by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
The fall season brings with it cool weather, changing of leaves, and, as always, another season of the hit series Only Murders in the Building. This new season reunites out beloved main cast Steve Martin Charles, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez. I have said many times that this is a trio you wouldn’t expect to work, but they mesh amazingly.
We last left our lovable detectives the morning after Oliver’s (Short) wedding, where they discovered the body of their beloved doorman Lester (Teddy Coluca) in the fountain of the courtyard with seemingly no evidence, leaving them completely lost for words. As preparations for the funeral are underway, the three leads find a severed finger, confirming Lester’s death may not have been the accident which authorities claim it is after investigation. When Oliver looks back at his wedding photos trying to piece together Lester’s story, he notices that Lester had been talking to notorious mobster Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale) the day of the wedding at the Arconia. When they travel to Staten Island to speak to Nicky, they are met by his wife Sofia (Téa Leoni), who had attempted to hire the Only Murders team to investigate her husband’s disappearance at the end of last season. She gives Charles (Martin) a deck of cards that Nicky kept on his person all the time, only to discover that one of the cards has a hidden map on the back, which leads through the Arconia into a basement where he and Mabel discover an underground casino. And at nearly the exact same moment, Oliver follows a lead to a dry cleaner in the building and finds Nicky’s dead body hung up with the clothes bags.
It’s always a good time to come back to this world and see the new antics and cases that Charles, Oliver and Mabel (Gomez) solve. As I said before, this is a grouping of actors that you wouldn’t expect to work so well together, but they make it work perfectly. And when you mix in all the guest and supporting characters for these all stars to play off of, it adds to the likability of not just the characters, but the show as a whole.
But as this show has progressed, and as we get to further into the later seasons, I often wonder to myself why, after four murders in one building in a seemingly short amount of time, this building isn’t condemned or deemed unfit to live in, or why nearly all of the tenants in this building haven’t completely moved away to escape the endless string of crimes and deaths. It’s understandable that the hook of the show is that there is going to be a death in the building for the podcasters to investigate, but at what point does this premise start delivering diminishing returns?
But the stories of each season at least give a fun new angle for the show to play on. Last season played on the idea of Hollywood making film about the hit podcast. The season before intertwined the cast with an on Broadway play. This season, it deals with an underground casino, the mob, and, oddly enough, A.I. robots coming in to do the doorman’s job. But even though the show always seems to find new avenues of plots and comedy to go down, it does feel like we are sort of seeing the same thing over again. Not completely, but just nuggets of this season feel too familiar, as if the writers are finally starting to lose steam.
Surprisingly, the new additions to the cast don’t exactly raise the bar enough to make it a completely compelling watch either. Renée Zellweger, Christoph Waltz, and Logan Lerman all play wealthy industry moguls who are all somehow connected to the underground casino, but they are more like distractions from the actual murder in this season. It feels like they were just big names brought in for the season, like how Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, and Zach Galifianakis were last season. They aren’t necessarily important in any, way but the producers wanted to have a few huge names to keep the audience interested. So that’s how these three new guest stars feel.
That isn’t to say that this new season isn’t good. There is still plenty about this show to love, and watching the three leads act against each other is great. It’s always fun to watch the side characters interact with the trio’s quirks. And we have an interesting at best new set up for what this murder explores and unfolds. But as Only Murders in the Building continues, I wonder how much further it can go before it becomes old, and we start seeing Oliver’s silliness, Charles’s lack of being in touch with the modern world, and Mabel’s exasperation with her elderly friends as annoying, as opposed to cute fun.
Rating: Liked It
Only Murders in the Building is currently streaming on Hulu
You can read more from Jeff Alan, and follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd