Only Murders In The Building: A Superb Comeback

Only Murders In The Building Returns To The Arconia, Where Old & New Mysteries Collide

With season 4, Only Murders in the Building marks a welcome return to exploring misery through humour, conquest through contradictions, and calm through anarchy, writes Manik Sharma.

“WE'VE BEEN VERY LUCKY with people dying in our building," Charles, played by the exceptional Steve Martin, says in an episode from the fourth season of Disney+ Hotstar’s Only Murders in the Building. It’s an acknowledgement of the bizarre regularity with which murders happen inside the Arconia, and of the bluster with which this show makes its central characters both heroes and victims. In its unlikely fourth season, the show returns to doing what it knows best: settle into the Arconia’s mystifying arms, flip a new chapter in its pageantry of secretive histories, and rally a familiar but childlike curiosity to the screen. The dip in Season 3 may have sounded the death knell for a format that had seemingly started to overstay its welcome, but with Season 4 Only Murders announces a welcome return to exploring misery through humour, conquest through contradictions, and calm through anarchy.

In Season 4, the gang reunites in the aftermath of the gunshot that the previous one ended with. Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), who stood in as a double for Charles in his Brazzos days, has been shot. Except this time, there is no body, nor the ceremonious discovery of a new case. At least not right away. Instead, the three podcasters are being courted by Hollywood execs. A studio pitches to adapt the podcast into a film, with A-listers like Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria and Zach Galifianakis cast as the three amateur sleuths. But unlike the lazy and indulgent third season, the action swiftly moves back to the Arconia where Sazz’s murder unrolls fresh mysteries about the building’s demography, an untapped east side. It’s where the show has always found comfort: neighbourly wit, and this sense of cultural nausea. No matter how famous these folks are, the neighbours have had enough.

The hit on Sazz is meant for Charles. This means Martin gets to really play his nervous, jiggly self. He hallucinates, manufactures situations, and constantly dreams up threats to his life. It’s the kind of space the veteran actor thrives in. Unlike Season 3, all three characters get a level playing field while being confronted by an expanding array of psychological caveats. Oliver’s shadowy past of failure resurfaces, casting a haunting presence over his view of showbiz. Mabel is forced to confront the projection of her, which she has been accidentally letting on. And then, there are shared histories, window dressing for the economically well-read, and even a proletariat angle to view the class differentiations. All of this with dollops of humour, classic septuagenarian tête-à-tête and that affable chemistry between three of the unlikeliest of friends.

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For the longest time, Only Murders has succeeded because it knows how to critique its own hype. Hollywood’s obsession with true crime may have been the starting position, but with the following seasons the show has evolved to exhibit the fine lines between desperation and disgrace; how fame changes your relationship with morality, and how you sort of remain the same person throughout the rise and fall of that thrilling sinusoidal curve of engagement. In Season 4, that point of contemplation begins where self-awareness becomes a kind of plateau. Descend and you risk becoming anonymous; ascend and you risk showing your true self. It’s the edgiest a double-faced sword can ever be. And to the show’s credit, it wants to excavate these complexities rather than steer towards pallid, inexpressive continuity. i.e. do clues and reveals for the sake of it.

Of the things that this fourth season does well, or does well again, is in returning to the place where old and new mysteries collide. Neighbours and characters from the first season continue to drop by through the revolving door of cameos. There are call-backs to earlier seasons, even reveals that tie long untethered threads into discernible knots. Much like The Bear, Only Murders... has become a magnet for prestige roles. They don’t come any bigger than Meryl Streep’s scene-stealing — and maybe even redemptive — arc from last season. This season, there is yet another beeline (including Kumail Nanjiani), except the actors are welded to the show's quirkiness as opposed to its cachet. They appear in service of our conflicted leads as opposed to prying apart a murderous world of their own. To that effect, a return to the Arconia, with the exaggerations of a money-grabbing Hollywood hovering just beyond the lobby, serves as the perfect site. Again, it’s a potent critique of the show’s own popularity.

In essence, Only Murders in the Building continues to champion its oddballs and misfits as purveyors of a kind of innocent vanity. The plain, simple quest to be seen. But what happens when the lens finds you? Or worse, begins to define your self-worth, the image you believed to have always emerged from? It’s one of the many subtexts that makes this fourth season richer, and for the missed opportunity of the previous one, evidence of the many ways craft can outlast second impressions. Only Murders may not be any deeper or closer to the wrenched heart that makes drama transformative, but it is still the closest comedy comes to being exquisitely moving and revelatory.

Streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.

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