"The Most Murderous Building in New York City" Returns
It's the "Only Murders" season 5 premiere recap.
Welcome home to the Arconia, a Thunderdome of sorts where you simply never know who will emerge alive, and who will end up on their back bleeding out into a water feature. As I noted when we recapped last season, I truly love this show and find a lot of comfort in its antics — regardless of whether said antics don’t make a ton of sense — and I hope it runs forever, even if it means someone has to move into a slightly different building so that we have a fresh supply of victims. Truly the only scenario in which I will root for murder.
As a side note, if you missed any of season 4 or you want a refresher, our recaps live at this link.
Season 5 premiered with three episodes at once, so hopefully I can wrangle this thing into a readable length, although on that score your hope should spring about as eternal as Doorman Lester’s heartbeat. I have a theory that episode two, which is all about Lester, was intended to run as episode three, but Hulu either didn’t love it or didn’t think it stood alone well enough — and because this show is a weekly drop, they didn’t want people to wait around just to get an episode that wasn’t propulsive, so they sandwiched it between two better episodes and offloaded them all at once. This theory is based on the fact that they use several “flash forward” clips in episode two to connect some dots for us, but a couple of them, we hadn’t seen yet because they appear in what is now episode three. So I think that was originally episode two. Look at me, hunting down clues! Can I be on the podcast now?
The victims:
Lester Coluca and Nicky Caccimelio. The former is the longtime Arconia doorman whose corpse the trio discovered after the wedding in a fountain. The latter is the Dry Cleaning King of Brooklyn, played by Bobby Cannavale, a vain gangster-type who at one point finishes fixing his hair in the mirror only to cross over to a different mirror to do the same. His disappearance was clumsily teased last season while a nurse wept over the death of poor Irish stuntman Glen Stubbins, and then reinforced when Nicky’s wife swung by the Arconia to ask our investigators for help. My sources believe Nicky was killed in an off-book underground boxing match against Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, who took poorly to it when Nicky threatened to “clean his meat once and for all.”
The murder weapons: An elevator hand-crank, missing, and a meat cleaver, very much present.
The suspects and new characters:
Sofia Caccimelio: Tea Leoni plays Nicky’s wife. She is, therefore, extremely attractive, and Charles frequently tries to flirt with her, with inept results. “He calls it The Savage Swagger,” Oliver says as they watch Charles wriggle his body in what he believes is a sexy way, but which looks more like a gentle seizure. Sofia claims not to have seen Nicky since the night he vanished, and hands over a clue to the crew, so she’s acting extremely helpful. Always a red flag.
The Caccimelio Boys: Sofia and Nicky have five sons named Johnny, Tony, Mikey, Vinny, and of course Braden.
The CEOs: The mob throughline quickly shifts into CEOs as the new mafiosos, but we meet them at the end of episode three so we don’t know much about them yet. Sebastian “Bash” Steed, a.k.a. Christoph Waltz, dresses like Steve Jobs and is called a “tech billionaire and longevity enthusiast,” and is, per Oliver, “the guy who invented that one thing.” Jay Pflug, played by Logan Lerman, is the heir of a pharmaceutical company and is worth a pathetic $19 billion compared with Steed’s $53 billion. He should really search within himself to tally up his shortcomings. “They make highly addictive drugs that ruin a lot of people’s lives. They also make my blood pressure medication, so I’m conflicted,” Oliver frets. And Renee Zellweger plays Camila White, a hotel magnate worth $47 billion. “Can she rock a neutral cashmere!” crows Charles. “She’s the human incarnation of a Nancy Meyers kitchen.” A+. No notes.
Mayor Tillman: Keegan-Michael Key plays the mayor who is imminently up for re-election and who turns Lester’s funeral into a photo op.
Lorraine Coluca: Dianne Wiest is Lester’s beloved, and thus, his widow. There is also mention of them having kids in college, but we don’t see any of them. Not even at the public viewing in the Arconia? Kids, it’s fine, skip your constitutional law seminar! They’re going to set that whole document on fire anyway.
Athena: The show retconned Beanie Feldstein as an old resident and friend of Mabel’s and Tim Kono’s. She is now an absurd influencer in pink fur who goes by “Thē” because “anytime anyone searches for a band that starts with ‘The,’ I come up.” So far her chief point seems to be making Mabel insecure again about her accomplishments and her place in the world, which is a repetitive story beat that I’d hoped we’d left in the rearview. Beanie is a hoot and I think this is a wise career move for her; she’s kept a low profile since the disastrous Funny Girl, and this is a great way to remind people that she’s good at things.
Randall: Played by Jermaine Fowler, Randall is a doorman trainee at the Arconia who is perhaps slower on the uptake than Lester was, but who might be about to get some help from Oliver on that front — as soon as he takes his very important nap.
Episode 1:
There was a tremendous amount of concern last season — dare I call it an UPROAR!!!! — over how long it took Oliver Putnam to eat some dip. We KIND OF address that right off the top here, in a scene where the gang discusses the murder while Oliver eats leftover shrimp. A delicacy, he says, which is really just “the vessel for heavenly cocktail sauce.” Just drink it, Oliver. It’s not that different than a virgin Bloody Mary. But is cocktail dipping sauce technically a dip? Existentially, are they the same, or is this a dip technicality? These are the questions we as a society need to consider in order to function.
This scene, coupled with a brief appearance from Howard, covers that the police