Only Murders in the Building Season 2 Episode 3 review: There’s a new suspect on the Bunny Folgers murder board

3/5

Story: Oliver (Martin Short), Mable (Selena Gomez) and Charles (Steve Martin) recreate the events from Bunny’s (Jayne Houdyshell) last day, until the moment someone stabbed her to death. The day she died was supposed to be Bunny’s last as Board president, as she was set to hand over the mantle to fellow resident Nina. But when Nina moots modernizing and monetizing the Arconia, Bunny is not on board, and, goes back on her decision to quit, much to Nina’s displeasure. Could she have gotten rid of the ‘relic’ Bunny?

Review: Oliver (Martin Short), Mable (Selena Gomez) and Charles (Steve Martin) are no closer to finding out who killed Bunny Folger (Jayne Houdyshell) than they were last week, but they have a new suspect - Nina, the heavily-pregnant new president of the Arconia Board, who almost didn’t get the gig when Bunny decided that she wasn’t ready to step down after all.

But to arrive at that, we wade through the events of Bunny’s last day, right until the moment she was killed. From practising her farewell speech for the Board, to contemplating moving to Florida, handing the friendly waiter at her regular restaurant haunt a fat wad of cash, attending the board meeting and deciding against stepping down, to even trying to crash the ‘success party’ that Charles, Mable and Oliver were having to celebrate solving the Tim Kono murder, Bunny had quite the eventful day, one must say. Along the way, she bumps into our sleuthing trio multiple times, and even gets a call about the painting that’s now missing.

And while they now have a prime suspect on the murder board, Charles notes that although they didn’t kill Bunny, she would have been still around if he, Oliver and Mable had shown a morsel of kindness and invited her to join them when she came around with a bottle of champagne to thank them for the Tim Kono case. By the time it strikes them that they should have let Bunny in, instead of slamming the door in her face, she has returned to her apartment, only to be accosted by her soon-to-be murderer. And from her last few words we know that Bunny knew her murderer quite well. Nina seems to have motive, but there’s still the mystery of the missing painting that needs to be solved. That’s the painting that Uma was quite keen to get her hands on in the aftermath of Bunny’s death, so maybe she had something to do with the murder.

What The Last Day of Bunny Folger also does is give us a glimpse of Bunny as not just the iron-handed Board President, who knows something about everybody who lives there, but someone who actually cares about certain things and people. Not so hard-hearted after all.

Episode 3 has some fun moments, like, for instance, when Charles wonders if Bunny could have been his half-sister and if that were the case, whether it would be okay that he had once kissed her on the lips or when he and Oliver do an impression of their late neighbour. Yet after three episodes, the season still doesn’t feel half as funny as the previous one. Perhaps we need a little more of Amy Schumer, Tina Fey and Shirley MacLaine in the mix to spice things up a bit.

Verdict: So, who killed Bunny Folgers? Uma, Nina or another one of the residents? Well, we’ve got another seven episodes to get to the bottom of it. Until then, stay tuned to Only Murders in the Building.