At the end of Season 2 of Only Murders In The Building, we flashed forward a year to the opening night of Death Rattle, the new murder mystery play directed by Oliver Putnam (Martin Short). His star, Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd) walks out on stage, begins his opening monologue, and collapses, seemingly lifeless. Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) stands up in the audience and says, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” So we’re pretty well set up for Season 3. Oh, and the show not only added Rudd to the cast but none other than Meryl Streep, as well.
Opening Shot: We pan down on a stage, with Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) saying in voice over, “All the world’s a stage. And all the blah, blah, blah, we all know how that one goes.”
The Gist: We don’t quite pick up where Season 2 left off, but we go back to a brief summary of the acting life of Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep). She loved the theater since she was a kid and dedicated her life to the acting craft, but never got the big role, never got a director to say, “Where have you been?” Never, that is, until she auditions in front of Oliver, who utters that very thing when she knocks it out of the park.
Only then do we go back to that stage, with Ben on his back and bleeding out of his mouth. He has no pulse. Of course, Oliver and the cast are freaking out, but he decides that the opening night party at his apartment in the Arconia should go on, even if it’s now a wake. This is over the objections of everyone, including his neighbor and now-assistant, Howard (Michael Cyril Creighton).
Flash back four months, to the cast’s first table read. Charles has a role in the play, and Mabel comes along because she’s a huge fan of Ben’s, especially his starring role in the series Girl Cop. The table read is a disaster for a few reasons: One, Loretta decides to try different accents for her role as the nanny instead of what she did at her audition. Second, Ben blows in late with his manager/brother Dickie (Jeremy Shamos) and a documentary director named Tobert (Jesse Williams), displaying a general smarmy assholish attitude. And he completely ignores Charles while gladhanding the rest of the cast. We also learn that Ben rented the penthouse at the Arcadia that Amy Schumer lived in the year before.
Back to the opening night party. It doesn’t seem like the main cast — Charles, Kimber (Ashley Park), Ty (Gerald Caesar), Loretta and Bobo (Don Darryl Rivera) — don’t seem to be all that upset, even if this means the end of the show. In fact, there’s more than a hint that Loretta and Oliver have gotten quite close over the past four months. Charles and Mabel get the thought that the Only Murders In The Building podcast should come back and revolve around Ben’s murder.
Then Ben bursts through the door, shocking everyone. He really was dead, but somehow was revived and was well enough to be released. But we all know that, in the Arcadia, someone’s going to die and Mabel, Charles and Oliver are going to find out who killed that person.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Only Murders In The Building Seasons 1 and 2, but with a caveat, which we’ll explain below.
Our Take: We were worried a bit that, with the murder of Ben, that Only Murders In The Building was going to take place mostly out of the Arconia, with even the murder itself taking place at the theater where Death Rattle was being staged. But that was a fake out to an extent; Ben’s real death still takes place at the Arconia, though it seems that most of the prime suspects don’t live there.
That’s one of the caveats to saying that Season 3 of Only Murders feels like the first two. The other caveat is that it feels like showrunner John Hoffman (who directed the first episode and co-wrote it with Martin and Sas Goldberg) is playing a bit more with the timeline, especially within the context of the play. Episodes will go back and forth to show just how poorly Ben conducted himself, to the point that his castmates weren’t that sorry to see him go, then go to the present and show Charles, Mabel and Oliver try to figure out who killed him.
That back and forth might take away a bit from the momentum that the first two seasons had, where they were mostly propelled forward by the trio’s banter as they investigated that season’s murder. Sure, there were flashbacks, as well as episodes completely dedicated to a particular character’s point of view. But things certainly didn’t go back and forth as much as this season potentially will.
We’re still trying to figure out how the podcasting trio will find reasons to stay together during this season. The only reason why Mabel is even floating around is that, besides truly being buddies with Charles and Oliver now, she has a massive crush on Ben, whose performance in Girl Cop got her through tough times when she was a kid. Hoffman, Martin and company will figure out a way, of course, but we’re not sure how organic it’s going to feel compared to the first two seasons.
Of the two main additions to the cast, we’re more impressed with Rudd over the first two episodes. Yes, Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep, and the fact that she’s playing an inept actress is full of irony. But we’re impressed at how well Rudd can use his nice-guy reputation to his advantage as Ben, who only acts nice when he needs something. There’s a scene in Episode 2 where he tells Charles why he’s been cold towards him, having to do with a role in Brazzos that Charles got him fired from when he was a kid, that shows that there’s a reason behind Ben’s jerkiness, and Rudd plays that very well.
We just wonder if the third season is going to prove that the show has overstayed its welcome; even though we love the continued comedic chemistry Gomez has with Martin and Short, the jokes about their age difference are starting to lose steam, and we really don’t know what the three of them have left if those jokes don’t work.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first two episodes.
Parting Shot: Echoing Mabel in the theater, Uma (Jackie Hoffman) sees Ben’s body in the elevator and says, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!”
Sleeper Star: We mentioned that Michael Cyril Creighton’s Howard is going to be Oliver’s assistant this season, which we think is a brilliant idea; Howard has been the show’s funniest side character through the first two seasons.
Most Pilot-y Line: We haven’t mentioned Donna Demeo (Linda Edmond) and her son Cliff (Wesley Taylor), who are the producers of Death Rattle (i.e. they fronted the money for the production). We’re not 100% sure what they’re going to be doing during the season, other than creeping everyone out when they kiss each other on the mouth for way too long.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Season 3 of Only Murders In The Building still has a lot of what we enjoyed during the first two seasons. But there’s a lot of evidence that the show is running out of comedic gas.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.