I Think I’m Done with the Murder Gang

I’ve been watching Only Murders in the Building for a few years now. Admittedly I found the show a little late, binging the first and second seasons before heading into the third, but what I saw I really liked. The show had a fun premise, enjoyable characters, and a game cast that really seemed to click together. A show about a podcast about a murder in an apartment building certainly had potential, for at least one season, and if the show had stopped there it probably would be something I’d think back fondly on, once in a while. It could have even been a show I enjoyed rewatching once in a great while, like with the short run on the Clerks Animated series.

But Only Murders in the Building didn’t stop at one season. It came out with a second that did, somehow, manage to stretch the concept out past a single story. A follow-up murder to the first murder that links everything together still works, but you can also tell that it’s a concept that can only run for so long. How many times can the same people stumble onto yet another murder that only they can solve. Okay, sure, Murder, She Wrote had Angela Landsbury’s Jessica Fletcher find a new murder every week for over a decade, as if she were some kind of Angel of Death, but generally speaking, there are only so many murders a show can support before it stretches credulity.

Season five is that breaking point, at least for me, for Only Murders in the Building. After the murder in their building, and then a second murder the team was framed for, then a murder at a Broadway show linked to their building, followed by the team pursuing a murder of someone they knew that was sort of at their building but also related to events halfway around the world, it’s pretty clear that the creatives will keep doing murders at the building no matter whether it really works within the bounds of the show, the characters, or the story. And I’ve just had enough.

This fifth season picks up with the shockingly revealed death of doorman Lester (Teddy Coluca) on the eve of the wedding between Oliver (Martin Short) and Loretta (Meryl Streep, who doesn’t appear in the first three episodes of season five). Shaken, the “Murder” team of Oliver, Charles (Steve Martin), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) suspect foul play because, well, it’s always foul play when a body shows up at the Arconia. Except this time the police have ruled it an accidental death. Nothing to see here. That would hold water if not for the fact that Oliver, while eating leftover shrimp from his wedding (or, really, dipping them and licking the sauce off) discovers a finger in his cocktail. That doesn’t seem like an accident.

Naturally, the three begin investigating, especially after Charles is reminded that a mobster’s wife, Sofia Caccimelio (Téa Leoni), wanted to hire the team to investigate her husband’s disappearance. At the time they said “no”, since they only investigated murders that specifically took place at the Arconia, and her husband, Nicky (Bobby Cannavale), was missing, not dead, and it didn’t happen at the Arconia. But as the crew continues to dig into Lester’s maybe-murder, they find mounting evidence that links the doorman to the missing husband. And with the discovery of a secret speakeasy run by the mob sitting right underneath the Arconia, it’s starting to feel like all these murders may be connected…

For a show set at a fixed location, with a small pool of characters that can show up again and again, one would think that the creators of Only Murders in the Building would have a solid, multi-season plan in place for their show. Season one was a tightly plotted bit of cozy murder fun, and season two picked up on a few threads from the first season to continue carrying out storylines while making the whole endeavor feel natural. But after those first two seasons it’s become pretty clear that the creatives are simply throwing new twists, turns, and plot devices at the walls to make things stick. Stuff randomly happens, and then the characters have to wildly explain it away as if all of this crap happening at the Arconia doesn’t feel just a little too convenient over and over again.

The secret speakeasy was a sticking point for me this time around. There’s a whole underground section of the building that the characters, after four years, have never seen and didn’t even know existed. This after they spent an entire season exploring the inner tunnels of the building, and another season where they repeatedly had to go into the basements of the building to find burned up bodies. One would think they’ve explored every inch of the place, multiple times, because they’ve had to for all their investigations. And yet, nope, there’s a whole new secret area just revealed simply because. That doesn’t make any sense, and it’s one of a number of things that felt too convenient, too simple, to really work for me anymore.

The bigger issue for me was the flanderization of the lead characters. Gone are the three we knew from the very start of the series, flawed characters just trying to figure out how they were going to continue in their lives when it felt like everything was falling apart. Charles was no longer a star, Oliver was in debt and couldn’t get a broadway show going if he tried, and Mabel was lost, living in her Aunt’s abandoned apartment, hoping to find her next path in life. Now, though, most of what made those characters interesting has been sanded off. Charles still doesn’t know what to do with his life, but it’s vague and seemingly momentumless. But while he laments and does nothing about it, Mabel and Oliver basically have their lives worked out and have little in the way of issues to speak of. They’re complete people now who barely resemble who they once were, and it feels like even the writers have forgotten what made them tick.

Instead of the rich and interesting characters they once were, now Charles, Oliver, and Mabel are shallow versions of themselves. Charles imagines dead people speaking to him in what used to be a weird mental tick that helped him work through grief but now is apparently something akin to a superpower. He talks to a dead body, and has conversations with it, even though he has no connection to the dead character and shouldn’t be mentally processing their death the way he is. Mabel’s biggest issue is that a shallow friend of hers has moved into the building and now Mabel no longer feels successful in her own life, despite this never being a fear or concern of hers before this. And Oliver… wow, Oliver is just so annoying now with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that the show constantly resets the characters back to zero, forcing them to go through similar motions over and over without learning anything. Charles wouldn’t feel alone in his life if his step-daughter, Lucy (Zoe Colletti), were still around. But after introducing her in the second season, she completely vanished from the show, never to even be mentioned again. Oliver needs someone to ground him, but both his son, Will, and his wife, Loretta, functionally vanished from the show entirely. And Mabel… well, aside from a couple of lovers than came in for one season and then vanished, she has a whole rich life she built for herself that seemingly should be shaken by a friend, Althea (Beanie Feldstein), that we’d never seen or heard of before spontaneously showing back up. The show just jerks and spins wildly without keeping its characters consistent or grounded, and it has worn me out.

All of this goes along with a murder mystery that is far too stupid for a show that used to be smart. They find a finger in a shrimp cocktail, so do they call their cop friend, Detective Donna Williams (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) to say, “hey, we think there might be more to this case than you suspect”? Nope. Then they find a body, and instead of reporting it to their detective friend, or anyone, they move the body, perform a secret “autopsy” (which doesn’t involve cutting up the body so it really isn’t an autopsy despite what the characters say), and then move the body around some more. Left and right they make wildly stupid decisions that, on any other show, should have set them up as the killers… except the show also doesn’t do that either because these are our heroes and if they make stupid decisions it’s for a good cause, right?

The third episode of this premiere batch ended with a big reveal of who the killers might be and where the series was going after this but… I just can’t. I don’t care about this case. I don’t care about the characters anymore. I don’t even care about this building, which has been the central location for five seasons but which also seems to morph and change at the whims of the writers any time they need to do something new. There’s no consistency in characters, story, or setting, and at a certain point it feels like there’s no reason to watch anymore.

So I won’t. There’s still plenty of this season of Only Murders in the Building to go but I’m done. I’m out. I was on the fence with season three, hoping the show could turn it around. Season four was worse, but not quite bad enough to quit entirely. I didn’t really enjoy the story of that season but I at least still liked the characters well enough to hang out with them. But season five is just awful. I hate everything about it now as the show has gone on too long and lost all the magic that made it good. Murders may continue to happen in the building but I don’t plan to be there to see them through anymore.