By: Alex Tilton
Police procedurals and true crime are two genres I can do without. There’s no joy in either of them, and not much originality. I think they pander to the worst in us, but that’s a different rant.
The title ‘Only Murders in the Building’ put me off at first, because that’s how it sounded. But it turns out OMB is a self-aware, smart, comedy-drama. It expects me to pay attention to the details, it’s a grown-up show without trying too hard to be grown up, and I like the protagonists. The characters may lean into their stereotypes a little too hard, but apart from that I can really only find one thing wrong with the show. Some spoilers ahead.
Our main characters are Martin Short as Oliver, a semi-deluded Broadway producer, Steve Martin as Charles, a washed-up TV actor, and Selena Gomez as an artistic college dropout living in her wealthy aunt’s apartment with no apparent source of income. Which wouldn’t be an issue, except that the show makes a point of highlighting Oliver’s money problems, so the inconsistency is hard to ignore. This finally gets addressed in season 3 (kind of) when her quest for an apartment becomes a story element. But they never explain how she’s been managing to buy food all this time, and she doesn’t get a visible source of income until season 4. And even then, when she’s got movie money, she chooses to become a squatter in an apartment that she knows is part of a rent control scam.
In season 1 the main characters bond over a shared love of true crime podcasts and decide to launch their own when a resident of their Manhattan apartment building is killed. Season 2 sees them framed for another killing in their building. It has to because that’s the title of the show. They get around this otherwise convenient coincidence by making the second murder inspired by the first one, carried out by someone who wants a podcast of their own. And this is my favorite thing about the show: It mocks true crime as a morbid, dehumanizing genre and is openly contemptuous of the ocean of cookie-cutter police procedurals on television.
There’s a genuinely fun mystery at the core of each season, and the cast have a believably difficult time piecing it together, looking for the context of the crime as much as the physical evidence. The characters are well developed and very human, being played by some of the best actors you could ask for. That said, in season 3 the OMB is forced to poke fun at itself for yet another murder in the same building. The fourth season does a better job (so far, but there are 2 episodes left at the time of writing) by making the most recent murder the product of a long-running conspiracy that the main characters failed to notice amidst the other killings.
But even though OMB generates its humor by mocking police procedural cliches, it can’t entirely avoid them itself. In every season the trio spend most of their time chasing the wrong conclusion until they get a critical piece of evidence that puts everything into the proper context. In the first three seasons the police immediately jump to the wrong conclusion. The show also has to constantly come up with an excuse for why the police don’t solve the crime. The first murder is written off as a suicide, in the second season a cop is involved in the murder and an attempt to frame the main characters, but they somehow remain free for the essentially the entire season even while under suspicion. In season 3 the police arrest the wrong person at the beginning and the season revolves around fixing this. In season 4 the FBI kick the police off the case for reasons which (as of episode 8, out of 10) are never explained. I realize this is because the police aren’t the main characters of the show, but even as a fan of OMB I have to roll my eyes a little at this. If I belonged to any fan forums, I would post the following question: ‘What excuse will they use to make the police a non-presence in season 5?’
What I’m saying is that in order to continue thriving the show needs to evolve beyond its original gimmick. But it may not matter. Steve Martin is 79, Martin Short is 74 and Selena Gomez is a billionaire. The next season feels like a natural stopping point. Hulu gets a huge success, two veteran actors get to close out their careers as A listers, and a younger star gets a big boost to her already massive career. And if it means that the show goes out on top instead of becoming crap because it ran for too long, then I call that a win for everyone.
Image Source: RottenTomatoes.com