Spoilers for the season-four finale of Only Murders in the Building, “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” below.
In what has become a signature device of Only Murders in the Building, “Lifeboat,” the eighth episode of season four, adopts the perspective of the dead. Here, it’s Milton Dudenoff (Griffin Dunne), a film professor and Arconia resident whose remains Charles, Mabel, and Oliver find in the building’s incinerator. Dudenoff had developed a close bond with his neighbors in the west wing, and in this episode, we see how it shaped the last months of his life. Vince Fish, a “Westie” played by Richard Kind, took a Dudenoff class to stave off the loneliness he felt following his wife’s death; when his younger classmates complain that the Jimmy Stewart classic It’s a Wonderful Life is “pro-capitalist gaslighting,” Vince reprimands them. “You missed the point: George ends up with his family, Potter’s all alone … Being really alone, there’s nothing worse.” That admission of loneliness brings Dudenoff and Vince together in a friendship that will last the rest of the former’s life. Later, Vince bemoans of their critiques, “Why can’t a movie just be a movie?” But in OMITB’s universe, no work of art is ever self-contained. It exists within a system that can both bring people together and tear them apart, and Only Murders in the Building’s ability to simultaneously celebrate and mock those systems has rarely been better than in its fourth season.
The series established itself as a send-up of the true-crime industrial complex in season one, lambasting how readily we consume grisly and macabre stories retold in ultradramatic, hyperverbose ways, even as Charles, Mabel, and Oliver bonded over making a podcast about murder. Season two furthered those themes with a rival podcast host’s assistant killing an Arconia resident to invent content for her boss’s show (so many meta layers!), while the third season took aim at Broadway, particularly the silliness of Method acting, the grudges that form onstage, and the competitive dynamic between theater and television. But these follow-up seasons felt imbalanced: Season two hit the same winkingly self-referential murder-as-entertainment narrative beats, while season three separated Mabel from Charles and Oliver for extended periods, robbing viewers of time with the show’s core relationship. The riffs and ribbing were still there, as were the parables about fame and celebrity as corruptive, murder-inspiring forces. But the series was straying too far from its initial point, embodied in the Arconia Three, about what makes these art forms — podcasts, TV, theater, and film — so singular: their ability to unite disparate groups in creation and fandom.
Season four rectified that with a switch to Hollywood, where a script about the Only Murders podcast churns into production just as Charles’s stunt double and longtime friend, Sazz Pataki, is murdered in his kitchen. By foregrounding its satire within the relationships forged by people who love and work in cinema, OMITB returned to its season-one roots, carving out the time to demonstrate why these connections — like the ones between film professors and students, or stunt performers and actors — matter. Per usual, the gags and deep-cut references are meant to point out the absurdity of this world, from the mysterious Brothers Sisters directing duo planting hidden cameras around the Arconia Three’s apartments for authenticity in their filmmaking to Charles’s perpetually renewed disappointment when someone doesn’t recognize him as the TV detective Brazzos. This industry, OMITB says, has the ability to hurt us, but it also comforts, entertains, and bonds us. Season four’s satire was so effective because it allowed for a level of earnestness about the impact of pop culture and its camaraderie-building qualities that the show hasn’t prioritized since season one.
In season four, once Charles, Mabel, and Oliver stop treating everyone as a suspect, they begin to see them as people who were once as lost as they were. Sazz’s stunt colleagues aren’t at fault for her death; they’re professionals overlooked by an industry that prizes faces over bodies who created a refuge for themselves at the bar Concussions. The initially annoying OMITB movie production becomes a source of growth for some of the Arconia’s residents, including Howard, who identifies as “a sad boy who hates being alone” before getting a job as the Brothers sisters’ documentarian. (Too bad about losing out on playing himself to Josh Gad, though.) The found-footage format of “Blow-Up” humanizes the Brothers sisters, expanding upon their bond with their mentor, Dudenoff, and explaining why they took his “keep shooting” advice to heart. Most poignantly, the Westies, whom Charles, Oliver, and Mabel had labeled as weirdos and suspected as murderers, get a heartbreakingly vivid collective backstory in “Lifeboat,” which explains how Dudenoff drew them all together with his encouragement of their creative pursuits and appreciation for their artistic flair, then trusted them to carry out his final wishes following a terminal diagnosis. The season’s emotional high point lands as the camera revolves 360 degrees around Dudenoff’s dinner table, depicting the Westies eating a meal together, talking about movies, and bonding as a found family — a moment that evokes exactly how the relationship between Charles, Mabel, and Oliver grew from shared podcast interest into something more.
The series reclaims the bittersweet balance of its first season by remembering that any artistic pursuit, as pretentious or silly as it may seem, is worth pursuing if it makes anyone feel a little less alone. This is exactly why Marshall’s betrayal of Sazz is so unforgivable: As her former mentee, he corrupted both their relationship and their shared love of movies and stunts when he stole her script to pass off as his own. It’s clear that Only Murders in the Building — like the similarly great show-business satires 30 Rock and Girls5eva — comes from a place of deep fondness for the pop culture that it spoofs, and an understanding of the warmth and kinship it brings to the human experience. By centering that affection in its storytelling, OMITB helps us understand why the characters who would kill for a podcast story, shut down a Broadway show, or get their own movie deal are betraying the creativity they claim to love. When the Westies tell a sympathetic Mabel, “It can be hard to survive in this city when you march to the beat of your own drum. You need somebody to have your back,” it underscores how art brings people together and serves as a reminder of what made this show so appealing in the first place. It’s not the murders that make Only Murders in the Building — it’s the hang.