‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 4 Finale: MVPs, Fit Lords, and More Murders

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Speaker 15 You want us to call the police? No, no, no. No.
He'll kill her if we do. I will not be joining because I'm not insane.
But I will be contributing to today's caper by creating a front door distraction.

Speaker 15 Front door distraction. Now, is that a type of ding-dong?

Speaker 16 It is, Brudy.

Speaker 15 Very good.

Speaker 16 Ding-dong. Charles, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 15 If you fall, angle your body away from my wedding. Everything's a rental.

Speaker 17 Greetings and welcome to the Prestige TV podcast. Here on the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Mallory Rubin joining me today, telling me on his ride or die and his strong preference is ride.

Speaker 17 It's everyone's favorite Westie, Ben Lindbergh.

Speaker 19 It's true, as a longtime Upper West Side apartment dweller, I've been preparing for this pod my whole life.

Speaker 17 Oh, Ben, it's great to be here with you today to talk about Only Murders in the building. If anyone is wondering, why am I hearing from these two?

Speaker 2 Where are Joanna and Rob?

Speaker 17 Don't worry. They'll be back with you to talk about the latest episode of Disclaimer.
But today, Ben and I are here to chat about... Only murders.

Speaker 17 We are going to do a season four review-ish in the form of awards, season four superlatives.

Speaker 17 We're going to hit some of the highlights from the latest season of Only Murders, and we're going to open with like a few minutes.

Speaker 17 We're going to chat about the finale and just the season as a whole, some opening thoughts, and then we're going to dive right in to hand out our fictional awards.

Speaker 17 I am thrilled to be with you to talk about, I'll just spoil some of my eventual picks by saying this, one of my favorite characters in the history of television, Oliver Putnam.

Speaker 16 Yep.

Speaker 17 Genuinely can't wait to chat Putnam with you.

Speaker 20 I will gladly do that.

Speaker 4 I sense that we might have some overlap in our picks, and that might be one area where we both have some of the things that we're doing.

Speaker 17 I consider it inevitable, and I consider it not only acceptable, but appropriate that we have joined today. No hummus, no dip in hand, but it's like it's with us in spirit as

Speaker 17 we team up to celebrate Oliver, as we should. So spoiler warning, before we get going, obviously anything that happened in the season four finale of Only Murders might come up today.

Speaker 17 Anything that happened anywhere in season four of Only Murders might come up today. And guess what?

Speaker 17 If it's ever happened in the television program Only Murders in the Building, it might come up today.

Speaker 17 It's on the table, much like the dips. Anything, Ben, that you would like to say on the spoiler warning front? Any other things that you intend to spoil from elsewhere in culture?

Speaker 17 Are we keeping it to the Arconia?

Speaker 24 We'll try to keep it to the Arconia.

Speaker 25 I just hope I can explain all of the ins and outs of season four to you.

Speaker 19 You may actually spoil the plot of the season to me as we record, even though they have seen the entire thing.

Speaker 17 I don't know if that's likely. I'm also a little under the weather today, and even by my usual standard, my brain is not completely functioning.

Speaker 17 So will I forget a Stray Westie or a particular red herring? It's entirely possible. We'll see.

Speaker 17 Ben, not that we don't love watching you stare out the window like a sad war widow, but it's time to pod.

Speaker 28 Tap in.

Speaker 29 Quick thoughts.

Speaker 17 Opening snapshot. How did the finale measure up to past finales for you, Ben? How did you feel about the finale of this season? And how did you feel about the season overall?

Speaker 17 Let's just hit this for a few minutes before we dive into our awards.

Speaker 9 Well, I don't know about you, but I don't think of this as such a finale-centric series, which might be sort of surprising for a mystery show where you're supposed to get the big reveal.

Speaker 34 In this case, there barely was one, and that's kind of okay, right?

Speaker 18 I don't think of Only Murders as a show about intricate, precise plotting where it all comes together and dazzles you.

Speaker 32 Yeah, you have the Agatha Christie style.

Speaker 18 Everyone gets together in the parlor, and we explain exactly what happened here, which is easier to follow in some seasons than others, I will say.

Speaker 45 And I think it's for the best that I view the show that way, because I think this season excels in other respects, let's say.

Speaker 41 I think this is a hangout show for me.

Speaker 46 This is just my pals.

Speaker 48 This is my group of lonely misfits finding each other, finding meaning.

Speaker 50 And there was plenty of that.

Speaker 26 this season.

Speaker 52 So the actual mystery, I would say, was more slapdash than it has been in previous seasons.

Speaker 45 And at times, that was a little frustrating.

Speaker 26 It was, you know, all over the place at times, both figuratively and literally.

Speaker 31 So I'd say, on the whole, perhaps the season was less than some of its parts, but it had so many parts.

Speaker 16 So

Speaker 16 many parts.

Speaker 55 So many moving parts.

Speaker 57 And ultimately, though, it comes down to the characters in this show. And if anything, I care about the characters more as the series proceeds.

Speaker 60 So that aspect of the series is still delivering for me.

Speaker 17 Yeah. So we have actually, despite chatting with each other

Speaker 17 very routinely about many aspects of both pop culture and sports, and of course, also most importantly, of all our pets, we haven't talked about only murders together much over the years, but I am completely unsurprised that our relationship to the story is very similar.

Speaker 17 I also view it as a hangout show that I not only enjoy, but have really, really, really over time come to cherish. Like I love these people and I enjoy spending time with them.

Speaker 17 I did find this season plenty to celebrate, plenty to highlight, plenty that I loved as we will explore together today.

Speaker 17 I did find this season less successful overall in many respects than some prior seasons, but I still enjoy being with my buds in the Arconia.

Speaker 17 And those moments in particular when they are together, when they're looking for a clue, when they're working on their various and sundry murder boards, that's just always joyous.

Speaker 17 And like some of the moments between them that later in this season that I have no doubt will come up today, where really they like drilled down on the depth of the devotion that they had like forged with each other.

Speaker 17 I found myself so moved by it and thinking back to the fact that like, these are just people who ran into each other in the elevator or looked over at a table in a diner and realized they liked the same podcast.

Speaker 17 And then something beautiful spawned from it. And God, if there's anything in the world that the two of us can relate to, it's that.

Speaker 17 You know, spend a lot of time alone in your home, not talking to other people and then bond over a podcast.

Speaker 23 Can't really relate to making friends with my neighbors.

Speaker 43 Yeah, that's the problem.

Speaker 22 Yeah, same.

Speaker 61 When I'm in an elevator with someone, it's silence, it's stare at the wall.

Speaker 19 This is why I never make great friends with my neighbors.

Speaker 30 Except for my latest one, I just moved into a new building and my across-the-hall neighbor, great, great woman.

Speaker 61 So I look forward to getting to know her better and perhaps making podcasts with her at some point.

Speaker 17 I mean, look at this. If this is not the lesson that Charles and Oliver taught us, that it's never too late to make new friends.
I don't know what is.

Speaker 17 Did you enjoy the kind of like self-referential nature of some of the aspects of how the seasons are structured?

Speaker 17 Like Mabel in episode three saying, How come the actors couldn't come for one of our finales? Right.

Speaker 17 When we figure out everything all at once, and I did think it was interesting that this season, then we found out who the killer was and what actually had happened.

Speaker 17 I'm going to call him, are you going to call him Rex Bailey or are you going to call him Marshall Ma Ba Ba Bailey?

Speaker 16 Yeah, Rex Marshall.

Speaker 67 I guess he'd prefer Marshall, but

Speaker 16 he's earned that from us.

Speaker 17 Marshall, I'm going to stick with Marshall, I think.

Speaker 17 We learned, you know, the truth was revealed to us

Speaker 17 in the penultimate episode ahead of when our intrepid podcasters pieced it all together, which was like slightly different structurally. So that was interesting.

Speaker 17 I think also, obviously, this season, the idea of the victim being as central to the mystery as the murderer, you know, who was really meant to be on the other end of the sniper.

Speaker 17 And of course, we learn at the conclusion of the season that it was in fact Saz, not Charles.

Speaker 17 Like that was, you know, one of our categories today is going to be the red herring, but like, that was one of the great red herrings of the season.

Speaker 17 This idea that actually really they were, the killer was, was after Charles. And then we have the photo shoot

Speaker 17 bullet ricochet off of Glenn Stubbins' brain plate into Galfanakis' side. Oh, that was meant for Oliver.
Oh, they're all in jeopardy. They're all targets.

Speaker 17 And it's like, actually, Saz wasn't shot just because she was in. Charles's apartment dressed like Charles.
Saz was the target. So that was kind of an interesting wrinkle in the season as well.

Speaker 17 I have a couple of questions for you about where we find the show overall. Are there officially too many famous people in Only Murders in the Building?

Speaker 17 Like when you talk about all of the different components of the season and how many, you know, when you said like some of the parts, but oh boy, there are a lot of parts.

Speaker 17 How much of that for you is about, and I guess these things are inextricable from each other, aspects of the plot, different storylines.

Speaker 17 And how much of that for you is about just the sheer volume of star power and like the question of how much oxygen there is to go around.

Speaker 17 I found that to be a little, the calibration was off for me this season on that front.

Speaker 17 Like every individual person was great and it was wonderful to have them all in the show, but I just thought there were too many of them.

Speaker 17 And then because of that, like we didn't have enough time to like really, you know, we've got our main cast. We've got the Arconia crew who like

Speaker 17 really were relegated to the back burner. Like we barely got any time with our beloved Arconia residents.
And we have the Westies, right? We have like the studio, the people making the movies.

Speaker 17 We've got the love interests. We've got the siblings.
There were just so many people. We've got random cameos from Ron Howard.

Speaker 17 So, so, so many people.

Speaker 17 I did get a real kick out of Oliver in episode nine saying finally a celebrity this season.

Speaker 55 I was going to bring that up because you mentioned the self-referential aspect of the show, which has kind of been present from the start just because there's a show within the show.

Speaker 18 And so they're constantly talking in terms of episodes which correspond to the episodes of the show.

Speaker 61 But it's gotten much more meta as the series has gone on to the point that in the finale, they're referencing how you know there's going to be another murder to set up the next season, right?

Speaker 17 I enjoyed Oliver saying like, or Charles saying, like, finally, like, four seasons in, you have a good pitch. And Oliver's like, four seasons in, I'm cooking with gas.

Speaker 17 And to your point, like, in theory, they're talking about their podcast, but actually talking about their show.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 67 There is a case of too many cooks going on here.

Speaker 37 I think it got to the point where every time a new character was introduced, I sort of braced myself for, okay, who's the guest star going to be when we meet Charles's sister, Doreen, who's delightful, by the way.

Speaker 23 But I'm thinking to myself, well, who's it going to be?

Speaker 52 Oh, it's Moses McCarthy, right?

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 43 Which, you know, individually, every person who appears on the series is precious, right?

Speaker 70 I'm not unhappy to see Zach Galfanatic because I'm a Gal Fanatic.

Speaker 20 Or, you know, you got to

Speaker 21 get Eugene Levy in here, please, by all means.

Speaker 26 There can never be too much in isolation, though, when it's kind of an ensemble situation.

Speaker 35 Yeah. Do you remember?

Speaker 23 I know you remember, I don't know how many of our listeners will remember, the Mandalorian episode with Jack Black and Lizzo and Christopher Lloyd.

Speaker 28 Yeah,

Speaker 73 it's just, you know, it takes you out of things a little bit.

Speaker 41 Here's a galaxy a long time ago, far, far away, but also Jack Black and Lizzo are here.

Speaker 42 That's kind of what I felt.

Speaker 47 And the thing is that Meryl Streep is, you know, the highest wattage star of anyone here, but she's also Meryl Streep and she has this unique preternatural ability to blend into everything, right?

Speaker 18 It's kind of a cliche, the idea of an actor disappearing into a role, but no one has ever been better at that than Meryl Streep.

Speaker 68 She is Loretta.

Speaker 30 She is Loretta.

Speaker 49 I'm not thinking, oh, look,

Speaker 21 it's Meryl Streep acting.

Speaker 36 I'm thinking that's Loretta.

Speaker 17 You're thinking, when can I tune in to Norfbun? I need the latest episode of Norfbun before the New Zealand relocation.

Speaker 51 Especially when people are playing themselves, which I enjoy in general, but that is putting it very much front and center, right?

Speaker 40 Just the guest star aspect of it all.

Speaker 37 And as you said, that leaves less time for the characters that we care about.

Speaker 34 You know, no Cinda Canning, no Tina Fey this season.

Speaker 26 I was sad to not see her.

Speaker 50 Barely any Detective Williams.

Speaker 40 Really, the absence of the police in general.

Speaker 17 I'm coming back to Detective Williams in our category safe. Fear not.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 53 So it was a bit busy, I think.

Speaker 17 But then when Will showed up in the wedding, I was like, is Oliver's family, which has been incredibly central to the story so far, just not in this season at all?

Speaker 17 And then the wedding rolls around and it's like, okay, there's Winnie. There's Will.
Here they are. They just, there just wasn't clearly any time or space for them in the show.

Speaker 17 One of the things that really struck me, I mean, obviously, we're about to get to Lester when we talk about our beloved Arconia family, Uma. Icon legend always.
Of course.

Speaker 17 There's a moment in episode six when Uma says, because of you, they've installed cameras everywhere in case we're murdered. Can't cut a fart or steal a newspaper anymore without being watched.

Speaker 17 And it was like one of maybe three or four times that Uma appeared in the season. And like, to me, that's the show.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 23 She'd show up in an elevator and get off a one-liner.

Speaker 26 And that was that.

Speaker 19 And it's sort of sad because, yeah, the aspect of the community of the building, granted, we get introduced to the Westies, so we're opening up a whole new side of the Arcadia, but it feels a little less like a living, breathing place where these people we know are popping in and out.

Speaker 18 And on the other hand, you know, the core trio is back together when they're on the screen, at least, which is welcome because in season three, they're off doing their own things, right?

Speaker 19 And they briefly split up, and it's a solo podcast for an episode, and Oliver's working on his musical.

Speaker 25 So it's nice to have them

Speaker 21 come back together and be closer than ever.

Speaker 47 For sure.

Speaker 58 And yet, also, we're just trying to cram so many other extraneous characters into the frame that they're forced out at times.

Speaker 17 Yeah. Now, like, don't, don't get us wrong.

Speaker 17 We would welcome a sweaty Betty.

Speaker 17 We would take a sip. We would try it.
Like,

Speaker 17 of course, we are amused when Zach Galifinakis, or excuse me, should we officially refer to him as Gallifine Akis, as Detective Williams

Speaker 17 would like us to?

Speaker 17 The moment where we cut to the

Speaker 17 cell phone video of him saying Beth Mellon sucked his IV bad guy like a Capri son. Like you said, I mean, all of these moments individually are just, they're delightful.
It's incredibly amusing.

Speaker 17 It's charming. And part of the thing that we love about the spirit of the show, which is, as you said, like the hang in the community,

Speaker 17 I do think like the element of the people making it want to feel that way about it too.

Speaker 17 And that means bringing on a bunch of people that they're actually friends with or like acting with or like performing comedy with, like all of that makes sense to me.

Speaker 17 I think a slight refocus on the Arconia in season five will be appropriate.

Speaker 17 And that brings us to briefly before we get to our superlatives, the setup that we got for season five, because I found myself worrying, you know, season four opens with a trip out to Los Angeles and you're like, oh my God, are they actually going to leave New York?

Speaker 17 Are they going to leave Arconia? Are they going to set and entirely? Like I had seen the trailer, so I knew that wasn't true, but I was like, oh, my God, what?

Speaker 5 When Seinfeld, when the gang goes to LA for a Jerry late night show, you're unmoored.

Speaker 2 You're out of your usual world.

Speaker 17 Unmoored is the perfect word for it. So I did wonder if we were building toward finally truly breaking.

Speaker 17 away from the, as they always love to remind us, like it's right there in the title of their podcast and the show. They only thought about murders in the building.
but no.

Speaker 17 Lester, our beautiful beloved Lester, died so that only murders in the building could live.

Speaker 17 Season five is going to focus on a couple things, it seems apparent. And these things already seem to be tied because Lester is found dead in the fountain.

Speaker 17 The fountain that he was talking about earlier in the finale, right there, his own wedding, his wedding in the courtyard under the stars, the fountain.

Speaker 30 Very sad.

Speaker 61 Chekhov's fountain.

Speaker 17 Indeed. Oliver saying when they ran into Lester as they're all hurrying out, they run into him earlier in the finale.
And Oliver's like, what? All he does is let in murders.

Speaker 73 It's true. Yeah.

Speaker 28 And then

Speaker 17 I guess he did it again, Ben. And then Tay Leone shows up in the finale of Only Murders.

Speaker 17 Charles calls her a dame.

Speaker 17 Mabel gives him an eye roll that we can feel in our souls.

Speaker 17 And she is there connecting to something we saw, Mabel saw, and we saw on the hospital TV in the Penn Ultimate episode when she was there to check in on Glenn Stubbins, R.I.P.

Speaker 17 Glenn Stubbins kills me as a name. She's so funny.

Speaker 68 Glenn Stubbins.

Speaker 40 It kind of tells you just, I guess, the regard in which this show is held and this cast is held in Hollywood that everyone wants to be on it.

Speaker 70 And so Paul Rudd's like, sure, put me in this cap and make me do an Irish accent.

Speaker 47 And I'm down for that.

Speaker 32 And I'll do it for a couple episodes and I'll jump in a dumpster if you want me to.

Speaker 30 Like, this is, I think it just goes to show, like, these people are having a good time making this show.

Speaker 34 And so we're having a good time watching them.

Speaker 78 But yes, we have a couple different threads setting up aspects of the next season.

Speaker 20 And it's like, we've got not only a murder in the building.

Speaker 22 He's missing, Ben.

Speaker 17 Nikki the Neck, the dry cleaning king of Brooklyn, has been reported missing. And his wife, Taya Leone, is here to say, I don't think he's missing.
Something's going on. Need you to look in.

Speaker 4 Always happy to see Taya Leone show up.

Speaker 26 My childhood crush made a deep impact on me at a formative time in my life.

Speaker 64 But I'm also sort of excited to see, you know, we're working in a mob connection here.

Speaker 52 To this point, the series has been about small-time crooks, almost accidental murders, maybe, not so much premeditated in some cases.

Speaker 18 And now maybe the crew is leveling up a little.

Speaker 37 They've solved a few murders.

Speaker 67 They're professionals at this.

Speaker 18 It's time to take on organized crime.

Speaker 26 And that's sort of exciting.

Speaker 50 On the other hand, we don't want to lose the community aspect of it, the tie to the building.

Speaker 26 And that's presumably where the late Lester comes in.

Speaker 17 Yes, I think that the Lester tie certainly will,

Speaker 17 what history Lester and Nikki the Neck have together, who can say? But her character, Sophia, assures them when they push back, no, you know, we only, we're not, we're not PIs for hire.

Speaker 17 We only work in the building. Oh, what happened to Nikki the Neck? It has everything to do with this building.
And then, Ben,

Speaker 17 I was looking back through my notes on the season, and I had written down in episode five, when Charles is sketching out the timeframe and how he thinks the timeframe holds.

Speaker 17 He says, and finally, Using what I assume is one of my missing suit bags,

Speaker 17 Our killer hoists the body over his shoulder and disposes of it.

Speaker 28 Wow. Soup bag?

Speaker 17 Missing suit bag? Dry cleaning? How long has the dry cleaning scheme been running through the bowels of the Arconia? Does it connect to gut milk?

Speaker 17 I love that we got a gut milk shout out still this season. Gut milk is eternal.

Speaker 39 This show, we know Oliver loves a callback, and the show is so good at them.

Speaker 18 The gut milk, the different people moving into Sting's apartment each season.

Speaker 26 Loretta asking Oliver, where have you been in the finale, echoing Oliver's line to her at the audition last season, just perfect. But I don't know how much of this is pre-plotted and pre-planned.

Speaker 5 We could maybe get into that a little later.

Speaker 9 But yes, it is intriguing.

Speaker 18 This is not a show, again, where I'm on the OnlyMurder subreddit trying to piece things together before it comes together.

Speaker 30 Cause look, it's not.

Speaker 50 airtight, you know, if we were to go over this plot with a fine-tooth comb, I don't know whether everything about Rex and Marshall would make sense.

Speaker 18 You know, how did Marshall know about the empty apartment? Okay, there's a little throwaway line there about how it was a subplot in Zaz's script, right?

Speaker 26 So, you know, they throw us a bone there so that it's not an obvious plot hole, but there are a lot of things like, why would that have been in the movie draft?

Speaker 66 Why murder someone in the building when there's a podcast dedicated to solving such murders?

Speaker 44 You know, why couldn't they all just set up a meeting with Ron Howard through the studio?

Speaker 69 Who knows where Ron Howard is?

Speaker 26 But who cares, right? We want the hijinks.

Speaker 65 And obviously, the hijinks will keep coming.

Speaker 26 We know season five five is on the way.

Speaker 18 And shout out to shows that are still on an assembly line and that we can still count on.

Speaker 18 Just in the era of waiting two or three years between seasons, not remembering anything that happened by the time the series comes back, feeling like you need to re-watch to get up to speed again.

Speaker 18 The few shows that do still keep coming like clockwork, Only Murders and The Bear and Slow Horses, et cetera, every summer, you know, you're going to get new Only Murders.

Speaker 10 You're going to be back with your pals again.

Speaker 18 And that's nice.

Speaker 25 And I got to say, also, I binged this season as opposed to watching week to week because, you know, again, it's not so much an appointment viewing must see this immediately before it gets spoiled sort of series for me.

Speaker 18 So I waited and I caught up and I felt like that helped actually, because I wasn't on the edge of my seat trying to piece together the plot and, you know, cliffhangers and suspense.

Speaker 25 I was just kind of

Speaker 76 marathoning everything.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 50 And so, you know, they were dangling little tidbits and morsels.

Speaker 36 And then it was just like, all right, next episode, let's move on.

Speaker 17 So it's interesting that you say that because I re-watched it heading into the finale.

Speaker 29 And

Speaker 17 week to week this season, I feel like this is fun, this is good, but I'm not feeling like quite the way I felt about it before. And then when I watched it all on a Saturday afternoon,

Speaker 17 this show is still a delight.

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 66 Definitely the preferred way to watch.

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Speaker 17 Okay, should we get to our superlatives? Should we hit some of the highlights?

Speaker 14 Who will?

Speaker 15 I.

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 15 So you watched her die. You threw her down the trash chute like she was garbage.

Speaker 17 Think of it as her final stunt.

Speaker 17 It's like the vibrator settings.

Speaker 15 Damn it, even Longoria.

Speaker 17 Ben, nothing sets the mood for superlatives quite like the Lady Longoria.

Speaker 17 Will you pick the Lady Longoria for our first category? Who can say? Let's find out together. We are starting with season MVP.

Speaker 17 I have very little doubt we have the same pick here, but maybe we'll surprise each other. Who do you have and why?

Speaker 25 Yeah, I will not pick the Lady Longoria.

Speaker 18 She did a fair amount with her minutes, even though her character didn't have a whole lot to do.

Speaker 4 But we're going to go with Oliver. We both are.

Speaker 22 I mean, he's the perennial MVP, right? Like, it's a group effort.

Speaker 70 You know, we're talking about how maybe there are just too many shooters on this super team that they've constructed.

Speaker 37 The roster synergy is not there.

Speaker 18 But Oliver is holding things down, holding things together year after year.

Speaker 37 And he actually revealed some new dimensions to me this season.

Speaker 18 I don't know that there was... there was that much growth for, say, Mabel.

Speaker 25 Mabel didn't have a whole lot to do this season, which was sort of disappointing.

Speaker 30 But Oliver, still zany, still Mr.

Speaker 47 Madcap, still prancing around, but also kind of a depth to him, an emotionality, which in my mind, it almost mirrored Zach Alfanakis' deepening appreciation of the character.

Speaker 16 This is not just a superficial fop.

Speaker 19 This is a man who is a romantic, a man who has deep, meaningful relationships, who has been through many near-death experiences, including who knows how many heart attacks.

Speaker 46 And he has come through that.

Speaker 12 Nobody threats the season.

Speaker 17 We really abandoned the Oliver Hart plot.

Speaker 63 We have.

Speaker 52 Yeah, just let him have his dip.

Speaker 64 I don't want to worry about his blood pressure.

Speaker 65 But he really connected with Charles, with Loretta on a deep level, you know, bringing his usual fashion sense, his usual joie de vivre, his ageless hair, which I just, I want to know so much more about the hair care routine of Martin Short and what exactly is happening there, but whatever it is, I hope to learn from it.

Speaker 52 And I just got very invested in that character and also in his relationship with Loretta, while at the same time getting equally invested in the real life relationship of Martin Short and Beryl Streep.

Speaker 17 Can I tell you something embarrassing?

Speaker 62 Please.

Speaker 17 Since I literally live my life online for my job, I find it mortifying to say this out loud. This was complete news to me the last couple of days, like prepping for this pod, re-watching the season.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 17 I did not know.

Speaker 28 Okay.

Speaker 17 Let me put it this way.

Speaker 17 I did not know that this was a thing, that there have been like rumors and questions, and that people for basically a year have been speculating about whether they are in love in real life.

Speaker 62 Yes.

Speaker 17 But I knew. Like when I saw all of these headlines, I was like, of course, people have been wondering this because their chemistry on screen is so electric and so beautiful.

Speaker 17 And the kind of of thing, the rare thing in this world that makes me feel like a modicum of possibility that when you grow old, someone might still love you and want you.

Speaker 17 It's like so aspirational and wonderful. Oh, man.
They're just delightful together.

Speaker 45 They are deeply in love, whether that is a platonic love or a romantic physical love, that has not yet been established beyond all doubt.

Speaker 22 They adore each other. It is amazing.

Speaker 5 They deeply adore each other.

Speaker 18 And it is fun for all of us to ship them and to follow them throughout their many dinner dates and awards gala sitting next to each other episodes.

Speaker 26 So I, you know, when they're exchanging their vows in this episode,

Speaker 59 it's too real.

Speaker 66 I hope it's real.

Speaker 17 What was it? It was like, be my man, be my husband, be my friend, be my lover.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 17 It's so good. Yeah.

Speaker 16 So

Speaker 35 I hope that Loretta flitting off to New Zealand does not portend

Speaker 32 less Meryl Streep, less Devil Wears Prada to perhaps conflicts in her schedule.

Speaker 37 Who knows?

Speaker 5 But that would be very sad if

Speaker 18 Oliver's love interest was to suddenly disappear, much like Maples did.

Speaker 17 Can't bear it. I need him to, obviously they have some murders to investigate back in New York, but I need him to fly over as promised.

Speaker 17 Maybe they can you know go do a little lord of the rings visit together he mentioned only sheep but there's the shire as well oliver yeah they're incredible together when she like cupped his face and said like where have you been oh my gosh yes

Speaker 17 when they get engaged and and he says before i accept is there any family money which was apparently an ad-libbed lie okay but by the brilliant martin short you can i would say you can tell because that was a perfect TV moment.

Speaker 17 Her laughter and response to that was so authentic and sincere. And that's what's wonderful.

Speaker 17 It's like, and that gets to what you were saying earlier about like, these people just clearly love making this show together.

Speaker 17 And so no matter exactly what shape the mystery takes or what they play with structurally or how big the cast gets, like that will always be a source of joy.

Speaker 17 And you feel it so keenly in a moment like that. Like that's really a precious gift to make somebody laugh like that.
And for us to get to watch it. That's awesome.
Delightful.

Speaker 17 Anything else on your MVP case for Oliver?

Speaker 26 Yeah, the distant second, whoever would be second, you know, plenty of great contributors here, but Oliver's just putting up points left and right here.

Speaker 45 Just so many of the great lines, I mean, the running bits, the tech ineptitude, which granted low-hanging fruit, just, you know, making fun of a boomer for not being able to lower the dimness on their tablet, but just never, never gets old.

Speaker 17 This was in the running for my favorite moment of the season.

Speaker 17 Obviously, part of part of my MVP case for Oliver, yes, my MVP is also Oliver.

Speaker 17 On the tech front, like what I love is the way it works in both directions. The way that I'll part, like part of the charm is Oliver always ribbing Charles.

Speaker 17 So Charles is like, oh, and Oliver says, this was at the beginning of the season. It's like stepping into a sharper image catalog.
Like he's ready to mock Charles.

Speaker 17 But then the old guy shtick, it's been a long time since, you know, the season one days of, you know, Charles parentheses old, right, on the text exchanges.

Speaker 17 But you still get moments like that where he's like, how did you do that above the E? And then Charles shows him.

Speaker 17 But the iPad moment that you're referencing was that's a pantheon moment in the history of OnlyMurders when they are at concussions. And we get like the Charles version of it too, actually.

Speaker 17 I know we're talking about Oliver, but when he's trying to take photos of everybody in the Sting apartment and he's coming, you can hear the shutters out.

Speaker 17 But also, I literally turned to Adam when we were watching it. And I'm like, he's definitely taking pictures of his inner ear, his Jeek.
And sure enough, Charles was.

Speaker 17 But the way that Oliver is like just parading the gigantic iPad encased in like purple Kevlar about, and Mabel says, Jesus, turn your brightness down.

Speaker 17 I feel like I just looked into an eclipse that just kills me.

Speaker 65 Yelling turned down brightness.

Speaker 16 Just the best.

Speaker 2 Highness,

Speaker 41 we've all had, we've all had those experiences with our beloved senior relatives.

Speaker 26 And I, in fact, I bought an automatic bottle opener for my great uncle, possibly from the Sharper Image.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 35 He loved it.

Speaker 30 He uses it.

Speaker 16 So it's

Speaker 16 accurate.

Speaker 43 Or one of my favorites was Charles.

Speaker 65 This is, you know, not just him being old, but also his kind of sad sat career.

Speaker 18 I mean, so many moments like that when he's doing background work and they just

Speaker 30 give the extra role.

Speaker 14 You can be in the movie.

Speaker 41 When IMDb comes up and he's like, my agent's going to get you.

Speaker 17 Oh man, that killed me. That was brutal.
Poor Brazos. I love two of the detective, one of the Detective Williams scenes and he's like, like, Brazos.
It's just like, I got nothing for you, man.

Speaker 17 On the age front, too, it was, in terms of, again, the kind of meta aspect of the show, it was amusing when we got to hear about the focus group for the movie.

Speaker 17 And how they're like, yeah, Mabel, like the aging up, why? Well, like, the feedback was that this is like pretty creepy.

Speaker 17 But the other thing I love about the age, the age jokes is that it does, again, it's like it's circular. It goes in all directions.

Speaker 17 It's not like Oliver on the receiving end of the turn your brightness down is like, always, I'm in the bloom of youth. I'm in my prime.
Sometimes he does that, right? We're going to talk.

Speaker 17 I'll spoil that one of my picks later today has to do with Oliver testing the 12 second

Speaker 14 timeframe.

Speaker 17 But sometimes he's just like, like in the finale, where's the young one? We need a pliable brain on this. So it works in all directions.

Speaker 17 It's just, it's just great.

Speaker 17 I thought on the Loretta Oliver chemistry and natural charm front, too, the moment in the premiere when they're in the fire pit in the pool and they're talking about the Hollywood stars.

Speaker 17 And like, just again, the way she laughed in response to what Martin Short, not Oliver Putnam, like Martin Short said about that was just so charming.

Speaker 17 And I don't know, everything with like his anxiety.

Speaker 18 Much like with Marshall on the set of the Ron Konkama project.

Speaker 63 The eyebrows, man,

Speaker 17 they never healed. He's got to tape them on.

Speaker 17 Everything with the Ronnie Finsta and the jonked plot, I really enjoyed when Oliver, to your point about like, he just always has the best lines and the funniest lines.

Speaker 17 One of the ones that absolutely killed me when he's freaking out about jonk was in episode five. I myself went through a steroid phase.

Speaker 68 Pregnisone for my zinus infections.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 14 Incredible.

Speaker 32 Reminded Reminded me of Mabel's You're Pretty Fit for a Writer line from the finale.

Speaker 28 Rude.

Speaker 17 I actually thought of you. I was like, I think Ben is going to be offended by this.
Yeah. We, you know, the Oliver Putnam story has always been a sacred, only murderous tradition.

Speaker 17 And obviously, we get plenty of great ones this season as well. The Ron Ron hot soup slurp bit in the penultimate was a great one.

Speaker 17 But what I really loved was in episode nine when Oliver's telling a story and he's like cut off, right?

Speaker 17 And then he jumps back in and says, says, devastating that you could know me so well and yet think that was the end of my story.

Speaker 17 Just the shorthand that they build between each other, that was great.

Speaker 17 But then with Oliver, it's always the combination of the bravado and the insecurity, which is, you know, yet another reason that he's the eternal MVP.

Speaker 17 He's bragging, he's showing off, he's flashy, but we see how deeply insecure he is in the episode where they all break off with the actors.

Speaker 17 And he's like, Zach Galfinakis, I cannot get this guy to love me. This is a terrible feeling.
And he's like, really driven to a dark place by it.

Speaker 17 But then he's the same character who, when they discover the surveillance cameras, everybody's freaking out. And his first response is, my Monday jammies.

Speaker 17 This is incredible. This is a wonderful television character.

Speaker 40 And Galfinakis has the Mad Libs Oliver story where he's just sort of supplying, you know, inserts, proper name and year, et cetera.

Speaker 40 And everyone doubts the stories, which, to be clear, they're usually fabricated.

Speaker 46 But then he gets vindication when Ron Ron recognizes him and reciprocates with the slurping.

Speaker 46 Some of this, there's some kernel of truth

Speaker 43 inside the stories. There is.

Speaker 67 Was it me or did Oliver snort much more this season? I was not quite as conscious of how much snorting he did.

Speaker 4 He really ramped up the snorting.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I've always loved the snort. So it's definitely always been very present, but it became more...

Speaker 17 I don't know if the volume changed this season, but people were commenting on it more in the universe of the show.

Speaker 19 And maybe it's just the show within the show this season was not the musical, but the movie being made of only murders, right?

Speaker 69 Which on the whole was, you know, somewhat distracting.

Speaker 26 I know there was the big moment, of course, where the actors come together to actually kind of break the case or at least an aspect of it.

Speaker 18 But for a lot of it, it felt a little like, I mean, you know, entertaining moments, much like John Hamm shadowing Larry on curb, where you just love to see someone who is not the person you're used to mirroring their mannerisms.

Speaker 18 But also just a little bit of like, this feels separate from the actual story that we want to see here.

Speaker 5 Or Bev, the Hollywood executive, which I love Molly Shannon.

Speaker 86 She's great.

Speaker 31 But I have seen her playing sort of the same character a lot lately.

Speaker 57 This was sort of the same character she played on the other two.

Speaker 78 And I love that for you.

Speaker 9 Just sort of this very extra industry type.

Speaker 18 And so that felt like.

Speaker 17 Did she make a smoothie out of Red Hole and Slim Times on either of those programs?

Speaker 28 That's kind of something that happened here.

Speaker 16 It is.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 19 But Oliver carrying the team as usual, just

Speaker 2 surrounded by a championship core, but still.

Speaker 17 Great stuff. Okay.
I had no doubt we would be aligned there. Will we be aligned for our second superlative?

Speaker 5 Favorite episode? I would not be surprised.

Speaker 17 What do you have here? I actually will say, I found this kind of hard.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 36 Yeah. I'm going to go with episode seven, the field trip to Doreen's house on Long Island.

Speaker 68 Not my favorite.

Speaker 68 But that's a great one.

Speaker 22 That's a great one. Yeah.

Speaker 85 For pure comedy, comedy, this was probably the richest text.

Speaker 17 Have you ever said out loud, I just got caught in her

Speaker 17 macroeid duster?

Speaker 16 Have you ever said that to anyone?

Speaker 31 That might come up later on in this episode, but I know this is rich coming from someone who rarely leaves his apartment, but it was nice to see the trio get out of the house a little.

Speaker 27 I mean, we were just talking about, okay, the Arcania is kind of the core.

Speaker 25 It's the setting. It's the warm, cozy feeling, the community aspect that we want.

Speaker 79 But also, after four seasons, maybe it starts to get a little stale when you're wondering those same halls in those same sets.

Speaker 17 Should they have gone to Can-Cans instead of Doreen's house, though? Have you considered that?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 68 I know they're supposed to be in hiding, but yeah, hooters for bots, men.

Speaker 17 Think about it.

Speaker 23 But they go to this extremely unsafe safe house, which was part of the comedy, just trying to get away from it.

Speaker 17 Just giving away their location

Speaker 68 to anyone who calls.

Speaker 30 But everyone shows up.

Speaker 65 Bev, all the actors, everyone is just dropping by.

Speaker 78 I think the really the coup de grace, just the seminal moment of this series was probably the Billy Joel doorbell chime.

Speaker 4 The scenes from an Italian restaurant.

Speaker 68 Unbelievable.

Speaker 18 Just took me back to so many friends from high school.

Speaker 26 Just, you know, love the piano man, but that just felt rich.

Speaker 78 It felt true.

Speaker 26 And everything really about, you know, getting to learn a little more about Charles's background, his family, his sibling relationship.

Speaker 16 A lot of stuff about the

Speaker 49 dolls.

Speaker 52 All of it.

Speaker 61 Just such a welcome little field trip and diversion from the norm for this series.

Speaker 17 That's a great one.

Speaker 17 I also ended up picking something that involved an excursion.

Speaker 17 I'm going with, after careful consideration, and a genuinely hard time picking, I'm going with episode four, The Stump Man.

Speaker 14 I love that.

Speaker 66 Under consideration for me, too.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 17 I did consider the Doreen episode.

Speaker 17 First of all, the Saz Charles framing. in this episode.
This is a very funny show, but part of its impact and

Speaker 17 charm is that it's like quite touching. Charles having to confront how much pain Saz was in and like really reflect on how this is supposed to be his best friend, this central figure in his life.

Speaker 17 And there was so much he didn't know or like stop to understand about her. And then also, of course, that builds toward like we see later.

Speaker 17 She was hiding that from him. She didn't want him to know.
You know, after the stunt fall at the beginning of the finale, like, yeah, how you doing? I'm good. I'm good.

Speaker 17 And then we like, we see her like hiding the ice pack, right? She wanted to keep her hero, her number one, in the dark, so that he could be blissfully ignorant to her suffering.

Speaker 17 So that was all just really interesting. Glenn Stubbins has already come up many times with the pod today,

Speaker 17 but like what this said about

Speaker 17 the really like highly absurdist nature of the world of the show.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Yeah, Paul Rock could just come back and before he was Ben Glenroy and now he'll be Glenn Stubbins'

Speaker 17 stunt double. It's just like incredible.
This was also the Ronnie Finsta thing with the iPad. And we got to hear Oliver say in this episode, that's a one-way ticket to Cuck City Population Button,

Speaker 17 which is iconic. There were a lot of really funny lines and moments in this episode.
I enjoyed Charles saying he spent two hours looking for an all-night staples. That killed me.

Speaker 17 Mabel saying

Speaker 17 most working adults are up by 8 a.m. and Oliver replying, replying, yeah, but like

Speaker 14 farmers.

Speaker 28 It's so wonderful.

Speaker 17 And then, you know, there was,

Speaker 17 I agree with you. My primary relationship to the show is the vibe, the hang, the relationships, the charm of it, the oddity of it, the quirkiness of it.

Speaker 17 I'm not necessarily, I am not primarily watching it from the murder mystery, but when the mystery grips you, it's, it is pretty cool. And like the end of this episode, there was genuine suspense.

Speaker 17 Charles has pieced together what paradise is, this trampoline park in Jersey, and they're driving up to this shack that Bev in the next episode will refer to as a quote, poverty cottage.

Speaker 17 And we go into this dark

Speaker 17 room, and Bev is there with a gun. And I was like, oh shit, what's about to happen? So this episode kind of had it all.

Speaker 17 I also did really, I considered picking the penultimate episode of the season, which I liked a lot. Yes.

Speaker 17 And now in hindsight, again, knowing we really did get the reveal like ahead of schedule is interesting to me. But that was a great, great.

Speaker 17 I'll circle back to some of this so I won't linger on this for long. I have this coming in another pick, but like you probably do too.

Speaker 17 This is just a genuinely great Oliver Charles relationship episode.

Speaker 17 And I'll leave it there because we're going to come back to it later.

Speaker 22 Okay. Yes.

Speaker 64 I have more to say about both of those episodes also in upcoming categories.

Speaker 20 So we can table that.

Speaker 51 But Glenn Stubbins, I mean, that there's almost a 30-rock element to this show at times, which,

Speaker 18 you know, just kind of this like, I mean, speaking of John Henn and the character he played on on that show, where it's just like as many laughs as you can cram into the thing as possible, just punchlines per minute.

Speaker 18 And that's, again, like even that is not my primary reason for coming to this series.

Speaker 52 It's not even the jokes or the murders.

Speaker 58 It is the feelings.

Speaker 61 It's the friends that we made along the way.

Speaker 85 And so that's not the primary draw.

Speaker 18 And yet when it does deliver that.

Speaker 66 aspect of things, it's like, oh, this show is like four quadrant.

Speaker 26 It's like, you know, multi-pronged, two-way, you know, five-tool player kind of series when it's firing on all of those cylinders at once.

Speaker 25 And so that was one of those episodes where it did get to that point.

Speaker 17 Yeah, for sure. Okay, next superlative.
Smartest red herring. Looking back, what really, what really stands out to you? Yeah.

Speaker 23 Well, you know, we've kind of learned how this show works as it's gone on.

Speaker 18 And to their credit, they've made an effort to mix up the formula a bit so it doesn't get too predictable.

Speaker 59 But you know that you're not going to see the real killer until the end.

Speaker 47 Now, there were breadcrumbs along the way.

Speaker 61 I mean, we found out that Marshall was an imposter who has fake facial hair, right?

Speaker 18 We could have read more into that at the time.

Speaker 25 But you know, you're going to get tossed a lot of candidates who seem too obviously like the murderer.

Speaker 18 And so you're not going to fall for that at this point.

Speaker 36 Probably the one that kind of got me to some extent, and you know, everything has just spun out to the point where we went from a murder board to multiple murder boards to a murder wall that we need to contain all of the clues in this case.

Speaker 44 But the Westies, probably for me,

Speaker 31 would be the most effective red herring, just in the sense that I love that addition.

Speaker 18 Again, as someone who's lived a long time in New York apartments buildings, the owner-renter divide, the idea that your neighbors are also strangers to you, that there might just be this distant land within your home.

Speaker 50 That really appealed to me.

Speaker 19 And so it sort of seemed to be setting up this Westies versus Easties, I guess, kind of conflict showdown.

Speaker 18 And I love the rear window aspects, the window dressing, so to speak, of this story, you know, kind of gazing across the courtyard, seeing what someone else is up to, creeping across a ledge at the end when you know that there's someone who means you ill.

Speaker 61 And yet it turns out that the Westies are just another group of lonely misfits who are trying to find their way and find their family, right?

Speaker 59 And that's heartening in the end.

Speaker 18 Now, you know, on the whole, I felt like we didn't spend enough time with most of the Westies for me to get that invested in their relationship.

Speaker 36 And then the whole Dudenoff aspect, you know, it's tough to, when you know a character exclusively through flashbacks, you know, memo to the acolyte, like sometimes it's tough to, sorry, Star Wars show's catching strays for me here today, but, you know, like it's, it's a little tough when you're only seeing that character through.

Speaker 19 the eyes of others or others' memories or the camera lens.

Speaker 18 And so, you know, like, feels like they should have their own spin-off show or something, more so than them kind of being shoehorned into this one.

Speaker 17 But there was a time of Arconia expanded universe. I love that.

Speaker 4 Yes, please.

Speaker 26 Why not?

Speaker 18 But that felt a time like it was going to play a more prominent role in the end game here.

Speaker 17 Yeah. I mean, I, my, my pick is, I already said it earlier.

Speaker 17 I think just broadly, the idea of Charles being the real target when it actually was Saz was a massive red herring for how they pursued their investigation across the entire season.

Speaker 17 But then inside of that, because those are those are entwined, I think what you what you said is right. The Westies,

Speaker 17 because Charles is the one on the other side of those windows, he is the one they're looking at. He's got the feelings about stink guy, right?

Speaker 17 Before he becomes pink guy, he's got his feelings about the sauce family, et cetera, Christmas all-the-time guy.

Speaker 17 So I think for the Westies specifically, now this was in episode seven, which generally I would say is like too early for something to be like, oh, wow, we just learned a thing that really is going to prove who the murderer is.

Speaker 17 That said, you mentioned the Marshall episode, like that's episode five adaptation. And we bet we get in hindsight now, like everything we need is in that episode, really,

Speaker 17 which will come up in our next category. Spoiler.
But that moment where Howard is at the bodega and like sees the Westies cashing the Dudenoff checks on the security cam.

Speaker 17 I was like, something really shady is going on with the Westies. And of course, we learned that there is a secret there, a a large one, many secrets, secrets with NZ.

Speaker 16 Even secrets from hellgraphic.

Speaker 2 But yeah,

Speaker 17 wonderful.

Speaker 22 Okay.

Speaker 17 Unless you want to sing the theme song to Perfect Strangers, we can move on to our fourth superlative, which is the other, the other related part of this. Looking back,

Speaker 17 we know what the actual crime was. We know who the killer was.
We know who the real victim was, who the target was, I should say.

Speaker 17 Most ingenious real clue, because there were plenty of clues that Marshall P. Pope was the killer.

Speaker 17 What stands out to you now, either on the, oh, actually Saz was the target front or, oh, Marshall was the killer front or anything else.

Speaker 18 Well, we were talking earlier about how much of this is laid out in advance.

Speaker 18 Like, is there an only murderer's roadmap where they have season seven charted out and they're just sticking in little chips that they can cash in later?

Speaker 64 Kind of doubt it.

Speaker 50 Kind of doubt that back in, say, season one, they knew what season four was going to be about.

Speaker 67 But I did appreciate the ingenious use of plot holes from previous seasons

Speaker 77 to kind of close the holes and yet also reuse them here through Saz's notes about, you know, the dog, right?

Speaker 16 Like who poisoned Winnie, Oliver's dog, right?

Speaker 43 Like,

Speaker 25 you know, I would assume again that this is probably something that the writers have kind of heard feedback from people saying, what, you know, who, wait, what happened here?

Speaker 26 Who poisoned the dog?

Speaker 31 Which again is not really the way I'm watching this show.

Speaker 37 I'm not necessarily keeping track of the things that, in retrospect, don't totally hang together, but I'm sure that some people are.

Speaker 25 I'm sure that the writers are aware of the flimsier aspects of their plotting and are probably hoping that we won't notice, that they just, you know, throw Oliver out there to do some jazz hands and we'll just kind of ignore some of the things that are dead ends.

Speaker 44 But the fact that they could come back three seasons later and repurpose plot holes

Speaker 26 to make them make sense in retrospect if anyone was bothered by the fact that they didn't at the time.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 18 And then also give the actors their moment in the sun here to actually contribute something to the solving of the case.

Speaker 77 I thought that was ingenious.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I love that. That's a great one.
And

Speaker 17 this is not a plot hole. This was a key aspect of the season two plot, but I did love also just in terms of like bringing stuff back from the past, that Jan at the end went after her incredibly

Speaker 17 creepy like wave and smile and her telling Charles that their end game and everything. Great, great return from Jan this season.

Speaker 17 And she's like, yeah, I've just been in those secret passageways, you know, like the ones that you all knew were there, but like nobody thought to look, look in after you told them that I like escaped through your closet.

Speaker 17 Great stuff.

Speaker 17 So I'll go with the kind of obvious fastball down the middle here, which is just, again, all the Marshall clues. Looking back now at episode five,

Speaker 22 he

Speaker 17 falls over with a partial footprint on the tacky mat. Like the exact thing they were looking for.

Speaker 17 Like we have a clear shot of him stepping on it, partial footprint, falling over, freaking out, just as Charles is talking about someone getting nervous because he saw them poking around.

Speaker 17 He feels so excited that he's a suspect and not that he's getting notes, which like in real time played like, oh, nobody who actually did a bad thing would be happy to be a suspect.

Speaker 17 But now, given everything we've learned about this, like, and again, as you said, in this episode, he's like, you know, you got to pretend to be the real thing, right? Fake it till you make it.

Speaker 17 His anxiety about the writing, the quality of his writing, the fact, all of this is primarily for the fact that he stole this script. Like he is not, he was not capable of writing the movie.

Speaker 17 You know, we have later Bev saying that like every draft that he's turned in is worse than the one before. Like that was really all there.

Speaker 17 That part did really like land when we learned that he had taken the script because it's like, yeah, this is not a person who could have written this script, clearly.

Speaker 17 Glenn Stubbins. you know, oh, when did you grow the beard? Because like he recognized Rex beardless from the, from the, the stunt work.

Speaker 17 Can you tell us where you were the night Saz died? It's funny you ask. Then later, it's interrupted.

Speaker 17 Later in the scene, he pretends like, or maybe he also did a comedy act that he actually has on YouTube, a full hour set. Would love some feedback, would love some notes.

Speaker 17 But before he says the thing about stand-up later in that conversation, just the like way that lingered. Can you tell us where you were? Oh, it's funny you ask now feels very keen, really striking.

Speaker 17 when he's talking about not just the fake beard and the haircut, but the glasses and says these aren't real either. I have 2010 vision, like sniper vision, right?

Speaker 17 Like this is a guy who knows, they're, we're in the stretch of the season where they're like looking for the rifle and, oh, a rifle. He's like, I have 2010 vision.

Speaker 17 But most of all, the murder board feedback, the way that he is like saying, oh, you don't know who the target was.

Speaker 17 Interesting. Oh, that why section is a lot of motives.

Speaker 17 And then all the feedback on the timing, specifically the way that he says the person who did this would have to be extremely fit, a gifted athlete in the best shape of their life.

Speaker 17 And like, if you go back to the shots of his apartment, it's like, there's a bike that he's clearly riding. There are weights under the bench.

Speaker 75 Like it's just,

Speaker 17 they gave us all the clues, Ben. So a lot of stuff in the Marshall episode.

Speaker 19 Yeah, if we were sort of true detectiving this thing and actually trying to speculate and, you know, just, I'm not on the subreddits for this series.

Speaker 71 So if I were, if I were more clued in, literally, then, you know, there's enough there that you can see these things coming.

Speaker 27 Again, I prefer for it to wash over me.

Speaker 19 But when it's done, I also appreciate that the pieces are all there, that you can go back.

Speaker 18 And, and, you know, this is not the first time that Only Murders Reveal, it's turned out to be sort of, you know, the assistant, like the person on the side, right?

Speaker 34 Kind of the lower profile character who is ignored and pushed out of the spotlight.

Speaker 18 And this is how they kind of, you know, get their moments.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 63 we've run this playbook before, but it works well enough.

Speaker 17 Speaking of things that work, number five, funniest moment or

Speaker 17 scene. I think we're going to have different things here.
I think we might have the same for our most touching moment or scene, which is our next category after this.

Speaker 17 But let's actually hear our picks. Kai, can you play Ben's funniest moment or scene? Or Ben, do you want to set it up? Any preamble, or should we hear it first and then you'll explain it?

Speaker 32 Kai, queue it up.

Speaker 5 I think it'll be immediately obvious what it is.

Speaker 17 Okay, Okay, don't tell me to calm down. Okay, why don't you go back to Beverly Hill? Whoa.

Speaker 73 Listen, I ran a studio in Burbank.

Speaker 17 You know, it's under a Whole Foods. I don't need you throwing your rich bitch shit in my face.

Speaker 14 You need to calm down.

Speaker 17 You need to get out of my house, you Hollywood fuzzy.

Speaker 15 Jack suffers this!

Speaker 15 What are you doing to me? I don't know why you eat your brains.

Speaker 17 Oh my god.

Speaker 86 Oh.

Speaker 26 Meryl Streep, legend of stage and screen.

Speaker 26 Not afraid to get down and dirty with Doreen.

Speaker 26 And I love reading the back and forth, the behind the scenes of how this scene came together.

Speaker 67 No stunt doubles.

Speaker 56 So it would be thematically appropriate if there had been for this season.

Speaker 31 But no, they did these action stunts themselves.

Speaker 67 Melissa McCarthy, according to a variety run-through of how this came together, I quote, I was not going to miss the opportunity to hurl Streep over the back of a couch.

Speaker 14 Streep.

Speaker 18 For the record, I wouldn't want to meet Meryl in a dark alley.

Speaker 23 She moves like an 18-year-old bobcat.

Speaker 55 According to co-creator John Hoffman, they ran through the fight in full three times, and they were somewhat dismayed because they didn't think it went near far enough.

Speaker 26 They wanted this to be no holds barred, like they wanted there to be blood, and there was not.

Speaker 49 There were fake pigtails being pulled here.

Speaker 53 So,

Speaker 21 again, like Meryl Streep doesn't have to do this, you know?

Speaker 78 She can do any part she wants, she doesn't have to be in a Long Island brawl, and yet she is not afraid to do that.

Speaker 60 She is as good at that as she is at everything, and this was just an absolute delight.

Speaker 17 Wonderful pick. I have no notes.

Speaker 17 It's not my pick. Kai, can we hear my pick?

Speaker 15 How am I doing?

Speaker 13 It's been 38 minutes.

Speaker 75 What?

Speaker 15 What happened to you, Oliver?

Speaker 14 well

Speaker 73 i got off to a good start no you didn't no i did not

Speaker 15 i've been on a journey i saw things i did things i failed i failed as an athlete as a

Speaker 15 movie character as a fashion icon

Speaker 17 as a guardian of the city's wildlife This is my favorite single favorite moment of the season.

Speaker 17 Oliver standing there in full McEnroe cosplay, having just passed John McEnroe on the streets. He's got the headband on.
He's got the windbreaker. He's got the shorts.
He's got the trainers.

Speaker 17 And then he comes into the room. We had seen him.
He can't, he thinks he, this is all about jonk. It's all about Loretta.
It's all about the anxiety.

Speaker 17 He needs to prove to himself, to Loretta, to the world that he's fit. He's young.
He's worthy. Can't, first thing, can't get down off the radiator, right? I sunk 20 grand into these knees.
Incredible.

Speaker 17 All of the recurring, talk about a recurring bit. Like Oliver's knees and always, we always get this born green moment.
The stairs moment is an all-timer. It's just historic.

Speaker 17 And when he returns and thinks he's done it, filthy, a bird feather sticking out of that beautiful hair that you love so much.

Speaker 17 And the initial shock when he hears the time into

Speaker 75 the emotion of that.

Speaker 17 This is just so funny. I've been on a journey.
I saw things. I did things.
I failed.

Speaker 17 I failed as an athlete, as a movie character, as a fashion icon, as a guardian of the city's wildlife as he's holding the feather in his hand.

Speaker 17 This is Oliver Putnam in miniature to me. And I

Speaker 17 loved everything about it. I was in tears watching that scene.
It was so funny.

Speaker 39 And because not to overanalyze the joke, but because he is so delusional most of the time, because he is so arrogant and overconfident in his own abilities, the moments when he's self-deprecating, where he acknowledges his shortcomings can be the best.

Speaker 47 Yeah, because that's just a note we don't get from him that often.

Speaker 17 It's wonderful. Just wonderful stuff.
Great show.

Speaker 22 Okay.

Speaker 17 From the laughter to the heart.

Speaker 17 I think we have the same pick here. This is my prediction, but maybe not.
There were a lot of candidates. This is our category for a most touching moment or scene.
You want to go first?

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 60 Kai, roll the tape.

Speaker 15 You're my emergency contact.

Speaker 15 What? Well, when I fill out forms, I put your name, and I know you used to put mine, but now it's Loretta's.

Speaker 15 You know, I always knew Mabel would one day spread her wings and leave, but

Speaker 15 you and me, I thought, we'd, you know, grow old er

Speaker 15 and die together.

Speaker 15 And don't get me wrong, I like Loretta. I really like Loretta.
But now I'm kind of the awkward guy.

Speaker 15 Third wheeling it on your dates,

Speaker 15 you know, saying, hey, let's split a dessert three ways.

Speaker 15 You know,

Speaker 15 I never wanted really to throw you a bachelor party.

Speaker 15 I just wanted to celebrate our friendship.

Speaker 17 That's also my pick, buddy.

Speaker 22 Yeah, I figured it would be.

Speaker 61 You and me, we're growing old together, too.

Speaker 20 And this was

Speaker 37 unlike Charles, I did not have to struggle to summon a single tear while watching this scene because

Speaker 40 this was just beautiful.

Speaker 45 The fact that it took place while while they're both wearing mocap suits with the little dots on their private parts makes it all the better after they just yell at each other, but they're yelling at each other because they care so much.

Speaker 18 And, you know, this idea of just like them finding each other, just the lifeboat, right?

Speaker 26 I thought if this was not your pick, that maybe the lifeboat Westies found family.

Speaker 25 I know you love a found family.

Speaker 22 I love a found family.

Speaker 18 That episode eight might come into play here.

Speaker 73 But this was just so beautiful.

Speaker 18 And we have so much history with these two, unlike with the Westies.

Speaker 34 And again, it's like when you're watching Martin Short and Meryl Streep, here you're watching Martin Short and Steve Martin, and you're knowing the real life aspect of their relationship, the way that they're the two amigos, that they go back decades as best buds, as frequent scene partners.

Speaker 32 You can imagine, you know, and Martin Short's a widower, like they've been with each other through thick and thin.

Speaker 26 And I would guess that there's some real feeling behind this.

Speaker 76 And then, of course, when they go to the Chinese restaurant and just they're like hiding their faces behind the menus so that they can speak, so that they can share their feelings.

Speaker 5 Oh, just that whole like episode nine, you know, perfect example of the show, like being zany, but then also having a heart.

Speaker 17 Incredible. My pick as well.
You summed it up beautifully. The menus pay off.

Speaker 75 And like,

Speaker 17 Ben, we go way back.

Speaker 17 We've known each other for more than a decade we've been working together for more than a decade uh i watched you take a bride and i will say to you now like you know you might not be my emergency contact but you can be my life alert contact in case i fall and we can get colonoscopies together um everything in that episode the wands you know the blank of the nominal's like am i taking crazy pills like i you know there's a lot of like tension and comedy that builds up toward it and then just that vulnerability from Charles, like who we talk a lot about what Oliver keeps hidden and what he shows to the world, but Charles is like

Speaker 17 deeply emotionally repressed character and

Speaker 17 was so resistant to like forming this friendship in the first place.

Speaker 17 And like the real payoff here, especially in a season that is so oriented around Charles really having to reflect on his relationship with Saz and like what he lost, which also isn't, you know, that's like a contender for a pick here, certainly.

Speaker 17 I mean, I thought like Charles taking Saz's ashes to the wedding or like even just saying that the movie meant more to him now that he understood that she wrote it or like saying at the beginning of the season like Saz can't end up on a wipe and like the real panic that he felt about having failed her.

Speaker 17 Like all of that is the, it's a central text, but also that it's the backdrop for Charles thinking about what Oliver means to him and what it means to have a friend that you care about that deeply and who you'll travel through life together with.

Speaker 17 That was just a beautiful moment. And like, I love like you're calling out the mocap scenes because the absurdity of the

Speaker 17 setting is part of what gives the show such a specific quality and sense of self and just hits so hard.

Speaker 18 Those are the Chinese restaurant menus of the show, you know, like have this beating heart underneath the scene where they're CGI aliens, right?

Speaker 39 So it works.

Speaker 18 Like if it were too sappy, maybe it's maybe it's too much, but you kind of, you know, cut it with the comedy and it's just the perfect blend.

Speaker 74 And shout out to Steve Martin.

Speaker 48 Like we've been praising Martin Short and Meryl Streep.

Speaker 66 Like there's a great depth to his character too.

Speaker 18 Even the Charles and Doreen connection kind of worked for me.

Speaker 37 And I love how Charles, you know, normally just so reserved, can't access his emotions.

Speaker 18 But every now and then you get that glimmer of like the 70s, 80s Steve Martin kind of coming out and just hamming it up.

Speaker 25 And so he has that aspect of him too, and yet also supplies some of the emotional depth.

Speaker 55 It's just, it's a great group, which I guess takes us to our next category.

Speaker 17 It does.

Speaker 17 We're going to go more rapid fire through our final superlatives here to wrap. Number seven, favorite scene partners or group?

Speaker 18 I mean, it's probably the two that we just talked about, but

Speaker 26 the core trio, the three amigos, who, as I said, are back together more often this season, even if they are sort of squeezed out at times.

Speaker 31 Just incredible chemistry.

Speaker 26 There's no

Speaker 47 real rival.

Speaker 18 for these three.

Speaker 26 Now, I love them with Detective Williams.

Speaker 17 This was going to be my pick to put a twist on it, just because I assumed that we would have talked about the Core Trio so much to this point. Obviously, the Core Trio is the pick.

Speaker 17 Obviously, the three of them together are wonderful. Charles and Oliver inside of that are unbelievable.
Oliver and Loretta have been great.

Speaker 17 But when you put a little dusting of Detective Williams on the Central Trio, it is a different kind of magic.

Speaker 17 There's a part of me that thinks like, you know, we just haven't gotten as much, obviously, of Divine Joy Randolph in the show show because she, I mean, is like literally an Oscar winner and doing amazing things, and that's awesome, but we've missed her.

Speaker 17 I would love for her for Detective Williams to be in the show more.

Speaker 17 There's a part of me that thinks, like,

Speaker 17 because it is so limited, it is even more precious to us. But I do believe that even if we had a Detective Williams scene in every episode, it would still be perfect.

Speaker 18 Yeah, another spin-off.

Speaker 61 The only manner's expanded universe.

Speaker 17 Dare to dream. Wow, you're really, you're building like a, you can like launch your own streamer with this.

Speaker 75 Episode three, call me, Feb, like, move over buttons.

Speaker 17 Ben's got something else for you. Episode three, her rundown of Jan's likely assumed escape to Florida because, quote, there's a shit ton of orchestras and sex toy shops.

Speaker 17 And then when she referred to Zach Kalfanakis as that scrumptious, fuckable botlava, that scrumptious, fuckable botlava is portraying you in a movie.

Speaker 17 And then when she comes back in episode six and it's like, I had one request, one fucking request. Don't let anything happen to Gala Fanac.
It's just so good. So good.
Yeah.

Speaker 31 Hidden dimensions to that character, too.

Speaker 23 Huge musical fan.

Speaker 66 Love that for her, too.

Speaker 22 Incredible.

Speaker 26 And I guess our next category, right, is also about cameos, or in some cases, not so much cameos, more than cameos.

Speaker 17 Let's see if we interpreted this the same way. Yeah, whether he went for a true cameo or more of a central figure.
Our next category is like the most additive celebrity inclusion.

Speaker 17 So you could pick someone someone who was in five episodes or you could pick someone who was in one scene.

Speaker 19 I went with Richard Kind, who I think is the best of the Westies, the most fully fleshed out of the Westies too.

Speaker 37 Just feels like he should have been on this series from the start.

Speaker 60 And maybe that's just because he is an Upper West Side resident.

Speaker 18 He's a neighbor of mine. It's like when he shows up and he does a cameo in Girls 5 Eva and he says he has an IMDb page longer than a wizard's beard.

Speaker 16 It's true.

Speaker 47 You look at it. This was another little bit of growth on that beard.

Speaker 18 And he says in that show, you don't don't want the big time, you want the medium time, never be above number five on the call sheet of life.

Speaker 40 And he isn't here, but even though he's not one of the actors playing himself, it seems like he is.

Speaker 40 Like, I could believe that they just sort of showed up at Richard Kynes' apartment and started filming, and he happened to have an action.

Speaker 68 He's a man's fish, yes, he already was.

Speaker 23 Yes, so he just feels like he lives in the Arconia.

Speaker 79 I believe it.

Speaker 17 I also went with a Westie, but I went with a different Westie.

Speaker 22 Who do you think I picked?

Speaker 35 Helga?

Speaker 63 Nope.

Speaker 16 Ooh, wow.

Speaker 35 Kumail?

Speaker 17 I picked, I'm going with Rudy. I'm going with Kamale.
I'm going with Christmas all the time guy.

Speaker 17 Really for one scene. I mean, obviously, great is always, always wonderful.

Speaker 16 The episode,

Speaker 17 no, the abs are also

Speaker 17 very memorable, though. The idea of a fitness influencer who got stuck

Speaker 17 pretending to love Christmas because of like one viral reel is wonderful.

Speaker 17 The episode eight, a few good men scene

Speaker 62 was incredible.

Speaker 17 Are you going to do the whole monologue? Yeah, I was going to do the whole monologue. I think it's worth it.
And then he does.

Speaker 17 This was a remarkable bit of television that I absolutely adored. So I just thought in general, like, I agree, the Westies were really fun.

Speaker 17 And I thought that Rudy gave us a convincing suspect.

Speaker 17 for a stretch of the show, then that trademark blend of heart and humor that we need in OnlyMurders, and like really feels at home in the world of the show.

Speaker 17 So, we had kind of similar like logics, I guess, behind the piece, but different Westies. Interesting.

Speaker 62 Okay, Ben,

Speaker 17 speaking of meta, our next category is the best or worst podcasting moment, according to two podcasters. Plenty of choices here because, and this, I we're praising a lot about the season.

Speaker 17 I did think this was a knock.

Speaker 17 The actual making of the podcast is

Speaker 17 so

Speaker 17 minimal.

Speaker 38 I was going to say, there barely were any podcast moments.

Speaker 43 I had a tough time with this one because

Speaker 23 early on when they're just getting the show started, there was a sense of like, you know, you didn't see them cutting every last second of tape, but they would at least perform.

Speaker 26 They'd stand in front of a mic, right? They'd have a recording session of sorts.

Speaker 37 You'd see them plotting out lines.

Speaker 48 Here, barely any, right?

Speaker 25 This was an all-time low for podcast recording screen time, which

Speaker 54 is fair.

Speaker 37 Maybe that's not the greatest draw either, though.

Speaker 26 Subscribe to all the Ringers' YouTube channels, please.

Speaker 40 But, you know, maybe it's not the most riveting visually to see them speak into microphones, but they didn't do a lot of that this season.

Speaker 53 I think maybe that had to do with how convoluted the plot was, the fact that not only did we not know who the killer was, we didn't know who the victim was.

Speaker 57 And so how could you make a podcast about that?

Speaker 67 Granted, they have run off the rails and, you know, implicated people who were innocent in past seasons, but like...

Speaker 17 They never care about shattering someone's reputation. But like, yeah, even the big Westy reveal.

Speaker 24 Right.

Speaker 40 And ultimately, they say this can't go in the show.

Speaker 17 They're just like, well, we're not going to put that in the show because we actually, they are nice people and we don't want them to lose their cheap rent control department.

Speaker 23 Early on, you had that Greek chorus of the fans, like the listeners who would kind of stock them almost and sit next to them at the diner.

Speaker 18 Like there was a sense that, oh, there's like a community around the show.

Speaker 61 People are listening to it and interacting with it.

Speaker 26 And in this season, in one sense, it seems bigger than ever.

Speaker 4 There's a music being made of it.

Speaker 18 And on the other hand, like you get really no sense that like anyone's listening to this or following along or that anyone still particularly cares about the podcast.

Speaker 37 So that aspect has just sort of receded from view.

Speaker 18 And, you know, for better or worse, producer Kai would probably be pained by how much recording on phones was happening in this season.

Speaker 40 Phones that you're not even speaking directly into.

Speaker 68 Out in the world, out in the world.

Speaker 26 In the vicinity, you know, we'll speak in the broad direction of a microphone and maybe this will be good enough to tape.

Speaker 42 So yeah, that's tough.

Speaker 5 The actual mechanics of the podcasting, you know, never been a strength of TV shows in general.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 57 If you are a podcaster, which it's probably tedious to hear people.

Speaker 22 Kai says nightmare fueled. Yes.

Speaker 17 Popping into the chat.

Speaker 69 I know.

Speaker 47 Who is, I mean, in the past, it's been Mabel, right, who's been sitting down and grinding out the edits on these things.

Speaker 25 So I don't know what she has to work with anymore.

Speaker 17 I did enjoy when they're trying to get onto the Ron Howard Klongo set. And Mabel describes their show to the security guard by saying, we're professional podcasters.
Only Murders in the Building.

Speaker 17 We're the most listened to murder podcast on the Upper West Side that's sponsored by a deli cheen. I love that they're still going strong with that sponsorship.
Great stuff.

Speaker 17 So here's what I'm going to go with for podcasting moment. Mabel spends some of this season, you know, thinking about, oh, podcast producer.
I'm a podcast producer.

Speaker 17 Mabel, you're missing a hit. You're, you're, Howard has a hit on his hands with Animal Jobs.

Speaker 17 And Mabel has failed to take this seriously. Gravy? The Central Park Clydesdale? The bodega cat? Howard is onto something here.

Speaker 17 And I have no doubt that Animal Jobs will be a chart topper if Mabel ever engages and decides to make.

Speaker 17 I actually, when I finished the season, I like went to Spotify to check to see if they had released Animal Jobs as like a bit of related content around the season, which I think they should have done.

Speaker 17 It's not too late, Hulu. It's not too late.

Speaker 59 Let's pilot it.

Speaker 23 We have a podcast network.

Speaker 35 I have a

Speaker 25 beloved Dachshund who's co-hosting this episode on my lap right now.

Speaker 17 I have a cat who is the most important person in my life. And yes, I said person.

Speaker 68 Next category.

Speaker 17 Best use of New York. Or

Speaker 17 I don't think you'll go this way, but if you, if you're so inclined, Los Angeles.

Speaker 61 I will not.

Speaker 19 Had a lovely time in Los Angeles seeing you and others that we work with last week, but I will be going with New York Moments.

Speaker 39 We are both former residents of Hell's Kitchen.

Speaker 30 Yep.

Speaker 18 In fact, we lived on the same block at different times.

Speaker 17 Across the street from each other.

Speaker 86 Yes.

Speaker 25 Ships passing in the night, but ultimately meeting.

Speaker 26 And one thing I love is when you watch a show that's set in Hell's Kitchen, you know, your Daredevils, your Jessica Jones's, and it's still like it's the 70s.

Speaker 53 It's rough and tumble.

Speaker 46 It's a seedy neighborhood.

Speaker 50 It's unsafe to walk the streets.

Speaker 32 You can solve crime by night, be a PI, be a lawyer who is great at fighting crime and solving murders.

Speaker 61 The current Hell's Kitchen, not my experience, not much crime to fight these days.

Speaker 50 It's playgrounds and gleaming glass skyscrapers and gourmet food markets.

Speaker 25 And so when our crew makes an excursion to Hell's Kitchen, ostensibly Hell's Kitchen, we get the great line, have you ever been to Hell's Kitchen?

Speaker 43 Yeah, I've eaten at Oliver's.

Speaker 49 Well done.

Speaker 2 But also we get Concussions, the stunt person

Speaker 22 bar,

Speaker 21 which is supposed to be the humblest hovel in Oliver's words.

Speaker 44 The exterior establishing shot that we get of Concussions is in no way Hell's Kitchen, for one thing.

Speaker 23 In fact, I don't know if this is intentional or not, kind of poking fun at the fakeness of it, much like when they go to LA and you get the fake New York City set.

Speaker 17 Oh, that was great. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Godzilla.

Speaker 23 You can see street signs.

Speaker 65 This is Ridgewood Queens, at least the outside of this bar.

Speaker 48 So it looks nothing like Hell's Kitchen.

Speaker 17 It is, but it rings true to me that you can't ask Glenn Stubbins to eat a dumpster apple in Hell's Kitchen, man.

Speaker 69 No, no.

Speaker 17 You got to go elsewhere.

Speaker 54 Not enough rats.

Speaker 67 Actually, still a fair amount of rats, but you know, Eric Adams is on it.

Speaker 18 So,

Speaker 30 but

Speaker 26 you get these little hints of these insular Upper West Siders takes one to no one.

Speaker 40 And, you know, when Oliver feels like he's taking his life in his hands to venture down to Hell's Kitchen, or in episode six, he says desperately, take us to the Upper West Side anywhere but the hell that is Soho.

Speaker 25 Again, this is New Yorker humor here, but these are not nasty neighborhoods.

Speaker 18 And so the fact that they're so out of their element anytime they leave the immediate vicinity of the Arconia, just great sort of 30 rock-esque inside science jokes sort of humor.

Speaker 17 On that front, my pick for New York is early in the season when they're trying to call in Saz's murder and there are 68 emergencies ahead of them. And Oliver says, 68.
Okay.

Speaker 17 It looks like our glorious city has given us a minute. That is amazing.
And then they obviously return to that in the finale.

Speaker 17 72 emergencies ahead of you. I am a Los Angeles resident.
So while I do not want only murders to move to California, I will call out that the immediate procurement of In-N-Out

Speaker 17 as they're driving the limo through the city, wonderful stuff.

Speaker 17 And then I would be remiss if I did not notice that one of the things that stood out to me most watching this season, when they're in that aforementioned fire pit in the pool, I'm like, I have seen this house on Selling Sunset.

Speaker 17 I recognize this fire pit in this pool, in this Los Angeles mansion in the hills. Great stuff.
I like the idea that they're just renting out that house for production after production.

Speaker 17 Okay, speaking of things that look swanky,

Speaker 17 we're almost done here, Ben. 11th category, Fit Lord.
I personally feel that there are only really two contenders for this, but I'm curious to see which you go with. And maybe you'll surprise me.

Speaker 50 Well, Oliver reigns supreme in this category.

Speaker 36 That's one of them.

Speaker 78 Annually, but I'm going to go off the board.

Speaker 26 I'm going to go with Doreen.

Speaker 34 Oh,

Speaker 17 this is okay. Twist, grip.
Yes.

Speaker 43 Great one.

Speaker 18 As Loretta says, who wears a train in their own house?

Speaker 4 Doreen does.

Speaker 65 The wigs, the nails, the decolotage, the dolls, the various aspects of clothing that one can get their

Speaker 26 pigtails stuck in during an impromptu brawl.

Speaker 18 Doreen has a look, and apparently Melissa McCarthy brought a lot of that look to this character, took it very seriously, brought some of her own items of clothing.

Speaker 59 And I salute the look.

Speaker 37 feels true to me.

Speaker 25 I was going to go with the Billie Joel doorbell as the New York moment, but we already mentioned that.

Speaker 18 So I'll just say the general aesthetic of Doreen and her habitat.

Speaker 17 Great pick. With apologies to Oliver's scarves and to his

Speaker 17 sensational wedding suit. I'm going with Mabel here because Mabel's fashion season after season continues to be iconic.

Speaker 17 And I loved that it was actually like active text this season when Bev said in episode nine, something about your erotic non-sexuality. And Mabel says, yeah, it's the sweaters.

Speaker 17 I just really loved that. The kind of like

Speaker 17 chunky jumper, the mustard yellow jumper that was featured prominently in the middle back of the season, wonderful, particular highlight.

Speaker 17 Just great stuff for Mabel, as always, who, you know, ever since she like raided her aunt's closet at the beginning of the show has never once failed to deliver.

Speaker 17 And then Ben, to wrap, we just wanted to do a very quick, in our final moment here, season ranking. You just binged, you caught up on all of them.
They're all pretty fresh in your head.

Speaker 17 You revisited the, you've revisited this more recently than I have.

Speaker 17 I re-watched seasons one and two before season three, but I did not watch all three before season four.

Speaker 17 Hit me with your ranking.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is tough.

Speaker 50 I think there's a general perception that there has been a decline, that the show has gotten worse over time.

Speaker 18 I don't disagree with that. Again, I think the aspects of the show that

Speaker 73 I strongly considered that.

Speaker 39 I think that would be a defensible ranking.

Speaker 66 I mean, the thing thing is that I initially, I lost touch with the show mid-season two.

Speaker 18 You know, I just swallowed season one, loved season one.

Speaker 70 Season two, I was just out for a while and actually just kind of got back into it and been new.

Speaker 22 Season two was really good.

Speaker 50 Yeah, I, I, for whatever reason, it didn't hook me at the time.

Speaker 25 And so the fact that it led to a little hiatus for me in watching the show makes me want to rank that lower.

Speaker 37 I'm not a musical head like our pal Joanna, but, but that show within a show worked for me just because like some of those numbers were like legitimately great.

Speaker 85 So like just a lot of care given to that.

Speaker 57 And again, you know, to invoke curb, kind of like the producer season, I mean, sometimes it's fun to have that sort of peg, but I guess I would go with, yeah, kind of like a linear decline.

Speaker 18 Probably personally, I might put two

Speaker 44 lower than the consensus, I would say.

Speaker 18 And then I'd probably say three and four, but I don't feel like it's a steep drop off.

Speaker 54 And having watched them all like kind kind of in quick succession, at least for season one, you know, it feels to me like they've more or less retained what I like about the show.

Speaker 17 It's very, very gentle slope.

Speaker 14 Yes, graceful. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yes. Right.

Speaker 17 Ranging gracefully. Yeah, I'm with you.

Speaker 17 I go in order, but

Speaker 62 it's...

Speaker 17 It's pretty close to a straight line. One is just, it's hard to top one because it was such a surprise.
Right.

Speaker 17 When something just like captivates you in a way that you actually could not have anticipated, it's, it's really hard to match that.

Speaker 17 I do think, and we've both said many times we're not watching primarily for the mystery, but I, I do think the mystery in season two was really good.

Speaker 53 Yes.

Speaker 18 And I think it had to be, right?

Speaker 18 Like that was kind of the load-bearing aspect of that season before we got to know and care about these characters the way that we do now, where the vibes are enough, we can get by on the vibes.

Speaker 19 Early on, it was like, no, this is a serious murder show. Like this is a real mystery.
The outcome actually matters. There are clues, right?

Speaker 18 So we've kind of gone away from that again, for better or worse. But I'm still enjoying the ride.

Speaker 17 Can't wait for season five, man.

Speaker 39 Truly, we know we'll be back a year from now, probably like almost exactly.

Speaker 21 You know, we could probably put it on our calendars right now.

Speaker 17 Let's plan to pot about it again then, man. I can't wait.
This was a blast. I had a great time.

Speaker 77 Improbably murderous settings are a rich tradition in mystery shows.

Speaker 35 So people who are like, another murder in the Orconia, come on.

Speaker 65 Like, have you seen Murder?

Speaker 50 She wrote?

Speaker 64 Have you seen any other murder show?

Speaker 18 Like, there's a bottomless well of crime here. And this one literally hits close to home because I live, again, in a hundred-year-old apartment building less than a mile from the real-life Arconia.

Speaker 18 And I did some research before we did this pod. I could not find a single murder in my building, which is why I'm not a true crime podcast.

Speaker 65 I dove into

Speaker 43 the newspaper archives.

Speaker 23 The closest I could find, the most interesting crime committed, at least known to have been committed.

Speaker 18 Who knows how many murders are unsolved and unrevealed?

Speaker 31 But closest one I could find is a 1984 incident in which a woman was arrested for weapons possession, menacing, and unlawful imprisonment after allegedly holding her husband hostage with two pistols after an argument about him leaving the apartment.

Speaker 23 So I don't know if it worked out for those two.

Speaker 41 Sheesh.

Speaker 61 Honestly, she sounds perfect for me because I don't go out that much.

Speaker 4 So I wonder if she's still in the building somewhere.

Speaker 61 We might be a perfect pair.

Speaker 17 Super weird vibes from you here at the end.

Speaker 14 Ben,

Speaker 17 it took four seasons, but now we're cooking with gas. I had a blast.
Thanks for doing this. Thank you, of course, to Kai Grady for producing this episode.

Speaker 17 Thank you to Justin Sales for production supervision. Remember, Joanna and Mahoney will be back with you on this very podcast feed to talk about disclaimer.

Speaker 17 Until next time, remember, at least four of the settings on The Lady La Gore

Speaker 17 could kill you.