The Magic of Hollywood

I’ve been struggling to write this article, in large part because I struggled to get through this last season of Only Murders in the Building. The season wrapped its run In October, three months ago, and I’ve had the last two episodes sitting in my queue on HuluOriginally created as a joint streaming service between the major U.S. broadcast networks, Hulu has grown to be a solid alternative to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, even as it learns harder on its collection of shows from Fox and FX since Disney purchased a majority stake in the service. ever since. I loved the first two seasons of the show (see: S1, S2), and while I didn’t enjoy the third season as much, I still liked it well enough to get through the whole season as it aired. But this last season was rough in ways that I didn’t expect from the show: flabby, poorly plotted, poorly written, and just generally quite bad.

So what happened? Why did this show, at least for me, go so far off the rails? We can point to a number of contributing factors within the show that add up to why the season that we see doesn’t work, but I have to think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that the show doesn’t really know where it’s going at this point. It started as a series focused on three tennants in a New York City apartment building becoming unlikely friends, and then starting a podcast, after a murder happens in their building. The first season was tightly plotted and quite interesting, tying the current murder to a past murder that also occurred in the building, creating a very neat, tidy, and interesting murder mystery. It worked because the show was very well written and finely plotted.

I don’t think the stories since then have been as good, in part because the creative team has to come up with the meat for the season in a short period of time instead of, as with the first season, having a long pre-production period to work it over and get it ready for scripting, filming, and air. Each season drops a cliffhanger for the next, and then that season has to pay off on whatever is set up even if the writers didn’t have a plan for what came next when they wrote the tag ending. Did they know why Mabel was framed for murder at the end of season one? Or what caused the actor to die on stage at the end of season two? Each ending has tied into the next season, sure, but was there a plan in place when they wrote that ending? I have my doubts.

The reason I have doubts, especially now, is because season four of the show was just absolutely horribly plotted. A good murder mystery should set up all its active pieces ahead of time and have a plotline that weaves in and out of its various character stories and major moments such that the ending reveal feels natural and cohesive. We absolutely got that with season one, with the reveal of the murderer being a major character we’d see all season (obviously the show is still very new so I’m trying not to spoil too much). We had it again with season two, although maybe marginally less so. Season three felt shaggier, but at least the murderer was revealed to be a major player in the stage show, and since the stage show was a major plotline for the season, it worked. But season four… man, season four just doesn’t work.

Very little about what we have to watch in season four actually matters to the end story of the season. If we went from the murder at the end of season three, when we see Jane Lynch’s Sazz Pataki get snipered from across the apartment courtyard, to the parts of the season that actually really mattered for her case, we’d have maybe two episodes. Two and a half of consequence if we’re being really kind. There are diversions off to the other side of the courtyard to meet a bunch of characters that mostly don’t matter. We have a whole plotline about a different murder that, surprise surprise, also doesn’t end up having any bearing on the story. Hell, we spend an entire episode at Charles’s sister’s house, and that whole episode barely does anything for the story at all. None of it matters.

So why is it here? If I had to guess: the writers didn’t know what to do and were just riffing with their characters to fill for time. Season four of Only Murders in the Building forgoes any sense of pacing, plot, or solving the case to, instead, have so many red herrings and plotlines of little consequence that, for long stretches, you could even forget what the hell the case was about at all. In comparison to the previous three seasons, where the case was always at the forefront, season four is barely a murder show at all.

Or, hell, a show about a podcast, either. Instead is a show about a movie being made about a podcast, and it goes through several episodes of patting itself on the back about just how clever and meta it’s being that I wanted to stop watching. I was no longer enjoying the show, I was annoyed by it. I found Charles, who was always a warm if distant presence, to be unbearably stuffing and annoying. Oliver, who was amusingly over-the-top in past seasons, did nothing but grate on my nerves. And as for Mabel, well, I was just sad for her because it feels like the show doesn’t even know what it’s doing with her anymore.

Mabel lost her apartment in season three, and has been adrift ever since, trying to figure out where to live, what to do with her life, who she’s going to be. That was a big question for her this season: what is she going to do with her life? The answer? Who knows, because the show doesn’t actually address it. She gets paid a lot of money to sign over the rights to her story so it can become a movie, and then the series just forgets that Mabel was having an existential crisis at all. Mabel needs direction, but the show isn’t giving it to her.

But it absolutely is giving us a ton of celebrity cameos for no reason. Paul Rudd (as a new character) and Meryl Streep return for smaller roles this season, and they’re joined by Zach Galifianakis, Eugene Levy, and Eva Longoria as themselves as actors playing the lead characters in the movie; Molly Shannon as a Hollywood producer working to get the movie made; Desmin Borges, Richard Kind, and Kumail Nanjiani as neighbors across the plaza; Scott Bakula, for some reason; and even Ron Howard as a really annoying version of himself. Do any of these people actually add anything to the season? Nope. Not a bit. Again, cut out all their material and the season still works just fine. It’s all just padding.

It’s obnoxious, really, just how much of the season’s episodes doesn’t even matter to the story. Hell, I haven’t even bothered recapping it here, even though I usually try to recap at least a bit, because when I tried to think about what actually mattered for the recap, cutting to the important meat, all I could come up with was, “Sazz died, a movie about the podcast happens, and then the killer is revealed.” Nothing around that actually has any bearing on anything, so there wasn’t any point in paying attention to it.

And that hurts this show because Only Murders in the Building isn’t structured like a random hangout show. This is a murder mystery series, so, you would think, the murder part would actually be important to the series. It’s right there in the name. The show seems so disinterested in its central conceit, though, faffing around with cameo guest stars and plotlines that are designed to go nowhere, that you never get to settle in and just enjoy the storyline. Hell, even the reveal of the killer is a foregone conclusion because the show as spent so much time setting up and dismissing every other character across eight unbearably long episodes that the only person left has to be the one who did it… and it’s all revealed after the fact by the killer themself because their story is so disconnected from everything else that there was no way we could have guess what the actual motivation was.

I think, honestly, that I hated this season. Actually hated. I very rarely hate shows or movies because while there is stuff I don’t like, and I’m known here for bitching about crap because it isn’t good enough, I’ll still enjoy the bits I can while I can. But there was nothing this season I actually enjoyed. I was annoyed by it, tired of the schtick, waiting for the season to come to an end. This fourth season just sucked, and it feels like the show’s creative team is struggling to come up with anything worthwhile to write for their characters or setting.

Frankly, while I know a fifth season is in production, I really think this show should have ended with season four. Hell, if we could, I’d delete this season as well and wrap it up with season three. It’s gotten long in the tooth, becoming essentially an annoying and tired self-parody of the show it used to be. Hulu, do what’s right and, as soon as possible, put this show out to pasture. It’s already long run its course.