Only Murders in the Building Season 2 Episode 4 review: Charles’ step-daughter Lucy knows more than she is letting on

3.5/5

Story: Teddy Dimas (Nathan Lane) and his son Theo (James Caverly) are back at the Arconia for a few months, awaiting trial. And while jail has been “transformative” for Teddy, as he’s learning not to act on his thoughts – like wringing Oliver Putnam’s (Martin Short) neck that is stimulating his root chakras – he can’t wait to “f*ck Oliver in a way he won’t see coming”.

Back on the set of his TV show Brazzos, Charles (Steve Martin) finds out that the network has tweaked his character and not only put him in a wheelchair but given him dementia too, as a back-up plan, just in case they have to write him out if he is jailed in the Bunny Folger (Jayne Houdyshell) murder case. Before he can wrap his head around this development, though, he gets a visitor on set – the much-spoken-about Lucy (Zoe Colletti), his former step-daughter.

Review: Purely from the perspective of advancement in the Bunny murder investigation, Charles (Steve Martin), Mable (Selena Gomez) and Oliver (Martin Short) make very little progress on this episode of Only Murders in the Building. They do accidentally stumble upon the murder weapon – the knife that was used to stab Bunny – in Charles’ kitchen and figure that it actually belongs to Oliver. Thanks to Lucy, who knows more than she’s letting on, they also realise that the Arconia has a secret pathway leading to all apartments, which is not on the building plan. As a child, Lucy would play with her neighbour in this secret hideout.

It’s where she was on the night off Bunny’s murder, and may have caught a glimpse of the murderer as he/she was making a run for it. She won’t tell Charles about that just yet though. This pathway is also how the murderer has been able to slip in and out of everyone’s apartment and leave behind stuff, like the painting and now, the murder weapon.

So far, the podcast trio had their sights firmly set on new building president Nina (Christine Ko) as their chief suspect. She has motive, they reckon, because she wants to add new structures to the Arconia, which, Bunny would have never allowed. They decide to get Nina to talk about it and maybe spill the beans about what she did to Bunny, but turns out that she actually misses her former mentor and wants them to find out who killed her. There goes that theory! The question now is, why is Charles visiting his murderous ex-girlfriend Jan (Amy Ryan) in jail?

As the mystery thickens, the humour, which has been the highlight of Only Murders in the Building, has been on the decline, with a lot of it still about the generational gap. Charles can’t understand half of what Lucy is saying or texting; even Mable can’t keep up with new-gen lingo – it’s like watching Squid Games without subtitles, he remarks.

Now that we don’t have a primary suspect, perhaps we should take a look at all the elevator meetings again. In season 1, the trio take an elevator ride with Tim Kono and he dies. In season 2 it is Bunny. Will her murderer too be someone they bump into on the elevator like in the case of Jan who killed Tim?

Verdict: This season is, strangely, tepid compared to the first. The jokes are few and far between and you don’t feel as invested in the mystery of Bunny death as one did for Tim. It’s still early days, and already two episodes without Cara Delevingne, Tina Fey or Amy Schumer in the mix, so, here’s hoping, the writers will kick up the action in the weeks to come.