TV Recap: “Only Murders in the Building” – Podcasters Go Hollywood in Season 4 Premiere

Another season, another murder. Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building is back for Season 4, and this year, the mystery is deeply personal to Charles-Haden Savage. As viewers, we all witnessed a character get murdered at the end of Season 3, but when we meet up with the podcasting trio at the start of Season 4, they’re still blissfully unaware. Let’s recap.

Episode 1: “Once Upon a Time in the West” – Written by John Hoffman & Joshua Griffith

Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) stands at a microphone in Oliver Putnam’s apartment, recording the closing line of Season 3 of the podcast Only Murders in the Building. He puts a halcyonic spin on the death of Ben Glenroy, talking about the power of motion pictures to make someone immortal. But his last line is interrupted by a power surge in The Arconia, having to do a retake. With another season in the can, Charles, Oliver Putnam (Martin Short), and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) decide to drink to celebrate.

As they get in the elevator to head up to Charles’ apartment, he wonders what could’ve happened to Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), who had left the party the night before to grab a bottle of wine from Charles’ apartment to bring it down for them. Inside Charles’ dark kitchen, they find the bottle, seemingly untouched. “So Sazz never even made it back up here?” he asks his friends. When he opens the bottle, the cork falls, and Mabel bends down to pick it up. She notices some red splatted on the oven handle, but the kitchen is otherwise spotlessly clean, as usual.

Having pulled an all-nighter, Charles lays in bed watching Once Upon a Time in the West, falling asleep quickly to the high-pitched sound of a train whistle. When he wakes up, he could swear he was still hearing it. He checks his phone, disappointed not to see a message from Sazz. Oliver and Mabel barge in, the theater producer hysterically informing Charles that his musical, Death Rattle Dazzle, has lost its funding after its biggest producers were unmasked as murderers. Mabel is dressed in one of Oliver’s robes, currently crashing at his place while she is between apartments. Charles tells them about the whistle sound, fearing he has a brain tumor. Neither Oliver or Mabel can hear it.

Howard Morris (Michael Cyril Creighton) enters with a new pet, a dog named Gravy (he wanted a cat, but the shelter wouldn’t let him have another). He pitches a new podcast to Mabel that he’d like to host about animals with jobs, since Gravy is retired. But their conversation is cut short when Gravey begins to bark wildly in Charles’ kitchen. Howard takes her away.

Mabel asks Charles and Oliver if they’ve been getting emails from a woman named Bev Melon. Charles has, and he questions if it’s real. Oliver asks for more info, and they tell her that Bev is allegedly an executive at Paramount who wants to turn their podcast into a feature film. Oliver quickly recovers from the loss of his Broadway show at the prospect of a movie. Charles is reluctant to leave New York until he hears from Sazz, who said she needed to talk to him about something important. But as fate would have it, he gets a text message from Sazz at that very moment, informing him that she had to leave quickly to be a stunt double for Scott Bakula in L.A.

The trio goes from the real streets of New York to Hollywood’s facsimile on the Paramount backlot. As they walk to their meeting, Charles and Oliver tell Mabel they will take the lead on contract negotiations. They are all startled by the full conference room erupting in applause when they enter. Bev Melon (Molly Shannon) is the first to introduce herself, shuffling through several studio executives – Monica Bernstein-D’Angelo (Shannon Weiss), Todd Shettinger (Eric William Morris), Sal Snyder-Bernsdorf (Marc Bovino). She then introduces the film’s directors, “The Brothers,” who are in fact twin sisters – Trina (Catherine Cohen) and Tawny Brothers (Siena Werber), and the film’s writer, Marshall (Jin Ha). Development on the project is so far along that Bev has casting news to share already, which she withholds until a party held in their honor tonight. But first, they need to sign over their life rights. As documents are placed in front of Charles, Oliver, and Mabel, Bev talks about the qualities that will make them such compelling characters on screen. She refers to Oliver as “unlovable,” Charles as “unfun,” and Mabel as “aimless.” While Charles and Oliver try to talk about numbers (Bev tells them to just have their lawyers call business affairs), Mabel asks to be excused.

Charles and Oliver find Mabel sitting on a bench at one of the Paramount gates, feeling overwhelmed. She doesn’t want people to remember her forever as homeless and jobless the way she will appear in the film. Charles is also a little hung up on being called “unfun.” Oliver tells them that he needs this deal, adding that he invited Loretta to the party tonight. Charles invited Sazz, but she’s become unresponsive again. A limo pulls up, driven by Sydney, Charles’ old (in more ways than one) Brazzos driver. After an In-N-Out pitstop, the trio heads to Sazz’s apartment complex, the Sunset Swan. A pile of packages are stacked outside of the front door, and mail is hanging out of the mail slot. Oliver lifts it up and peers in, noticing that the flowers in a vase have all withered. He calls for Sazz, but there’s no answer. Oliver suggests she’s on a location shoot for Bakula. “Let’s party,” Charles says, deciding to be fun.

The trio arrive at a glamorous Hollywood Hills mansion to the sound of applause. They think it’s for them, but turning around, they realize it’s actually for the film’s stars – Zach Galifianakis, Eugene Levy, and Eva Longoria – who have all arrived in costume as their characters. Oliver gets off on the wrong foot with his on-screen counterpart, seemingly unfamiliar with Zach Galifianakis. As Bev pairs the stars and podcasters up to get to know one another, she tells Mabel that she’s available whenever she’s ready to talk.

Mabel learns that the studio aged up her character because a focus group found the age gap between her and Charles and Oliver creepy. Eugene is thrilled to be playing Charles-Haden Savage, revealing that he did the Brazzos dub for the French Canadian version of the show.

After the sun goes down, Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep) arrives. She has been so busy on the set of Grey’s New Orleans Family Burn Unit that she hasn’t been as in touch with Oliver as she wants to be. But it feels like serendipity that they should all find themselves in Hollywood so quickly after the collapse of Death Rattle Dazzle. Loretta asks Oliver if he would consider moving to L.A. to be with her. He stammers about how he feels like she’s flying away, and he can’t keep up with her. She reaffirms her love for him. “Loretta, will you…” Oliver asks before finishing what sounded like the beginning of a proposal with a request for time to consider her offer to move to L.A.

Mabel goes to the bar, and Eva Longoria joins her, ordering tequila for both of them. She tells Mabel that she heard she’s holding out on signing away her life rights and that she doesn’t blame her. Eva feels the script makes Mabel seem sad. She gives Mabel some advice, saying when she hit a crossroads in her career, she invested in her future to become a producer, director, and brand ambassador for countless products. She advises Mabel to take the money and do something great with it. Mabel goes to a seating area where she finds Bev, sitting down to talk as Marshall gets closer to observe. Mabel hands Bev a card with her terms. We don’t see what it says, but Marshall is shocked by it.

Charles sits on a couch, nodding off when he is awoken by a whistling sound – a guest blowing across the top of a bottle. Looking up, he sees what looks like Sazz leaving the party. He follows them towards the front door. “Hey, Sazz,” he calls. But the person who turns around is actually Scott Bakula. Charles asks if he’s seen Sazz. “She was supposed to double me on this pilot we shot last week, but she never showed,” Scott tells him. Charles finds Oliver and Mabel about to celebrate with a glass of champagne, drawing them away from the party, resigning to not being fun.

Back at the Sunset Swan, Charles uses his lock-picking skills to break into Sazz’s apartment. Turning on the lights, Mabel is surprised by four X-rays on display, each representing a broken bone Sazz received on the job. “She’s had so many joints replaced by metal,” Charles shares. “Supposedly, the best ones come from Bulgaria. She only gets them from there.” They hear a noise and call out, but nobody responds, so they continue their search.

Charles sits at Sazz’s desk, which is cluttered with bits of paper, most of which have handwriting on them. A score card with the words “Long game,” a yellow card that reads “West Tower Arconioa” with question marks all around it, a sticky note with the numbers “773440″ written, and a mail envelope that says “Looking at Charles” in blue marker. It’s all very confusing to Charles. Another sound startles them – “Angel in Flip-Flops” – Charles’ ringtone. He answers the call from Lester (Teddy Coluca), the Arconia doorman. Lester apologizes for not getting the window replaced today. Charles is confused, but Lester tells him there was a note on his desk yesterday that there was a hole in one of his kitchen windows. Lester says it’s causing a whistling sound. Charles asks Lester if the hole is small enough for a bullet to have gone through, asking him not to touch the window.

While Charles was examining Sazz’s desk, Mabel got a text from Howard. “Gravey is ready to record,” reads his first message. Mabel tells him he’s spelling Gravy wrong. “No, it’s Grave-y,” Howard texts back. “She was a cadaver dog! That was her ‘Animal Job’!” Mabel remembers how the dog began backing when she was in Charles’ kitchen, near the window with a hole in it, near the stove with red splatter on the handle.

“We need to get back to New York,” Charles declares.

As a segue from L.A. to New York City, Charles-Haden Savage’s narration about the power of the movies continues, lecturing about the first seven minutes of Once Upon a Time in the West, which is so compelling for its absence of dialogue and heightened sound effects. That train whistle perfectly matches the pitch of the whistle coming from the bullet hole in Charles’ kitchen window as he inspects it with Oliver while Mabel looks closer at the oven handle. Charles pulls out his phone and texts Sazz’s number: “You’re not Sazz. Who are you?”

Howard returns to Charles’ apartment with Gravey. The dog spins in circles in the kitchen in front of the stove, picking up the scent. She then leads them out into the hallway to a chute that leads to the basement incinerator. A note states that it’s out of order.

Down in the basement, Charles opens the incinerator’s hatch as Oliver and Mabel watch. He leans in, examining a pile of ashes. Using his bare hands, he begins to sift through the ash, pulling out several metal joints – all of which say they were made in Bulgaria. He sits down, holding two joints, in shock. His phone buzzes. Oliver helps pull it out of Charles’ pocket, looking at the response that just came from Sazz’s number. Charles asked who they were. Their answer: “Not your f—— friend.”

Only Murders in the Building returns next Tuesday, September 3rd, with the second episode of Season 4, titled “Gates of Heaven.”

Mabel & Oliver begin investigating Arconia's West Tower and get trapped inside an ominous game. Meanwhile, Charles is visited by two individuals from his complex past.

Songs Features in This Episode: