Photo: Patrick Harbron/Disney
Meryl Streep’s schedule presumably explains why Loretta, newly wedded to Martin Short’s Oliver, spends the first half of the latest Only Murders in the Building season off-screen. When she finally returns, the show demonstrates its knack for casually achieving magic even as it drifts into the comfortably familiar. Deep into her showcase episode, Loretta and Oliver duck into a small Brooklyn theater for a detour through his childhood. He recalls being a foster child who learned to stay quiet — “If you make yourself small, maybe the family will let you stay for a while” — until the theater gave him license to be loud and himself. Then he and Loretta take the stage to deliver monologues they had once been denied: hers, a hammy, discarded SVU scene; his, a single line about moldy sausages. The speeches are absurd, with Short and Streep playing them for laughs, but what matters most is how the two watch each other. Short, who looks both 12 and his actual age of 75, regards Streep with boyish awe, while she reciprocates with a kind, knowing gaze. They sparkle with so much chemistry it’s hard not to believe those rumors about them in real life. The monologues last barely a minute, but the scene is pure electricity, proof that Only Murders can still transcend its formula when it wants to.
At this point in the show’s life cycle, the Only Murders template is set: another season, another killing, another mystery to feed the Arconia trio, who continue to covet meaning for their days and content for their podcast (not yet video). Oliver, Steve Martin’s Charles, and Selena Gomez’s Mabel work the case while navigating the usual constellation of oddballs that orbit them. Fresh weirdos appear each year to replenish the pool of suspects and victims. Some gags land, others don’t, and the script’s sudden bursts of melancholy dependably catch you in the gut. The show has had its ups and downs over the years but has attained the sturdiness of a cozy British mystery, the kind where bodies pile improbably high in otherwise charming villages and the format can, in theory, run forever. Except, of course, it can’t, if only because Martin is 80, Short isn’t far behind, and life imposes a natural limit. That knowledge lingers beneath the comedy — Only Murders, perhaps more than any other contemporary murder-mystery series, revels in existential philosophizing — and lends the series a faint, moving ache.
Season five, debuting this week, settles right into its usual rhythms, opening in the aftermath of last year’s finale and the surprise death of Lester (Teddy Coluca), the Arconia’s genial doorman since season one. His demise, paired with the disappearance of mobster-type Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale), sets the trio on the first phase of their adventures, which inevitably branches into fresh red herrings in customary Only Murders fashion. Meanwhile, each member wrestles with personal shifts. Charles, wistful after his buddy’s marriage, slips once more into loneliness and turns to a seniors’ dating app morbidly called Last Gasp. Oliver, reflecting on the next phase of life, struggles with the possibility of selling his apartment. Mabel faces the return of a childhood friend, played by a scene-stealing Beanie Feldstein, with whom she had a falling out and nurses a one-sided grudge, made worse by said friend now being a mega pop star who makes music that sounds a lot like Sabrina Carpenter’s. (Her hit song, written for the show, is intermittently played throughout the season. The gag really works.) Feldstein is one of many additions to an as-ever stacked list of new guest stars, each doubling as a fresh suspect and diversion. Keegan-Michael Key turns up as the gladhanding New York City mayor. Téa Leoni, after making a quick cameo in the last finale, returns as Sofia, wife of the missing mobster. Dianne Wiest features as Lester’s wife, Lorraine, while Jermaine Fowler takes over as the new doorman, who feels his job is threatened when building management introduces a robot into the mix. Christoph Waltz, Renée Zellweger, and Logan Lerman step in as a trio of billionaires, meant to be riffs on the modern mogul.
Recent Only Murders outings have broadly styled themselves around different thematic worlds (Broadway in season three, Hollywood in season four), giving the rough impression of Fast & Furious–style escalation. At first, season five seems to continue that trend by shifting the festivities toward some combination of the New York mob and, more loosely, the billionaire class. But much like last year’s brief pit stop in L.A., this season never swerves into wholehearted thematic flair or topicality. The action and emphasis always circle back to the Arconia. That’s because, at the end of the day, Only Murders knows what it’s firmly about: lingering in this one place, with these particular people, in this specific register. Season five delivers the clearest expression of that sensibility yet, embracing the Arconia as the true center of its stakes and interests, while treating its murder mystery, along with the mob and billionaire stuff, more as texture than subject.
The true subject is the bittersweetness of being alive. Each episode still opens with character narrations that double as musings on existence, and some dive fully into that ache. Just as season two reframed Bunny Folger — once acidic comic relief, later a murder victim — by underlining her regret over the sacrifices she had made, this season gives a chapter to Lester, revealed as a man whose grand ambitions for movie stardom were slowly ground down into the role he ended up filling in front of the Arconia. His story is sad and beautiful; as always, Only Murders cuts the melancholia with flashes of genuine warmth. For Lester, this is found in marriage and his love for the building, and for the season as a whole, it’s Oliver and Loretta’s theater scene, where their buoyant playfulness briefly convinces you they could live forever. That toggling between sorrow and joy is the register of life itself as well as Only Murders in the Building. It feels like a show that could run forever, even though it can’t. For now, just enjoy the ride.
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