‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 4, Episodes 2 & 3 Review: After Hollywood Detour, Exciting Story Unfolds

(This article contains spoilers for Only Murders in the Building Season 4, Episode 1.)

The trio is back in New York. After discovering the remains of Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch) in the Arconia’s incinerator, Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Oliver (Martin Short) speculate that Charles (Steve Martin) might have been the intended target of the sniper that took her out. In Episode 2, they start to investigate while on hold with 911. Mabel and Oliver go to the lower-rent side of the building, where they presume the sniper was situated. Charles shelters in his apartment, left to cope with a grief-induced manifestation of Sazz, the threat of the sniper and an unexpected guest. The podcasters continue to investigate the neighbors opposite Charles’s apartment in Episode 3, this time with the help (or hindrance) of their actor counterparts from the Paramount biopic.

Lynch’s reappearance as Sazz’s ghost in Episode 2 brings a chilling combination of comic relief and melancholic reflection as Charles struggles with the sudden loss of his friend. Lynch and Martin present a touching dynamic between their characters that promises to both raise the stakes and complicate the morality of this season’s investigation.

Throughout these two episodes, the podcasters get to know the renters known as the Westies, a cast of eccentric neighbors on the other side of the Arconia whose windows face Charles’ apartment. They start to investigate Vince Fish (Richard Kind), who wears an eyepatch to cover up alleged pinkeye, the Sauce Family (Daphne Rubin-Vega, Desmin Borges, and Lilian Rebelo), who have a ham in their bathroom, and Christmas-All-The-Time Guy (Kumail Nanjiani), who keeps his Christmas decorations up… all the time. This cast fits right in with the show’s trademark absurd and eerie energy. Are they eccentrics? Are they a cult? Are they trained snipers? Only time will tell.

The investigation is moving pretty slowly, especially with the addition of Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria and Zach Galifianakis returning as themselves in Episode 3, shadowing the trio for character study. Charles makes a little progress investigating Vince Fish, while Oliver can’t focus on the case before convincing Galifianakis to like him. Mabel struggles to keep Longoria out of her way as she prepares to speak with Christmas-All-The-Time Guy; this storyline is somewhat difficult to empathize with. Longoria’s frustrating tone-deafness was impossible to warm up to. Longoria’s performance was clearly fully realized as a mockery of the Hollywood attitude and lifestyle, which is jarring next to three New Yorkers hunting for a murderer. 

Episode 3 welcomes back ​​Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Detective Williams; I think this season needs her energy, especially considering the darker tones of grief on display. 

I still worry that this season threatens to lean too much on celebrity– Hollywood hasn’t exactly moved the investigation forward – but some compelling clues have already been unearthed, leaving me overall excited for the story that’s about to unfold. 

Will Charles’s sadness aid the investigation, or get in the way? Can Oliver get his mind out of L.A. long enough to uncover the murderer? And, most pressingly, what’s going on with the odd assembly of neighbors across from Charles’s apartment?