Only Murders In The Building
Hey everyone and welcome, today, we will be talking about season 4 of the show Only Murders in the Building. Fun Fact: All the episodes this season share their title name with a famous film. This season came out in 2024 and stars Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez and was created by Steve Martin and Josh Hoffman. So, Without further ado, let’s get right into it.
Only Murders Season 4 sees the trio getting a movie made about them and while that’s exciting they stumble across the murder of Charles’s good friend Sazz, and they must figure out who killed Sazz and who killed her and why.
Only Murders in the Building is a comedic who dun it. It has similar vibes to Knives Out, Poker Face, or The White Lotus.
Only Murders has been a highlight since it premiered and has done something, not many shows these days can say they have done: give us quality seasons every year instead of making us wait these long periods between seasons. The last season wasn’t as good as seasons 1 & 2, but this season came back swinging. Also, when I say it wasn’t as good, let me be clear and say I still thought it was good, but it just was a dip below the other seasons. The trio works well together, and then they bring in these other supporting cast members who just do well in their roles.
The show always has celebrities thrown into the mix who are just playing themselves and I always like to see who it’s going to be. In this season a film is being made about their lives and so the celebs we meet this season are the actors who are playing these characters in the movie. It was great to see these actors try to mirror these characters and their mannerisms. The celebs try to help to solve the murder but most of the time end up in the way. While the argument can be made that they didn’t help, I think they helped with the Dudenoff murder just not the Sazz one.
Steve Martin portrays Charles, who is a part of the trio solving murders on their podcast. This season puts a little more limelight on him, considering the person who is killed is his best friend, Sazz Pitaki, and he really wants to solve her murder. While exploring who might have killed her, he learns more about her how much she cared for him, and how she was trying to build a better future for herself. With the way Sazz died, there was no body and Charles even repays the favor by letting the stunt people mourn her by using his body as a replacement for hers. Eugene Levy is playing him in the movie adaptation, and it was funny to see them, considering Eugene Levy is playing himself as an actor, and Charles in the show is an actor. Out of all the actors I felt they respected each other the most but it was funny to see Eugene try to figure out his mannerisms. I’m glad to see Charles try so hard to find out who killed his friend and it was funny to see that Jan also dated Sazz and wanted to find the killer.
We meet Charles’s sister, Doreen, this season, played by Melissa Mcarthy, and I squealed with excitement partly cause of Melissa but also because I love it when she plays a character that lets her have this different look. She was hilarious, and her house was so creepy with all these dolls. She goes after Oliver, which leads to some hilarious scenes with him and a little fight with Loretta. Charles and she had a rocky relationship due to her just feeling alone, and they made up, which was nice.
The dip-obsessed Oliver is played by Martin Short, who not only makes me laugh but is also getting married this season. Oliver is being played by Zach Galifianakis in the film adaption, and it’s so funny how they hate each other. When the podcasters meet who is playing them, Mabel and Charles know the actors playing them, but Oliver doesn’t, which leads to a hilarious interaction. Zach didn’t want to take this role, but they learned to respect each other a little. Oliver loves being in the limelight, which leads to some scenes with him being overdramatic, and he is also trying to retain the youth that he has, which is hilarious to me. He’s marrying Loretta who is played by the always magnificent Meryl Streep and goes through so much worrying because he is nervous about the wedding and does crazy stuff like creating a finsta to make sure she’s not seeing anyone else. He often says stuff that seems like it is a lie, and a lot of the time, it is, but some are true and it’s hard to tell. Towards the end of the season, he says he knows Ron Howard, and I was sure that was a lie because, one, it just seemed so weird, but two, Ron Howard wouldn’t pop up and I was wrong because he did know Ron and Ron even made a cameo. He marries Loretta in the finale which is lovely at the Arcania which is where they met even though he could’ve had it somewhere fancier. I forgot they both had a son until they were walking Loretta down the aisle. He was going to move to New Zealand, where she is filming, but she sees how much he enjoys the Arcania and his friends and tells him to stay there and just visit but he is happy.
Loretta is played by Meryl Streep, and her role is much smaller than last season, but it’s always a joy to see her. I love her relationship with Oliver and how it isn’t your typical relationship because they are at different points in their life and they understand that about each other. At first, I felt like she overlooked his crazy real quick, but then I remembered she was a little crazy last season too.
Mabel is played by Selena Gomez, and she rounds out the trio and is the youngest and the one who is more up-to-date with the way things are done in society. She brings a different perspective, which helps with solving the murder, and she is also great with the behind-the-scenes technology with the podcast. She is very hesitant to sign her life away for this film, which is fair because it’s scary to have to make that decision. I feel like she embodies what a lot of young people feel like, not knowing what they want to do professionally yet constantly being asked while dealing with not being able to afford real estate or even an apartment. In the movie adaption, they age her up because they think the age gap is weird, so she is played by Eva Longoria, who doesn’t seem to really understand Mabel, which also seems to irritate her because she interferes with Mabel’s detective work. She really throws herself into the case and squats in the apartment the killer was in which I think is the show’s solution to making sure she stays in the Arcania. Mabel has this dry humor that makes me laugh and I think Selena does great in this role I’m always interested to see her perspective on what’s going on.
Davine Joy Randolph didn’t appear much in this season, but in the scenes she was in, she stole the show as Detective Williams. I just love how she is familiar with the group and how trouble seems to follow them and refuses to listen to whatever explanation they have. She is a no-nonsense person and gets straight to the point, but you can tell she appreciates the trio.
Howard is a funny addition and I love how he’s a little bit sassy but also ends up being much more helpful than you might think. He was very instrumental in helping figure out what happened to Dudenoff and is the perfect pet sitter.
This season, we meet some of the residents of the other side of the Arcania called the Westies who rent instead of own. It was interesting meeting them, and I love how they were used to distract us from who the killer was. We learn that the apartment from which Sazz was killed was Professor Dudenoff’s apartment, but he’s not there, and there is a rumor he is in Portugal. We later find out that he was the Brother Sister’s teacher, and then we learn that a piece of metal that was in his body was found in Sazz’s ashes. We think that the Westies did both murders when we find they cash his checks, but we find out that he was dying and wanted to make sure the Westies had somewhere to live, so he killed himself and asked them to keep it a secret. Another westie, Helga, who was out of the loop, thought they killed him, but he left her a video saying what really happened. It was a cool way to show that, yes, two people died, but they weren’t connected even though they both happened in the building. The Westies were an eclectic group of people, and it was nice that someone was nice enough to look out for them.
Sazz is played by Jane Lynch, and she is the person whose murder we are trying to figure out. Sazz pops up in prior seasons, and as a glee lover, it was always nice to see Jane Lynch, and she is hilarious. I felt that while we learn more about Sazz and her murder, we are also learning more about stunt people, and exploring her murder weirdly felt like paying homage to stunt people, which I love. We see how doing stunts is something Sazz realizes she can’t do forever, how she sees how stunt people are vital but are treated as less than when it comes to the star and director and tries to make something, a script, that isn’t in her normal realm of work. Even with all this going on, she never inconvenienced Charles and always put on a happy face when she was with him and hid her pain, which was sad to see when we saw what her future plans were, it’s sad that she didn’t get to fulfill them. The one thing about this show is that while they focus on solving a murder, they also give us a parallel story of what happened in the past that really puts things into perspective and shows the victim’s life leading up to their murder from their perspective which makes their murder even more gut-wrenching. I think when talking about Sazz, they juggled being comedic and being serious really well. I loved learning more about this character, and I loved the send-off that Charles had with her ghost at the end.
Jin Ha plays Marshall aka Rex who is the murderer. I love how he was helping solve the murder even though it was him and he knew all the info they had and how much they were struggling to find the murderer. When we learn about everything leading up to us meeting him, we see how he was able to commit this crime and get rid of the body by himself even though it was thought that it was a team. The one complaint about his character is that I wished he was in the show more because I felt he came in late, and he was a character that I didn’t put much thought into because he wasn’t there long before he disappeared. It’s sad that he felt the way to appease his family was to steal and murder instead of doing his own thing. One of the most shocking things is the fact that Jan ends up being the one who kills him in the end.
This show is dedicated to making this building a murder building, and I thought I would get annoyed, but at the end of the season, I’m always like, bring on the next one. It’s interesting because, with each murder, we learn more about the building itself. Every time we go somewhere outside the building, it feels like we are on a field trip, and I just know we will be back soon enough. Tea Leoni pops up in the finale, which shocked me because Fun with Dick and Jane is one of my comfort movies, and they deny her request to look into who killed her husband because it wasn’t in the building and then we come to find out that Lester, the doorman, has been killed. I already have a feeling that those two murders are connected, and I can’t wait to see how.
My favorite part of this season has to be the banter between the three leads. It’s funny to see Charles and Oliver playfully bickering and Mabel being the one to be like ok we got stuff to do. Mabel has some time to explore on her own, and we see Oliver and Charles together, and we see how they are besties, which is nice to see. The characters bicker back and forth about a variety of things, but at the end of the day, they care for each other deeply, and when Mabel is in trouble, they even walk on a ledge to get to her. One of the highlights, not just in this season but across the board, is just how well these characters work together and bounce off each other.
Only Murders in the Building season 4 is fantastic and had me laughing while trying to figure out who the murderer was. The cast is great, and the story draws you in and really makes you feel like you are a part of the trio trying to solve the crime.
