Okay, let me preface this review by saying there will be spoilers! I think I’m pretty late to the party for this original Hulu comedy, Only Murders in the Building, so I don’t know that I’ll be spoiling it for many people, but still, you’ve been warned.
Truth be told, this comedy was a little lower on my priority list, but my dad couldn’t stop raving about it and then my sister goes ahead and binges it in practically one sitting. I can’t be the only person in my family not in the know about a show! So that means I watched it over the course of a few days, which is pretty good as far as my binge-watching standards go. Anyways, the first episode was a bit slow, but by the end of the second episode they got me. I was pretty intrigued by this mystery.
In the first episode, we meet three oddballs in an elevator. The first is Oliver Putnam, a somewhat failed director, the next is actor Charles-Haden Savage, an actor out of his prime, and lastly is Mabel Mora, a young tenant sprucing up her aunt’s apartment. The three have barely an encounter but later find out they’re all obsessed with the same true-crime podcast. While they’re bonding over this fact, they learn that someone named Tim Kono who lived in the building has been murdered. Although at first ruled a suicide, it becomes apparent something is amiss when another tenant’s cat appears to have been poisoned. The three almost immediately decide to start their own podcast and are determined to figure out who killed Tim.
From the start it’s clear that no one really liked Tim all that much, but it’s soon revealed that Mabel has a past with Tim. The two of them were part of a tight-knit group of friends which also included Oscar and Zoe. It’s shown that ten years prior, Zoe fell off the roof of the building, and although at the time Tim said it wasn’t Oscar, he never said that to the police. This means that Oscar has spent the last ten years in jail. Now free, he reconnects with Mabel and wants to help solve the case even though Tim wronged him. I think a part of it was to also try and find out who Zoe’s real killer was. They have some success with that later in the season, when they think one of Oliver’s old pals, Teddy, was responsible for both Zoe and Tim’s murder. Some things don’t really make sense in connecting him with Tim’s murder, but it’s revealed through a cleverly silent episode that Teddy’s deaf son Theo accidently pushed Zoe off the roof and Tim saw.
That’s just one example of a great suspect they have for Tim’s murder, and there are so many other legitimate suspects throughout the season. It was really fun to see the lengths this trio would go to in order to find out who did it, but just ended up clearing someone’s name in the process. One that I was able to figure out a little bit was Charles’ new love interest, Jan. She’s a fellow resident and a professional bassoonist, who flirts endlessly with Charles before they kick off a romance. The show didn’t really help themselves out by recapping at the start of the penultimate episode which brought attention back to a box of sex toys they found in Tim’s apartment in the first or second episode. From there, it wasn’t all that hard for me to tie Jan into the mix, but what a fun twist! That lady is demented.
I know it seems like I might have just spoiled the whole thing for you, but trust me when I say the ride to the end was a fun one. Even though Martin Short and Steve Martin have had a comedic past together, it was cool to see how seamlessly Selena Gomez was able to fit herself into their brand of comedy. There was also plenty of physical comedy, too, which I found enjoyably refreshing! And even though one mystery got tidied up into a neat little bow, they’re shacked with another murder by the last scene and they’re the prime suspects! This show already got renewed for a second season, so I can’t wait to see what happens next. Also, as a bonus, Jane Lynch as Charles’ stunt double from back in the day was a treat! Absolutely hysterical.