Review: Only Murders in the Building, "The Show Must..." & "The Beat Goes On" | Season 3, Episodes 1 & 2
Big guest stars and a Broadway twist are fine and dandy...as long as the show still serves its main trio
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of the third season of Only Murders in the Building. As always, the first review is free to all, but future reviews will be exclusive to paid subscribers. For more information on the shows we’re covering, check out our About Page.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
In its opening episode, the third season of Only Murders in the Building is toying with the audience. It knows that we know that it’s the third season of a show in which our three heroes—Mabel, Charles, and Oliver—use a podcast to solve murders that take place in their shared home of the Arconia. And yet last season ended with a death onstage at the Gooseberry Theater, and because of the circumstances of the death no one is rushing to make a podcast about it. In the first season, the true crime angle was a way for three lonely people to connect (and for Mabel to solve her friend’s murder). In the second season, the podcast was their way to clear their own names after Bunny’s killer framed them for the crime. But this time around, there’s initially not really a reason for them to investigate Ben Glenroy’s onstage death during the opening night of Death Rattle.
But of course, we know they’ll have one. And so the premiere works its way through glitzy guest stars and last season’s tease of Paul Rudd as this season’s victim as though the formula is changing, but not everyone is willing to let it go. Mabel has grown distant from Oliver and Charles as her septuagenarian neighbors have spent their months on the Great White Way, and we learn she’s actually leaving the Arconia now that her renovations have been finished on her aunt’s apartment. She’s nostalgic for what they have, and she’s the only one who sees Ben’s death as a story worth telling because she wants a chance to relive the connection they had, the thrill of solving a case before it even is one.
It sets up the tension of Mabel treating Ben’s death like a murder when no one else does, eventually being proven right, which seems like an okay setup to the season…right up until Ben pops up at his own unofficial wake, reminds everyone why they hated him to begin with, and eventually finds himself falling down an elevator shaft to both his death and podcast infamy as a murder in the building.
“The Show Must…” and “The Beat Goes On” eventually get the show’s broader premise back to the status quo: someone has been murdered in the Arconia, and there are a limited number of suspects who had reason to want Ben dead and access to the building during the Death Rattle premiere party. I wondered if the show would feel less exciting when the writers had “spoiled” the murder itself at the end of last season as a teaser, so the double fake here is smart, and reorients us into the momentum of the setup itself. And it’s hard not to be excited when Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep are part of your ensemble, and when the backdrop of Oliver’s return to Broadway offers a satirical playground that extends the world of the show beyond the Arconia even if the murder itself remains in the building. This is, overall, an opening set of episodes that makes me excited to see what the rest of the season has in store.
However, I’d argue that this is the easy part. Creating a new setup for a murder mystery is all about exciting possibilities, but there’s two bigger challenges. One, shared by any murder mystery, is sticking the landing when it comes to revealing the killer. But the second, and the one I’m more intrigued by in this case, is making the murder meaningful for what actually matters: the characters solving it. Because when all is said and done, presuming that the writers and stars desire to make more seasons, these three podcasters will move on from this case, changed by it in some way. And after first and second seasons where their connections to the victims were intensely personal, the writers still have to find a way to make this about them as much as it is about the podcast they’re going to produce.
Oliver’s story is obviously front and center here, given that he has the most at stake surrounding Ben’s death. What’s interesting about the show’s choice with Oliver is that his story isn’t about the murder at all—the murder is rather a disruption of his return to Broadway, which he finds a way to spin into a bigger, better opportunity anyway. Although he’ll no doubt be involved in the investigation, Oliver’s story is able to generate narrative structure all on its own: we’ve got a heart condition encouraging him to rest, a frantic creative energy pushing him to transform Death Rattle into a musical befitting his over-the-top production style now that he gets a do-over, and then you have Ben’s death, his seeming romantic connection with Meryl Streep’s Loretta, and the possibility that the results of the investigation threaten the rest of his story.
It’s a very solid story foundation, something I don’t think the show had last season when it came down to it. Another thing missing last season was a clear story for Mabel, who got trapped in a messy Cara Delevingne plot that didn’t end up going anywhere. But this season, the solution to that problem has been to embrace it, turning Mabel’s lack of direction in life into a case of millennial malaise where the best solution is murder (or, rather, solving it). The introduction of Ghost Ben as her crime-solving partner—inspired by his appearance in Girl Cop—gives her a space to explore her perspective as she prepares to leave the Arconia behind, and it also makes her that little bit desperate for the podcast and the investigation to kick off. The kidnapping she and Charles fall into in the second episode is ultimately a complete dead end in terms of finding the killer, but it serves to prove how far Mabel is willing to go to turn this into her life in the absence of anything else.
I don’t know that ennui is necessarily a deep story, but it’s more dynamic than what Mabel was dealing with last season when she was being framed for the crime, and I’m hopeful that Selena Gomez will continue to be given some freedom to explore the character independent of the crime itself moving forward. But one notable detail from these episodes is that from a balance perspective, the show creates space for her by largely proving disinterested in what’s going on with Charles’ life beyond the circumstances of the plot. He’s in Oliver’s play, and we later learn the reasons for Ben’s animosity toward him, but there’s a real externality to his character. We see him too prideful at the opening read-through, and we learn through dialogue that he was burnt out from the idea of doing eight shows a week even before it was a musical, but he doesn’t have a story outside of the character’s connection to the other stories going on.
And while that creates space for Oliver and Mabel’s stories to gain more dimension, one presumes that this will shift as the season goes on, making it likely that Mabel might fade further into the background (since it seems hard for Oliver to, what with the structure of the season’s mystery). It’s a necessary shuffling for the time being, though, since Charles’ connection to Jan was so central to the first season, and because they developed the whole daddy issues plot as a red herring last year. It’s nice to see him take a bit of a backseat, although as noted he is still Steve Martin, and I expect that to change.
The other thing that’s going to be a question of balance is the season’s guest stars. Meryl Streep’s Loretta is probably not the central character of the story, but she is our entry point to the season as we see her childhood memories of a performance of “The Sweetest Sounds” from No Strings. Like Jan, she’s been set up as a love interest for one of our stars in addition to being tied in some way to the situation, but she seems too obvious to be the actual perpetrator, and so I expected her dynamic with Oliver as she gets her “big break” at a late age is going to be less about Ben’s death and more about the challenge of turning the already slightly frazzled production into a musical. It’s a bit distracting casting one of the most lauded actresses in history in the role of a woman who kept getting passed over by auditions, but it’s a role that taps into a certain part of her star persona where you maybe kind of want to begrudge her. Like, it might be satisfying if Meryl Streep were to be a bit of a hack who’s so high on her own press that she’s throwing out bad accents willy nilly, and we want her to be held to account for that. It’s a fun performance, but her absence from the second episode makes it harder to judge its long-term positioning within the story and the ensemble.
Rudd, meanwhile, gets more to do. As I noted in last season’s finale, he’s playing a sort of Hollywood-ized version of his Parks & Recreation character, but now that we’ve seen more it’s clear the cluelessness has been dialed down a touch in favor of Hollywood ego run wild. Rudd is a distinctly likable actor, which makes the sheer hatred Ben inspires in Charles and seemingly the rest of the cast an accomplishment on his part. At the same time, though, the scene with Oliver directing him through a monologue was actually kind of touching, and the backstory between him and Charles adds shades that the season will be leaning on to flesh out the potential motives of the rest of the cast. Throw in the imagined, nicer version of the character in Mabel’s head, and Rudd’s a more central node of the entire story, which will make it interesting to see how often the show works to flesh out his story versus the main cast’s.
And there’s just so much ensemble! The supporting cast at the Arconia is mostly absent, but Howard’s been drafted as Oliver’s assistant, and there’s lots of new talent across the board. Jesse Williams is a bit overly conspicuous to be playing Ben’s documentarian1, who we get very little information on here, but you’ve also got Ashley Park in the cast of Death Rattle, plus Linda Emond and Wesley Taylor as the Motherboy-esque duo producing the show. There’s a point where they go through each of the other cast members and ascribe potential motives, but none of them beyond Loretta seem like actual people at this point, and so I’m not getting over-invested in any theories until we start to get a clearer glimpse of what the suspect pool looks like in both timelines (the original production and the new musical pivot).
What’s clear to me here is that the show is operating on a different wavelength where the stakes of the investigation have shifted a bit. The first season was all about establishing the characters’ dynamic, but the second season didn’t really get to settle into it because they were immediately framed for the crime, and were suddenly working to clear Mabel’s name. Here, while there are stakes for Oliver’s production, the ethos of the show needing to go on means that Only Murders in the Building might have more space for just reveling in the banter and comedy of these situations. The show is better when it’s emotionally grounded, and both Oliver and Mabel had some strong foundation laid on that front here, but I also just want this to be a show about a millennial roasting her elderly friends as they bicker over whether one tricked the other into getting Paramount+, at least some of the time.
The second season didn’t really get to embrace that potential, and it feels like—at least based on these opening episodes—that the third season might be in a better position to balance the various dynamics to tap into what made the first season sing.
Stray observations
I’m going to presume that I am the only critic from Nova Scotia who will be reviewing this season, so let the record show that “Upper Nova Scotia” is not a thing, and it’s probably not where you’d be likely to find a lighthouse, although there are technically some on the province’s North Shore and in Cape Breton. I’m sure you’re all thrilled to have me fact-checking this all season.
Credits become spoilers when you spot Pasek and Paul as consulting producers before the musical gambit is made clear—we don’t get a real look at their work yet, with Gomez largely talking her way through Oliver’s dream number, but it will be interesting to see where they head with Death Rattle Dazzle.
“Do you think he likes ears?”—before they revealed the whole Girl Cop situation, I wasn’t sure I bought Mabel being so giddy and nervous around Glenroy, and I still don’t know that her nervousness felt in character in that moment given how disaffected she is about…everything else, ever. But, the dynamic with the ghost version of the character fleshed that out a bit, so it worked on the whole.
“Thanks for the tip on Amy Schumer’s place”—appreciate this continuity for the Arconia, although I’m a bit disappointed that all those red herrings about building renovations and the like from last season have seemingly been dropped completely. I wanted to see whatever nonsensical skydome thing they were planning on putting in!
“For god’s sake, do a crossword!”
If you’re wondering where you recognize the new cop on the beat from, I recognize Gerrard Lobo as the bodybuilding cousin from the Master of None episode “Indians on TV” that I screened for my students as part of an exam for years. I presume this means that Da’Vine Joy Randolph was busy filming The Idol which is…not a good use of her time, by comparison, but I won’t begrudge her some HBO money.
And thus begins Episodic Medium’s returning coverage of Only Murders in the Building. This means we’re covering two murder mysteries at once, between this and Lisa’s reviews of The Afterparty, which makes for a great moment of shared theorizing as a community. I really enjoyed our dialogue on the show last season, and I’m hoping this year lives up to the show’s potential and gives us lots to discuss. If you’re going to be watching and want to follow along, always a great time to become a paid subscriber.
And not just because it is, indeed, difficult to not find Jesse Williams conspicuous if you saw Take Me Out on Broadway.
Oof, had not heard about the Pasek and Paul of it all. I was excited about actually seeing an Oliver Putnam musical play out but I tend to run pretty cold on them. Although their over-earnestness might actually mesh well with Oliver's extravagance and questionable taste so I'll do my best to withhold judgement.
I found it notable that these two episodes are setting up the most important relationship for each member of the main trio to be with the murder victim. Tim was little more than a plot device and Bunny was background color until she became the victim (her spotlight episode in S2 aside), but the new flashback structure allows the show to make Ben into almost a co-lead rather than grist for the storytelling mill. I especially liked how he was positioned differently with each lead; he's got a teacher/student relationship with Oliver, one which is tied into his rivalry/grudge with Charles, and he's Mabel's imaginary friend (which tells us more about her than about him, but if they're going to pursue the idea that Oliver's show separated her from her olds then it's an elegant fix). I assume part of this is that they've got Paul Rudd on board and want to use him as much as possible, but the result could be that there's more meat on the storytelling bones for this season rather than just adding a big name to the cast.
Best gag was right there at the top, introducing Meryl Streep's character by having someone say "she's a bit vanilla" and then showing her up on stage being MERYL. Although as someone who really doesn't care for her performances where she lets a funny voice and/or prosthetic nose do most of her acting for her, the gag of her trying out all the awful accents at the table read was just as good. I don't know if it fully qualifies as meta-commentary on some of her past roles, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
Did Mabel have a role in producing the play? She's there at the table read, has easy access backstage, and was at the 'celebration'. Yet it's also established that she hasn't been in touch much with the old guys since the Season 2 murder. Did I miss something?