is trying to do both at once, slippage seems inevitable. As usual, there are meta jokes acknowledging how formulaic things have become over the years. “If this is the part where you tell us not to investigate, you’re wasting your time,” Mabel tells Detective Williams, who replies, “After three seasons, I’ve got that.” And Charles acknowledges that the podcast has done well because, “We’ve been very lucky with people dying in our building.”
Really, though, it was a miracle that the first season balanced its comic and thriller halves as well as it did. Season Two retained the laughs but struggled with its story, while last year the show went in the opposite direction, with modest humor but some strong character work. It’s fun to consider just how many A-listers were willing to appear in this season, and a credit to the reputation that both the show and its leads have built up over the past few years. But like Detective Williams, I’d prefer a more streamlined story next time around — even if it’s one that no longer has room for Detective Williams herself.
The fourth season premiere of Only Murders in the Building is now streaming on Hulu, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen the first seven of 10 episodes.
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