‘Only Murders In The Building’ Season 4, Episode 1 Recap And Review: We’re Back, Baby

Only Murders In The Building ended on a very troubling note during the final moments of Season 3, just as everyone was popping open the champagne and celebrating not only a successful murder investigation, but also the rip-roaring opening night of Death Rattle Dazzle, Oliver Putnam’s (Martin Short) glorious return to directing a Broadway show. Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) had his own comeback of sorts, with the hilarious Which Of The Pickwick Triplets Did It number—one of the best scenes in the entire Hulu series.

At the after-party, as Oliver, Charles and Mabel (Selena Gomez) celebrate, in walks long-time Charles stunt double Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch) dressed up exactly like Charles. She tells him she’d like a word with him later about “something sensitive.” When he says he’s going upstairs to get a bottle of Malbec, she goes instead. And as she walks through the dark flat, someone shoots her through the window. This is clearly a trained professional, shooting in the dark from a great distance and hitting her directly in the heart.

As she dies—or passes out?—she appears to attempt to write something in blood on the kitchen floor. What that was, we may never know because in Season 4’s premiere, when our trio of podcasting sleuths goes up to Charles’s flat, we’re all in for a shocking surprise: Sazz’s body is nowhere to be found. Mabel mistakes a bit of blood spatter to be wine. Charles later hears the whistling from the bullet hole in the window, but doesn’t know what’s causing the sound. Whoever killed—or possibly killed—Sazz, they cleaned up as much of the mess as they could, going so far as to send a note to the building to have his window replaced, ostensibly from Charles.

The chilling end of the episode all but confirms that Sazz is dead, when (in silence, like the intro to the Sergio Leone film Once Upon A Time In The West, which this episode is named after) the trio heads downstairs to the incinerator room and finds, among the ashes, Sazz’s metal Bulgarian joints. Now the fan theories will start flying: Was the killer actually after Charles, or was Sazz the target all along? Had she gotten too close to some dark secret? Is this a message for Charles? Could Howard be behind it for some reason? Perhaps he’s actually a Moriarty-like villain, pulling strings from the shadows all this time . . . .

Or, what if Sazz set this up herself as some bizarre swan song? Or could it be the movie producers, hoping to generate even more buzz for their big adaptation?

That’s the other plotline running through both this episode and, it appears, the rest of Season 4. Fresh off the failure of their Broadway flop, Paramount Pictures aggressively emails our heroes informing them that they very badly would like to make a movie version of the podcast. Some very funny “negotiations” follow with Charles writing just the number “4” on a folded piece of paper, fishing for how many zeroes the producer (Molly Shannon) is willing to part with.

Mabel has misgivings about the whole thing, but later plays hardball and secures the deal. Meryl Streep’s Loretta makes an appearance at the big party where we meet the big stars set to play our three intrepid podcasters: Zack “Fragilisticexpialidocious” Galifianakis will play Oliver (though he’s annoyed by Oliver from the get-go), Eva Longoria will play Mabel (they aged up the character because test audiences found the age-gap between Mabel and her pals “creepy”) and Eugene Levy will play Charles, having already done the Quebec dub for Brazzos in Canada.

I suppose this is another reason the premiere is named after Once Upon A Time In The West. Our New York City investigators fly out to Hollywood (and walk across a hilariously Hollywood set version of NYC) but just as quickly fly back east when they realize that Sazz is not only missing, but may have fallen victim to foul play.

This was a terrific opening episode for Season 4. I have no idea who the killer is, but it has to be someone with a grudge against Charles. There are plenty of people who that could describe, though none of them are professional hitmen as far as I know. Then again, you can always hire an assassin to do your dirty work—even from prison.

Hulu will be releasing these weekly every Tuesday for the next ten weeks, so there’s plenty of time to sink our teeth into this one and try to figure out what’s going on. I have to say, I’m very happy to see the series return to form. I really liked Season 3 (though the musical took up perhaps a little too much space, and I hope the movie doesn’t do that this season). It was certainly better than Season 2. So far, Season 1 remains my favorite and I hope that the even-more-star-studded cast this season doesn’t lose focus on what matters most: Charles, Mabel and Oliver, the reason this show is so delightful, even when it goes very, very dark.

What do you think of Only Murders In The Building Season 4 so far? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.