Remember how exciting it was when Meryl Streep joined “Only Murder in the Building”? Just when we thought the show couldn’t do better than the core cast’s chemistry and extraordinary guest star roster – with Sting coming out of nowhere in Season 1, and Tina Fey and Shirley MacLaine blessing the second season – the producers land one of the most respected and awarded actors in entertainment. And Paul Rudd besides!
When you’ve watched as much TV as yours truly has, though, a score of that caliber makes you nervous. After Streep, where else is there to go? The fourth season answers that with a concentrated formula of Hollywood stunt-casting overkill.
No doubt you’ve seen the promo trailer’s galaxy of stars – Eva Longoria! Zach Galifianakis! Eugene Levy! Richard Kind! Ladies and gentlemen, this show will see your Kumail Nanjiani and raise you Melissa McCarthy and Molly Shannon. It’s a who’s who of anyone that John Hoffman could kinda sorta fit into the Arconia within reason, budget and schedule availability.
Celebrity hounds might say that’s a good thing. Murder mystery connoisseurs are right to be concerned. Famous faces are distracting, especially on top of the show’s power trio of Selena Gomez, Martin Short and Steve Martin. And since it’s this show we’re talking about, every actor is having a stupendous time topping what they would normally do.
The net effect is to remove some of the cozy community sweetness and soul infused throughout “Only Murders” and replace it with shallow sparkle.
Don’t misunderstand – “Only Murders in the Building” is still a very good time and, if not as lovable as prior seasons, highly likable.
Gomez’s Mabel Mora, Martin’s Charles Haden-Savage and Short’s Oliver Putnam remain unchallenged in the realm of TV platonic odd throuples thanks to a chemistry that somehow prevents their quirks from exhausting their welcome.
Mabel, Charles and Oliver are winning because they can’t share their underdog insecurities regardless of how much their little podcast has grown in so little time. Concurrent to that exploding popularity is the rapidly expanding ambition of the show itself, upgrading from two hyperlocal murder mysteries involving longtime residents – hence, the podcast’s name – to tracking the homicide of a Hollywood star who happens to sublet for a while.
Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)Helping to extend their shelf-life this time around is the blizzard of side characters competing for the camera’s attention and ours, and at times ham-fistedly saying or doing things that are obvious meant to draw attention away from clues we should be paying attention to. Another peril of veteran murder mysteries is that the creator’s whodunit patterns become easier to trace.
Even with all that to juggle, series co-creator John Hoffman, who directed and co-wrote the season premiere along with Joshua Allen Griffith, sticks a light-on-his-feet landing from last season’s cliffhanger.
After piecing together the puzzle of who killed Hollywood’s barely talented Ben Glenroy, the mystery circles back to the first season feeling by tapping Charles’ longtime best friend, buddy and stunt double Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch) to take her place on the slab. Any mourning over Lynch’s loss to the series is premature, although you might have already guessed that.
This series loves its flashbacks, “what if” fantasies and traipses through its characters’ memories and subconscious as much as its true crime amateur detectives love a good murder board.
But the satirical quips and zany swipes at auteur filmmaking, celebrity self-aggrandizement and Hollywood executive bluster mute the intimacy of what is the closest-to-home death to hit these three so far.
Sazz, more than Charles’ stand-in, lived an alternate version of his life. Their running joke is that she dated all of his exes, and yet somehow remained his closest friend. The third season closes with Hollywood calling and Sazz taking a bullet shot from somewhere outside of Charles’ apartment.
Its angle and Arconia’s layout means the assassin was also in the building – possibly a resident of the “weird” West side of the place, but in a city as big a New York and in a building with secret passages, who can say?
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Before they can begin assembling their case, Mabel, Oliver and Charles fly to the other coast to take a meeting at a studio that's hot on making a movie based on their podcast. It’s a relief to report that the stories saying the show set up shop in Los Angeles aren’t entirely accurate. They visit, and that’s all they need to realize where home is and be blindsided by L.A. following them home.
You may be knocked for a loop too when the star-powered farce starts to thickly ooze into every corner of each episode, reducing the screentime for lovable regulars like Jackie Hoffman’s building grump Uma Heller. The good news is Michael Cyril Creighton’s Howard has more of a presence and yet Sevelyn is mighty scarce.
Such a fluster of jazz hands takes away from the show’s heart, which always returns to the notion that Oliver, Charles and Mabel are still finding themselves through each other.
Once the season gets underway the reason why becomes apparent, although the jury’s out as to whether that’s a suitable defense. Let’s just say Howard spends much of his screen time in the seven episodes made available for review (out of 10 total) as a vehicle to move clues from one square to the next.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Detective Williams is in similar “also appearing” mode, likely due her being in much higher demand than in previous seasons.
But so is “Only Murders,” and the new season appears to take for granted that, tonally speaking, it can get away with the very thing it’s about.
Things get a bit too cutesy when Longoria shadows Mabel while tweaking her persona into a glamorous, aged-up day drinker – her version is a “a tableau of vices,” she says – alongside Levy stepping into Charles’ loafers, and Galifianakis begrudgingly taking on Oliver.
Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)These heightened takes of themselves playing fictional versions of other extremely famous people’s alter egos has a little too much “dude playing a dude disguised as another dude” energy.
Maybe that’s all to draw a glaring contrast between plastic-fantastic L.A. and New York’s in-your-face honesty, or to make the pair of alleged twin auteur filmmakers look extra weird and Shannon’s extravagantly awful executive especially clownish. (Although her obligatory late-in-the-season meltdown is a true highlight.)
Even in Manhattan, the show finds ways to stuff in a cameo or two for their own sake —sprinkles on sprinkles, like the Westies crowd. Nanjiani’s Christmas-obsessive and Kind’s eyepatch guy are a part, along with Desmin Borges and others, take the shape of a MacGuffin family that’s all scowls and weirdness signifying very little. For the most part.
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Such a fluster of jazz hands takes away from the show’s heart, which always returns to the notion that Oliver, Charles and Mabel are still finding themselves through each other. That’s truer of Gomez’s character this time around than Oliver, who’s still figuring out what he and Streep’s Loretta are to each other.
Mabel’s certainly more introspective than Charles, who's immersed in figuring out the how and why of his dearest friend being killed. But as she reckons with imposter syndrome so, too, does this “greatest hits” of a season.
Having said all that, with precious little else on to lift our moods at a time we so badly need a boost, “Only Murders in the Building” is still one of TV’s best comforts. It may take a while to find its stride (which it does, by the seventh episode) and lack any addictive hooks like last season’s surprise Broadway banger “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?”
But it still gives us plenty of motive to stick with it, overwhelmed though we may be by its amplified dazzle. Oliver seized on that very thing to make his Broadway death rattle into a singing triumph. There’s little reason not to believe this season isn’t capable of pulling off a similar turnaround in the end.
The fourth season of "Only Murders in the Building" premieres Tuesday, Aug. 27 on Hulu. New episodes stream on Tuesdays.
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