Watercooler Shows, the trending series that everyone talks about the next day at the office, around the water cooler. Watercooler Wednesdays seeks to be a (critical) guide through the VoD maze: from masterpiece series to guilty pleasures, and from blockbusters that keep you on the edge of your couch to hidden gems; if it leads to binging, then it’s exactly what we’re looking for.

Only Murders in the Building (John Hoffman, Steve Martin, 2023)

Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez walk into a Hollywood producer’s office… okay, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that, but this cast still sounds more like a sketch comedy premise than a casting decision. Season 3 of Only Murders in the Building is just as fresh as the first two, without being fake almost at all — which is all the more important now that the show takes a serious turn towards a musical.

At the center of the murder mystery is the same trio of amateur detectives, neighbors and unlikely BFFs who constantly roast each other with great chemistry and charisma. Making a name for themselves in the true-crime podcast world, their success seems to be pulling them in different directions. Mabel (Selena Gomez) is about the only one still interested (addicted) in solving crime puzzles, while retirees Oliver (disgraced theater director, Martin Short) and Charles (TV actor, Steve Martin) enjoy their newfound stardom to relaunch their careers and love lives.

Oliver’s grand comeback in showbiz collapses with a bang just minutes after the curtain rises, the bang being the lead actor’s body hitting the floor, blood running out of his mouth. A superhero movie superstar terrified of an artistic environment where talent can’t be edited, Ben (Paul Rudd) is a poster boy modeled after Agatha Christie’s mysteries: but who wouldn’t want to kill the prick? It’s perhaps the only downside of this season, the fact that it lines up its suspects one after another. It’s missing the chaos of the previous seasons, where the detective work and clue-gathering followed a less predictable path. Unlike a highbrow murder mystery, here, at the end of each episode, everyone receives a get-out-of-jail-free card, an alibi…  not many murderers in the building.

Instead, we have two murders, medically speaking – legally though, we’re dealing with an attempt and an actual murder, both of them targeting Ben, who miraculously comes back to life from clinical death only to be killed “for good” in the right building. “You know, Mabel, we couldn’t have done the podcast anyway, Ben didn’t die in the building,” Charles comforts her just moments before Ben falls through the elevator ceiling. It’s a scene that still amuses me, not so much for its content but for the meta-image it evokes. Somewhere at the intersection of comic creativity deeply rooted in the absurd and brand value (there’s already a polished intro featuring Arconia, the building where the main characters live, and a super catchy show title), I can imagine the three actors trying to stay in character as they sneak out the corpse from one building to another through a considerable hole where the fourth wall should be. Breaking the fourth wall remains a favorite sport this season as well, though it’s harder to appreciate when done with style and originality in the metaverse that mainstream TV and cinema have become, where everything is a quote, pastiche, intertextuality, meme, and the main cinephile satisfaction is to correctly identify the references.

Only Murders in the Building continues to be firmly entrenched in the realm of (self-)reference, playfully assembling all manner of pop culture artifacts, which are then filtered into other pop culture artifacts with the ease of a stand-up comedian testing material for their next special (all done not to prop up a sitcom but for the love of art – in this case, stand-up – and maybe that’s why you don’t even mind when the humor falls flat). Take, for example, the scene where Gomez dons a wedding dress to burst into the courtroom (“because nobody stops a bride in this town”). It’s a slapstick premise which is that much funnier as the show remains true to its original geriatric concept (only murders in the building, minimal physical effort, everything advances through dialogue: the investigation, the comedy, the podcast, the romance). So the resolution of a seemingly physical comedy scene also comes through dialogue, a subtle reference to the famous collaboration between the two Martins in Father of the Bride.

But where season 3 truly excels is in creating its own cultural artifacts. Only Murders in the Building has played from the beginning with frame stories (hence the appetite for breaking the fourth wall): the flashbacks, the podcast (and its competitors), the hit crime series and the character Charles is best known for, the speculative reenactments, and all sorts of apparitions, dreams, or manic episodes. They all pale in comparison to Death Rattle, the play that Oliver wanted to stage before the lead actor dies, and especially to Death Rattle Dazzle, the musical (based on the same source novel, which was obviously also invented) he envisions as a backup solution after the tragedy.

The clues were always there – for example, this song composed by Steve Martin, performed by the character he plays in the film (actor Charles-Haden Savage) and marketed under the name of the character with whom Charles had achieved fame (Detective Brazzos). Only Murders… has always had this aura of a show, a combination of variety acts, frame stories, anecdotes, and so on, beyond the obvious background of the two Martins (with their theatrical-musical explorations, individually or as a comic duo). Naturally, in the good tradition of non-sequitur humor that Steve Martin (who came up with the idea for the series) relies on, the most convenient and predictable solution is also the first one that was put on the table: Selena Gomez does not sing (except for a short number inspired by Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, with whom Oliver shares the same profession and heart problems).

What’s surprising about this fictitious musical – but with every chance of becoming a real production, given the fan base Only Murders… already has – is the creative effort put into bringing it to life. This type of frame stories are usually narrative gimmicks, more frame than content. However, Death Rattle Dazzle enjoyed the talent of some of the composers behind La La Land and Hairspray, and the show’s mainstay is a talented unknown whose career never took off, played by Meryl Streep. Only Murders… won’t win, nor it claims any Emmys for acting, and it’s pretty clear that of the core trio, Martin Short is the only one who actually knows how to act. Steve Martin is Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez remains a mystery: is she an acting genius, or is this simply her only range of performing skills, monotonous and grumpy (be that as it may, it’s exactly what is needed here)? Speaking of Meryl Streep, I did not expect this unpretentious show, which doesn’t strive to be some form of high art (in terms of acting or other aspects), to shake my indifference toward the most acclaimed actress of her generation.

And perhaps here’s another key to why Only Murders in the Building is so engaging: there are no old folks’ parts. The premise of the series could just as easily be the work of an AI robot tasked with discovering new formulas marketable to different generations, and no matter how much chemistry is now visible between the main actors, that does not refute the suspicion of stunt casting. It’s easy to imagine how such an idea could fail in a clichéd formula with two 70-year-olds playing opposing roles (the serious guy and the goofy one, or the grumpy man and the sleazy geezer, and so on) and the most popular female icon in social media inserted between them for ageist jokes followed by syrupy moments. Obviously, there is a specificity that comes with age, but the roles are built from within, as an expression of representation rather than an external gaze. Even more so this season, with all the shockwave created by Meryl Streep’s presence and all sorts of cameos (Mel Brooks via video call) and the obvious warmth with which the creative process is illustrated in the live shows, Only Murders in the Building stands out as a gesture of generosity towards the cast and a promise to the viewers: the show must go on. In retrospect, it’s not exactly a turn toward Broadway, but rather a foot pressing the gas pedal to get home.

The show is available on Disney +

Andrei Sendrea

Film critic and journalist, UNATC graduate. Andrei Sendrea wrote for LiterNet, Gândul, FILM and Film Menu, and worked as an editor on the "Ca-n Filme" TV Show. In his free time, he works on his collection of movie stills, which he organizes into idiosyncratic categories. At Films in Frame, he writes the Watercooler Wednesdays column - the monthly top of TV shows/series.