There's Been Another Murder in the Building!!!!!

We detour to Hollywood, but the building was already compromised.

This show inspires such mixed feelings in me. On one hand, I’m thrilled to be reunited with my favorite septuagenarians and their dry partner in amateur detection — but on the other, I’ve been dreading this trip to the Arconia since the end of season three, when the newest murder victim was revealed. Only Murders In The Building has killed some excellent actors and made killers of others, and it’s always a bummer when you realize someone you enjoy can now only return in flashbacks. Or as a ghost. (Or if they escape jail; fancy a bassoon, anyone?) I would not be opposed to a seance that brings the dead back together occasionally.

Also, just as a note, I’m not withholding spoilers in here for previous seasons. If you’re reading this recap without having seen seasons one, two, or three, I assume you aren’t super fussed about it.

The victim: Sazz Pataki, a.k.a. the other Brazzos, played by the tremendous Jane Lynch. We’ve had two male victims and two that were female, and both dead women were played by award-winning Janes. The other was S2’s Jayne Houdyshell. Anyway, Sazz was introduced in season one as the set double for Charles Haden-Savage’s “famous” TV detective alter-ago, who also often dates his exes and typically wears a suit and a bowler hat¹ that continue to make her an eerie dupe for him from behind. She was about to double for Scott Bakula, but instead died on the floor of Charles’s apartment, taking a bullet in the dark that was presumably mistaken for him. Which, look, no one wants to get shot while looking for a friend’s 1966 Malbec, but if it HAD to happen, at least she bled out on an outstanding floor.

This is demonstrably not Dead Sazz, but it’s easier to appreciate this set with the lights on, and with Martin Short swooning.

The suspects: It’s too early, really. It could be anyone except our core trio, and it could be someone who hasn’t entered or re-entered the frame yet. It could be Scott Bakula, crazed with jealousy that his double will always be The Other Brazzos first and foremost. It could be S1 killer Amy Ryan, free from prison and using her bassoon as a sniper rifle. Or it could be former (?) tenants Sting, or Amy Schumer. I pray with everything in me that this show circles back to the Sting cameo by making him an assassin who BURNS for Charles’s blood.

New characters who aren’t playing themselves: Molly Shannon is Hollywood exec Bev Melon, whom I assume we’ll see more than just this once. Jin Ha, of Pachinko and Devs (and who played Aaron Burr for a time on Broadway!), is screenwriter Marshall Peepope, whose name made me laugh out loud. I just giggled again when I typed it, and AGAIN when I went back and re-read it. I’m going to chortle two seconds from now when I add “Peepope” to my dictionary so that the squiggly red line goes away. Or maybe I won’t add it, so that my eye catches sight of it each and every time and I chuckle all over again. It sounds like something your preschooler would accidentally say instead of “penis.”

The show I think we all wish we could see: Grey’s New Orleans Family Burn Unit, which brought Meryl “Loretta” Streep to Los Angeles to begin her career. When she appears here, she refers to it casually by pronouncing the acronym GNORFBUN, which is genius. Closed-captioning wrote it regularly, like “Gnorfbun,” and I can’t decide which is funnier.

The episode: While Charles delivers a stirring ending to the Death Rattle Dazzle murder podcast, we see an opening that’s cut like an old movie, with actual home footage of baby Selena Gomez, young Martin Short, and a brown-haired Steve Martin:

Look at Selena’s little FACE.

There’s a point to this, but I think they mostly just wanted to use this footage. As we re-enter Oliver’s apartment, Charles wraps up his speech by intoning that Ben Glenroy will live forever, both in his movies and “in a Super Bowl commercial where a baby stole his chili bowl.” The power goes out briefly, which they blah-blah has to do with the incinerator, REMEMBER THAT. But basically, after the cast party at Oliver’s, the trio immediately got to work? Charles didn’t go slip into something more comfortable, or, say, see about that bottle of Malbec, or his missing stunt double? I suppose this is the problem with having to cash the check you wrote at the end of a long season in a writer’s room. You come up with a great cliffhanger, but then you reassemble and realize you’ve created some weird logistical problems you have to untangle elegantly, and maybe can’t. Ergo, they’re selling the idea that the crew wrote, and Charles narrated, an entire podcast episode after a party, probably while drunk, and without Chaz once dipping back to his apartment or noticing Sazz’s absence. “Typical Sazz, here one minute, gone the next,” Charles shrugs, as if to make that okay.

As they wander up to get the wine from Charles’s place, the trio wonders what to do next. As Charles unlocks his door, Oliver of course says, “What we need is a hot, fresh dead body, preferably right here, or near to here.” And of course you assume they’ll burst in and see Sazz’s jazz all over the floor, but instead they shoot the ensuing scene with a lot of goofy misdirects, like making it appear Charles discovers the body when he actually just locates the Malbec. Then the cork goes flying and Mabel sees the splatter on the oven and the floor, but assumes it’s Malbec, because…

At first I accidentally inserted a GIF of Carrie Bradshaw brandishing a Blahnik bag, which would have been interesting.

Sazz is dead, unless she stood up and limped elsewhere, though after The Double Death of Ben Glenroy I don’t think they’ll do that again. But I did not expect the killer to sneak into Charles’s place, drag out the body, dispose of it, and escape without anyone being the wiser. Sting, you sly beast! You were in a band called The Police, for God’s sake! But our trio is not wise to his perfidy — they have no reason to think the droplets are blood — and instead cluelessly clink glasses. “If someone HAD to get murdered, let’s all say who we hope it would be!” Oliver says, as the camera backs out through the tidy little bullet hole that no one has noticed. Ooooh, ooooh oooooh, ooooh oooooooh, oooooh, ooooh oooooooh.

Had we seen Charles’s bedroom before?² Maybe, but since this is our first time recapping the show, let’s ogle: