Does everyone have a tell? Or do some people have such a convincing poker face that you’d never be able to know if they were hiding something? That theme is explored in the fifth episode of season two of Only Murders in the Building, fittingly titled “The Tell.” Enjoy this week’s detailed recap and see if you can guess who killed Bunny Folger.
(Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)
Will Putnam (Ryan Broussard) helps his son Henry (Oliver Fequiere) with a family tree project for school. Picking up a photo of Oliver from the 1970s, Will begins this episode’s narration by talking about how great that decade was for his dad. In a flashback, we see Young Oliver (Samuel Farnsworth) introducing his friends to a murder mystery card game called Son of Sam (inspired by the murders of David Berkowitz). We see how the game is played, with most cards indicating the player is a bottle blonde while one player becomes Son of Sam. When the lights go out, that player taps another to “kill” them and they drop down dead. Everyone debates who the killer is and if they get it wrong, the cycle repeats until either the Son of Sam card is revealed, or the Son of Sam is the only one still standing.
We see another flashback set sometime later when Will was a child (Carter Harris), spying on his parent's party in The Arconia as Oliver (Martin Short) pulls out the Son of Sam game. Seeing his son, Oliver takes Will back to bed and Will asks him how he always knows who has the Son of Sam card. Oliver talks to Will about how everyone has a tell. He knows it’s not his mom because she’s eating cheese, which she only does when relaxed. Returning to the party, Oliver finds Teddy Dimas (Nathan Lane) sitting on the same couch as Oliver’s wife Roberta (Marie-Francoise Theodore). “Teddy, you’re the killer,” Oliver declares and Teddy reveals his Son of Sam card.
“But it turns out you can hide a secret from my dad,” Will’s introduction concludes. “All you have to do is not know what you’re hiding.
Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) is at the prison talking to Jan (Amy Ryan) on a telephone through a glass partition. He was hoping she could help give him insight into Bunny’s murderer and she debunks his theory that Nina did it. After hearing about the knitting needle being placed in Bunny’s knife wounds and the fact that the killer keeps planting items in their apartments, she determines that they are an artist, a storyteller. “An artist never finishes their piece in the middle,” she says. “They stick with it until the end, finding ways to stay close to their work.” She asks Charles if there’s anyone new in their lives; anyone who is trying to get close to them.
Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) is searching through the hidden passageways in The Arconia talking on the phone with Alice (Cara Delevingne), whose flat is leaking rainwater through her roof. Alice was planning on hosting a party tonight but asks Mabel if they could have it at her place instead due to her leaky ceiling. Mabel has to pause their conversation briefly when she notices a chute leading up to a grate on the floor of her closet. Pulling herself up, Mabel tells Alice she doesn’t want to be alone tonight and agrees to host the party. Hanging up the call, Mabel notices a matchbook balancing on a ledge in the shaft to the passageways. She picks it up and notes that it’s from The Pickle Diner. Turning it around, she sees a red stain and freaks out, tossing it on the floor.
Oliver helps Will with the school play he’s directing, with Winnie cast as Toto in The Wizard of Oz. Oliver brags about how showbusiness is in Will’s DNA going back five generations and how proud he is of him. Will makes a joke about how that will show up in the ancestry test he took to help with Henry’s ancestry project. Oliver leaves when he gets a text from Mabel asking him to come over ASAP.
(Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)
When Oliver gets to Mabel’s apartment, they begin to debate about the red stain on the matchbook. Is it blood, or just ketchup? Thinking back to Bunny’s last words (“Fourteen” and “Savage”), they question whether she may have instead been saying “Passage.” A conversation about the difference between memory and reality gets Oliver and Charles talking about the Iran Contra Affair, with Mabel having to get them both back on the topic.
At The Pickle Diner, Bunny’s regular waiter Ivan (Ariel Shafir) gives them a list of his regular clients, but half the list is in Russian. While the trio talk about what’s going on with the case, they are being listened to by their most devoted fans Marv (Daniel Oreskes), Paulette (Ali Stroker), Sam (Jaboukie Young-White), and Grant (Orson Hong) seated one table over. Marv admits to doing mold removal in The Arconia and knowing about the passageways. Charles steers the conversation towards Jan’s theory, asking the others if anyone new is trying to get close to them. Mabel gets a text that makes her smile and she is forced to talk about Alice, revealing that they’ve had a couple of dates. When Charles and Oliver ask to come to the party, Mabel defends Alice and agrees to let them so they can see for themselves that she’s not a suspect.
(Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)
When Alice meets Charles and Oliver, she dives right into compliments. She praises Charles’ acting work in an obscure Scandanavian erotic film called “Encounter Out of Salla” and compliments Oliver’s outfit. While Charles is immediately put at ease, Oliver pulls him aside to say that he knows she’s hiding something. He takes off and returns shortly after with a bowl of red and green pills, calling them drugs, and the Son of Sam game. He explains the rules and the sequence becomes like a fantasy, with everyone suddenly in 1970s attire. Cards are distributed and the game begins in a montage. Charles is eliminated quickly and as the game proceeds, it comes down to just Oliver, Mabel, and Alice. Oliver puts Alice on the spot, telling her that he knows her tell: Playing with her hair. He noticed she was doing it while talking about the film she saw Charles in. She was doing it while talking about her upbringing. And she’s doing it now. Alice is defensive but Oliver pushes on and gets her to admit that she’s actually the daughter of a plumber from Essex and created a fabulous backstory to create legitimacy for herself in the art world. She turns in her blonde card, runs off, and locks herself in the bathroom, embarrassed as the party clears out.
(Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)
Alone, Mabel visits Alice in her bathroom and asks to know why she lied to her. Mabel is upset, saying that she has trust issues and asking for no more half-truths. They kiss. Later, we see them cuddling together in bed. The camera pans down to Alice’s purse on the floor. Inside it we see a card. Alice did have the Son of Sam card.
That night, Oliver hears a noise in the hallway and peeks out to see Ivan sliding something under Bunny’s door. After he leaves, Oliver pulls it out and finds an envelope full of cash. He goes back to The Pickle Diner and Ivan tells him that he felt like having some of Bunny’s money would make him look like he had a motive to kill her, so he wanted to return it. Oliver asks Ivan if he saw anything unusual on the days leading up to Bunny’s death. He directs Oliver’s attention to a security camera in the corner. In the kitchen, Ivan tells Oliver that his co-worker waited on Bunny the day before she died and she was there with another person, whom she had an argument with. Ivan gets to the part of the tape where Bunny is getting up from the booth to leave. All we see is the back of someone’s head in the booth, possibly wearing a black beanie hat. They get up and are in pants and a long jacket. They head to the exit, never turning around, but they stop and grab something from the host stand. “What did they just pick up?”, Oliver excitedly asks. “Nothing, that’s just where we keep the matchbooks,” Ivan responds.
Charles lays in bed talking on the phone with Jan, who doesn’t think Alice is the murderer. Her conversation gets flirty, as it did earlier in the episode, but Charles is less resistant to flirting back now. He confesses that he misses her bassoon playing. She reminisces about the blueberry bagels they shared together the morning after they first made love. She asks if Charles still has any in the freezer. The next day, we see Charles visiting Jan again at the prison. She thanks him for the bagels he brought her.
Oliver texts a recording he made of the stranger at Bunny’s table grabbing a matchbook to Charles and Mabel, saying he hopes it makes up for last night. He pulls out a tray of dips from Dima’s Deli from his fridge as Will visits with him. Will asks his dad if he’s certain that he’s 100% Irish and Oliver switches to an Irish accent for his affirmative response. Will got his DNA results back and everything looks right on his mom’s side, but it came back that his dad’s side was very Greek. “Greek?”, Oliver is surprised to hear, looking down at the dips in his hands.
Flashback to that night Will remembered of his parents having a Son of Sam party. Oliver has just revealed Teddy to be the Son of Sam and sits between him and his wife Roberta. “You’re awfully quiet tonight, Teddy,” Oliver notices, putting his arm around his wife. “What, do you have another secret?”, he asks. We see Teddy lean forward to glance at Roberta, who gives him a sheepish look back.
Is Teddy Dimas Will’s biological father? Or is this part of Teddy’s plan to get back at Oliver? Did Alice have anything to do with the death of Bunny Folger? Why did she lie about having the Son of Sam card? Is that blood on the matchbook? Or is it just ketchup? We’re now halfway through the second season of Only Murders in the Building and we will have to wait until next Tuesday, July 26th, to find out what happens next on Hulu. I leave you with the description of next week’s episode, titled “Performance Review.”
Charles, Oliver and Mabel collide with their podcasting mentor-turned-competitor, Cinda Canning. Subsequently, a key clue requires the trio to orchestrate a classic stakeout — Brazzos-style. New York has never been more glittering.