Review: Only Murders in the Building, "Gates of Heaven" | Season 4, Episode 2
A hard turn back to New York raises more questions than answers about the season's focus
“It’s a mistake to make assumptions this early in an investigation.”
It’s actually been tradition for two episodes of Only Murders in the Building to debut in its first week, and after watching “Gates of Heaven,” I’m a bit surprised that wasn’t the case for season four.
I understand that there’s value in having the audience sit with the revelation of Sazz’s murder, but we know we’re watching a new season of a show where every season is based on a murder mystery, so it’s not like we were shocked by the end of the premiere. Instead, the revelation was significant for the characters, whose gruesome discovery of Sazz’s Bulgarian bones in the incinerator brought their worst fears to life. And so it would make sense, then, for an episode about Charles reckoning with the shock of Sazz’s death to follow immediately after as a double feature establishing the emotional stakes for the character.
Above all, though, my confusion at the two episodes airing separately is rooted in the realization in “Gates of Heaven” that everything that happened in Los Angeles will have little to do with the actual murder mystery. While we now know that the film will try to shoot inside the Arconia, and that their attempt will give the show an excuse to bring back some recurring players within the building, the clarity regarding Sazz’s murder shifts us to an entirely new angle on the crime and a new set of well-known actors inhabiting the mysterious “Western Tower” of the Arconia. Richard Kind (as Pink-Eye Pete), Kumail Nanjiani (as “Christmas-All-The-Time” Guy), and Desmin Borges and Daphne Rubin-Vega (as the “Sauce Family”) aren’t even hinted at in the premiere, but emerge here as a suspicious set of characters whose card game hints at secrets about the abandoned apartment Sazz was staking out in her investigation.