Every TV show hits the skids eventually. It’s inevitable. It’s a perfect storm of salary disputes among the cast leading to departures; no chemistry between some actors; series concepts changing over time; and even real actor’s deaths.
With some shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Law and Order: SVU, all you need is to keep a handful of actors around and you can rotate other actors and characters out. It seems typical for health professionals and law officers to accept new job positions or better opportunities at other cities.
And the same is true for people who living in a residential building. People come and go all the time. Yet the three main characters of Only Murders in the Building are the foundation of the series. And the last two seasons have been uneven yet still enjoyable.
I’ve noticed this with many series that are instantly popular as OMITB. Everyone anticipates the second season and it gets better ratings and even better reviews. However, whatever the showrunners and writers had in store changes and by the third season, you can see the cracks. The third season of this show had both Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep as guest stars.
But I felt the problem of having one of the main characters, Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), have a great love interest in Andrea Martin and then just blowing it was a huge misstep. While the dynamic between Streep’s Loretta Durkin and Martin Short’s Oliver Putnam has been one of the series highlights (both on and off set), it seemed they didn’t know what to do with Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) as she went through love interests.
Now, I get the gag that the series is subtlety mocking other series with the changeovers in casting as well as the sudden revelations of something. In the fourth season, they introduced us to a new batch of residents at the Arconia who rent small apartments instead of owning condos. This season, we discover there is a hidden basement area that was a holdover from the Prohibition era turned into a gambling casino.
This season, the podcasting investigators of Savage, Putnam and Mora find themselves deducing who had reason to kill Lester Coluca (Teddy Coluca), the veteran doorman. I liked how they gave the ancillary character more focus this season. However, the show fell into the usual scenarios of red herrings with episodes ending with more red herring twists.
The suspects this time include billionaires who were patrons of the casino. These include tech whiz Jay Pflug (Logan Lerman), and business moguls Camilla White (Renee Zellweger) and Bash Steed (Christoph Waltz). There’s also another murder that happens in the cleaners nearby when crime boss Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale) is killed but not before his wife, Sofia (Tea Leoni), approaches the trio.
There is a nice mention of how business billionaires have become the organized crime of the 21st Century that is very clever. There’s also a discussion amongst the tenants over to use real humans as doorman or incorporate a robotic doorman which they do.
One thing I will give the series credit is for laying out many characters who all could have possible motives. But the use of guest stars in these roles is becoming lackluster. This isn’t Columbo, so you can deduce it’s not going to be the big celebrity. However, I did like the casting of Jane Lynch as Savage’s stunt double because they turned a one-off joke into something better. Yet the twists and turns aren’t really deserved mainly because the investigations have become less and less interesting.
Dianne Wiest plays Lester’s widow, Lorraine, and Richard Kind pops up again as Vince Fish, their neighbor in the rental suites. There’s a great Godfather joke I won’t ruin for fans of the movies. And even though they act tough, Nicky and Sofia’s sons, are actually goofballs.
By now, it’s no longer about who killed who, but watching the dynamic of Martin, Short and Gomez who have been a surprise on how well they feed off each other. Martin and Short have been working together for decades. Yet Gomez’s Mora is able to interject a little maturity in these two ageing celebrities. Savage, a once popular TV actor in the 1980-1990s, and Putnam, a narcissistic and eccentric stage director, are two people who feel like they still got some spark left in their careers while most people are growing tired of them. Mora manages to be the adult as she is also the most straightforward.
The season ends of course with the hint of another murder that has to be solved. But it does seem like it’s going to bring it full circle to the first season. Martin is 80 while Short is 75. With his recent health scare, Martin might be thinking of retiring. It would be in this writer’s opinion to end it at six seasons and go out while you’re still on top or closer to the top.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 