Spoilers

“Valley of the Dolls”

A week full of cameos!

We got a new character from Melissa McCarthy, the actors (Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis, Eva Longoria) returned, the Westies were back, Loretta made her way back from California, and Bev struggled to deal with Hollywood and her own bizarre shifts in personality.

Melissa McCarthy is Charles’s sister Doreen, who owns a vast collection of dolls (hence the episode title) and she, lets say, may be a touch cray cray.

We get a catfight between Melissa McCarthy and Meryl Streep. It was hilarious.

Charles, Mabel and Oliver went to Charles’ sister’s house to hide after discovering that they had been being watched by the killer for a long time. Of course, they told Howard where they were going so it seemed as if everyone knew where they went.

Howard played a big role too as he went to discover whom was cashing the social security checks of Dudenoff. He also got a phone number that, when Mabel called it, came to Vince Fish’s phone.

Oliver and Loretta straightened out their misunderstanding from the previous episode and Loretta, after the big catfight, proposed to Oliver (with a doll bracelet). He accepted so there could be a Only Murders in the Building wedding in the future.

It is revealed that the killer has ties to the first season as several of the plot holes of that season are mentioned, tying everything together in a cool idea.

Spoilers

“Episode 3”

“Coordinates”

Lois is really going through it.

Each week it seems as if they release two episodes of Grotesquerie and these two episodes send Lois through the wringer. The focus on her alcoholism and her relationships with her daughter, her husband, and a new man from the hospital named Eddie (Travis Kelce).

And this killer appears to be taunting her with each new kill.

I just realized that Father Charlie was played by Nicolas Alexander Chavez, who played Spencer Cassadine on General Hospital recently. Father Charlie and Sister Megan ended a tense encounter with sex. I have been uncertain about Father Charlie since the beginning. He feels like a major suspect in these murders.

There is a strange, dream-like sequence of Lois and Sister Megan in a car, singing a song together. The coloring of the scene created a hell-like landscape that was really disturbing and clearly part of the imagery of the episode.

Episode four, which is the first with an actual title, really dives into the religious iconography and ends with a creepy instance of a woman being chased by something.

Wild show so far. Is it too out there? Maybe.

Spoilers

“Blow Up”

I loved this episode.

Like a found footage film, Only Murders in the Building went through the whole episode on cameras, which happened to be everywhere.

The Brothers Sisters were set up as a new suspect last week, but they are cleared this week after spending most of the episode trying to make them look guilty.

Best Zach Galifianakis cameo of the season so far as he was recovering in the hospital after being shot by a ricochet off Glen Stubbins’ metal plate in his head. The few seconds Zach was on were hilarious.

The discovery of two left shoulders in the ashes of Sazz was cool. The reveal that the second body from the incinerator being the mysterious Dudenoff was a great twist. I never thought that the Brother Sisters were the killers, but the way this used the reveal in this episode was tremendous.

The way the show used the narrative plot map (Inciting incident, Rising Action, Climax, Denouement) was unbelievably clever and worked so well.

There is still the emotional connection for Charles in Sazz’s death, even with the increased paranoia as it seemed that all three of our podcasters were the targets, as the Oliver crew were shot at.

And the discovery of the cameras and the text message to all three of them saying “I’m Watching You” was creepy.

Love love love this episode. I watched it twice. I love this entire season so far.

Spoilers

“Adaptation”

I love and hate the ending of this week’s Only Murders in the Building at the same time.

What a great episode that ended with a horrendous cliffhanger, a gunshot echoing through the photo shoot.

I literally said out loud, “You can’t end there” as the screen went to black.

Charles was seemingly putting together a big time theory that the Brother Sisters, the movie’s directors, were the ones who shot Sazz, one of them as the shooter in the apartment and one to clean up the mess and dispose of the body. When the timeline of the murder night was seemingly thrown off by a limited amount of time, Charles was down about his “brain no longer thumping” as was written in the script of the movie. However, he did come up with the idea of the two. The Brother Sisters also had a boot mark similar to the one left in the apartment by the apparent shooter.

Clearly, as we have several episodes to go, this is not the final theory to come out, but everything sure feels like it fits together. Sazz supposedly had called about a mysterious trouble with the movie just before she was murdered.

By the way, the cameo of John McEnroe was hilarious, if not really weird.

We are introduced to Marshall, one of the writers of the movie script, who seems very excited to be a suspect by the trio. He may seem suss, but I just do not think he is anything more than a red herring.

I am not a fan of the side story of Oliver’s concerns over Loretta’s new co-star, This feels like a distraction from the best parts of the story (much like the heart attack to Oliver last season, which turned out to be nothing). Oliver does get a ton of funny lines from this, but it just feels too sitcommy.

I look forward to this show every week as it has been one of my favorites this year.