“At Least You Had the Decently to Keep the Body Out of the
Building This Time.”
This year, my cable company has slowly been adding streaming services to their customers. I’ve been hoping they’d add Hulu since it seemed to have the most I wanted to watched. And they finally did, so I jumped right into the third season of Only Murders in the Building since I’d seen the first two already on ABC. As expected, I enjoyed it.
Season three kicks off exactly where we left the characters at the end of season two. It’s been a year since Oliver, Charles, and Mable (Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez) solved the second murder in their building. In that time, Oliver has staged his Broadway comeback as a director, putting on a murder mystery called Death Rattle. He’s cast Charles in a small part. Opening night, Mable is there to support her two friends.
The star of the play is Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd), a movie actor making his Broadway debut. However, Ben has the ego that sometimes comes with being a huge movie star, and he’s been rubbing the cast the wrong way. Still, no one expects him to drop dead on stage within minutes of stepping onto it for the first time.
Mable was a huge fan of Ben’s work on a TV show before he became a famous movie actor, so she is immediately invested in figuring out what is going on. Oliver, meanwhile, is more invested in salvaging his play, even deciding to turn it into a musical, Death Rattle Dazzle. And Charles is distracted by his relationship with makeup artist Joy (Andrea Martin). Can Mable figure things out on her own? Or will the others help her out?
This season also introduces Meryl Streep in a recurring role as Loretta, an aspiring actress that Oliver casts in his play. She’s a suspect and a love interest for Oliver. Getting to watch her performance and interaction with the characters was a joy. I remember hearing when she was cast and thinking it might be an odd choice. But she fit in perfectly.
Speaking of being perfect, we also have to talk about the play. I really, really want to see it in both the straight play and the musical versions. Yes, we get quite a bit of it during the season finale, but I want to watch it unedited and without the distractions of a climax going on around it. I’m curious about what really was going on with the plot. And the songs are much better than they have any business being. I want to hear them in their entirety. The two we heard uninterrupted over the course of the season were great. It just captured my mystery lover’s attention, and I think there it is something I have to see for myself.
In case you are wondering, yes, this story does wind up fitting into the Only Murders in the BUILDING premise. And that’s all I will say about it. The twist was great and I enjoyed watching that play out.
Overall, I will say the season stalled a little in the middle for me. Or maybe it was me watching the season over the course of a week instead of a month like I did with the first two seasons. It helped make the stall in the middle more obvious. The middle gets clogged down with Oliver and Charles’s relationships. Poor Mable gets a potentially interesting storyline about having to move out of the building, but that gets buried as the season goes along, with just a few references.
I accidentally got spoiled on this season when I was just a couple of episodes in. That made it a bit more interesting, actually, watching how the season unfolded. I’d already noticed that they tend to focus on one suspect early on and then focus on different ones in different episodes. So I found it interesting watching the process play out. I did pick up on a couple of small moments I might have missed overwise. But it didn’t dampen my enjoyment at all for the season as a mystery.
I get what the writers were going for having the guys being so distracted this season. But I missed having the trio working together on the mystery. Those relationships are the heart of the show. Plus, the guys’ love lives tend to make me cringe, and that was the case again here. But when the trio came together again to solve the case, I was smiling.
And this isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the season. I did. I’m just nitpicking some things that didn’t quite work for me.
What was still here in full force was the comedy. There were so many lines that made me laugh or smile, and so many enjoyable moments. The writers also worked a lot of in jokes and references to the cast’s previous work into the season, which I always love.
I already talked about Meryl Streep earlier, but the entire cast was great. The show walks that fine line between comedy and mystery, and the cast balances it perfectly. This includes the stars and the supporting players. It’s hard to find any fault with anyone on screen.
When I’d watched the first two seasons on ABC, they had bleeped out the worst of the swearing. Since I watched this on Hulu, they didn’t do that. Honestly, I found the bleeping kind of fun, and I missed it. Anyway, know that the TV-MA rating is there for this and other reasons before you sit down and watch it.
While this might not be as strong a season of Only Murders in the Building, season 3 still was entertaining. If you enjoy mysteries and haven’t started watching it yet, I recommend you do so today.
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