TV Recap: “Only Murders in the Building” Movie Directors Make a Short Doc About Becoming Suspects in Sazz Pataki’s Murder

A gunshot was fired at the end of the fifth episode of Season 4 of Only Murders in the Building, an exciting cliffhanger that picks up right where things left off in episode six, “Blow-Up.” With the Brothers sisters now the lead suspects, it makes sense that they be the narrators of this episode. But they aren’t going to provide their narration podcast style. Let’s recap their short documentary film about their experience being suspects.

Episode 6: “Blow-Up” – Written by Rick Weiner & Kenny Schwartz

The Brothers sisters – Trina (Catherine Cohen) and Tawny (Siena Werber) – don’t just narrate this week’s episode,  they turn it into a documentary short film crafted in their distinct vérité style. In the prologue, we see footage from one of their earliest films – The Song of the Ruptured Swan (2010) – made while they were in high school being ostracized by their peers. The film was a crime of passion as they produced it with a stolen camera. But it wasn’t until they got to college that they really found a champion for their art in their film professor. “Chaos can be good; Chaos can be art,” he taught them. “We really took that to heart,” Tawny concluded.

Act I – The Inciting Incident

A photoshoot for the Only Murders major motion picture was interrupted by a gunshot. When the shot was fired, the three Olivers were posing together. We find Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) laying on the ground, sandwiched between actor Zach Galifianakis (Himself) and stuntman Glenn Stubbins (Paul Rudd). Both Glenn and Zach were hit by the shot, but the real Oliver is alive and well. Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) grab Oliver and vacate the building, trailed by Howard Morris (Michael Cyril Creighton) and his camera as they all get into a taxi and drive away.

Through footage captured by Howard, we see the podcast trio speculate that the shot was intended for Oliver. But if that’s true, it would mean Sazz’s death really was an accident and her fatal blow was meant for Charles. And if that’s true, then Mabel is likely a target as well. The Brothers sisters are the lead suspects, and the trio realize that Howard is filming for them as the on-set documentarian/talent liaison. Howard vows to work for them instead as Mabel discusses the improbability of film directors sabotaging their own project with murder.

Returning to The Arconia, the trio finds kleptomaniac Uma Heller (Jackie Hoffman) frustrated with them, moreso than usual. Security cameras are being installed in the lobby, which will thwart her ability to randomly swipe things from her neighbors. The trio decide to go to Oliver’s apartment since it’s the only one where a murder either hasn’t been committed in or from. As they wait for the elevator doors to close, they see the Brothers sisters, looking very calm, each holding a Super 8 camera, filming them.

Detective Williams (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) arrives at Oliver’s apartment, furious that they let something bad happen to her celebrity crush/hall pass, Zach Galifianakis. She shares that Glenn Stubbins is stable but unconscious. He had a matel plate in his head, which deflected the bullet, causing it to ricochet and hit the comedy actor. When Williams sees Howard’s camera, she orders him to turn it off. But the documentary then switches to lower-quality cameras, seemingly stationed around Oliver’s apartment. Charles tells Williams that he saw a long black case in the Brothers’ office, which he thinks houses the rifle that killed Sazz Pataki. Williams shares that her intel suggests that Dudenoff is in New York, not Portugal, and she believes someone is after them all. But she also suggests that they revisit Jan Bellows as a suspect, Charles’ ex and Sazz’s most recent lover, who is on the lam and was recently spotted in the city. Williams has to leave to go to a crime scene that may be another one of Jan’s victims. But before she goes, she gives Charles a box containing the cremated remains of Sazz.

The trio get an alert that there’s an emergency production meeting. They worry it’s to lure them back into the open, but Mabel suggests that if Howard is filming them, the murderer will be too scared to try another attempt. Charles sees this as an opportunity to look in the case in the Brothers’ office.

In the penthouse suite, movie producer Bev Melon (Molly Shannon) enthusiastically declares that the shooting won’t affect the shoot (the gunshot won’t halt production). She falsely quotes Zach Galifianakis as saying “The show must go on” (we see his side of the story: Bev threatened him not to leave the film and stole his pain meds). She asks everyone to sign a new liability waver. Charles sees the case in the Brothers’ office, but the directors go inside and close the door. Mabel talks to screenwriter Marshall (Jin Ha), getting his take on the possibility of the directors being the killers. He says he wouldn’t be surprised, asking Mabel if she’s seen their student film.

Oliver prepares snacks as the trio sits around Mabel’s laptop to watch The Dessecration of Alice, a film the Brothers made in college. It features two twins (Elliot Frances Flynn and Bridget Flynn) who were sculpted out of clay by The Creator, made to do his bidding. The twins look eerily like Trina and Tawny. And then The Creator is revealed… portrayed by East Tower resident Vince Fish (Richard Kind).

Act II – The Rising Action

Vince’s eye patch has hopped to his left eye as he opens his door to Charles, Oliver, Mabel, and documentarian Howard. Rudy Thurber (Kumail Nanjiani) is there, too, futzing with a camera drone he and Vince picked up at an estate sale. Vince asks about Howard’s camera and they tell him about the production doc. Vince gushes about how he loves movies, and Mabel mentions that they were just watching one – The Dessecration of Alice. “I was in that,” Vince says matter of factly, and Mabel asks why. Vince shares that he and Rudy both took film classes from their landlord, the mysterious Dudenoff. Rudy interjects about how the Brothers sisters were his favorite students, and how all of The Westies hated how they would suck up to him during games of Oh Hell.

With this information, Oliver summises that The Dessecration of Alice was semi-autobiographical, with the Brothers willing to do the bidding of the one they see as their creator, Dudenoff. Mabel wants to finish watching the movie before following that hunch. Charles elects to hang back with Vince and Rudy, hoping the drone will be able to see the mysterious case through a window into the Brothers’ office. As Rudy navigates the drone towards the East Tower’s penthouse apartment, Charles shares that he heard that Dudenoff is back in the city. Vince and Rudy are both shocked, unable to believe that he would return without coming to see them. In Rudy’s distraction, he accidentally crashes the drone.

Oliver’s near-death experience has caused him to rethink he love for Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep). He takes a moment alone to call her, saying he intended to propose to her in L.A. but choked up. “I want to spend whatever time I have left with you,” he professes. Her responses are delayed, and they sound like moans. It’s as if she’s completely uninterested in him, or possibly having sex with Jack Jonk. The call disconnects. What Oliver doesn’t know is that Loretta is on the set of Grey’s New Orleans Family Burn Unit in a full body cast, her character having been burned, both physically and emotionally.

Mabel finishes watching The Dessecration of Alice as Charles returns to share that his plans to see the Brothers’ big case was once again foiled. Oliver comes in depressed about Loretta. Howard returns to Oliver’s apartment, this time with his new dog, Gravey, a retired cadaver dog. Gravey’s nose is instantly drawn to the box of Sazz’s remains on a coffee table, knocking it over and spilling out the combination of dust and metal joints. Charles and Oliver work together to clean up, and Oliver hands Charles a metal joint marked as the left shoulder. Charles says that can’t be it, because Sazz’s parts were from Bulgaria, so the writing should be in Bulgarian, a language Charles knows from doing their dub of Brazzos. Mabel is the first to realize what this means. “Sazz’s body wasn’t the only one in the incinerator,” she declares.

Act III – The Climax

Mabel’s theory is that Dudenoff committed a murder. With successful podcasters in The Arconia’s other tower running a series all about murders in the building, he wanted to ensure that they didn’t come snooping around. Sazz’s death was either accidental, intended for Charles, or intentional because she was looking into something. And that would explain why he had the Brothers sisters potentially doing his bidding, taking on this project to get closer to them. Mabel texts a serial number on the erroneous metal joint to Detective Williams, hoping she can run an ID on thebody.

The trio devise a plan to stress the Brothers sisters into a confession, surprising them with a filmed interrogation. The sisters have their Super 8 cameras rolling as they arrive, capturing the conversation from every possible angle in this edited documentary. They seem excited to be considered suspects as they explain where they were the night Sazz died – in the West Tower, in the empty Dudenoff apartment where the shot was fired from!

The narration takes a momentary diversion as Trina and Tawny discuss the significance of the support of their film professor, Milton Dudenoff (Griffin Dunne). A class screening of The Dessecration of Alice disturbed the other students. “Ignore the critics and just keep shooting,” Dudenoff advised them, gifting them his old Super 8 cameras, saying his old bones were no longer strong enough to carry them around.

As the Brothers sisters tell their story, Detective Williams texts Mabel an update on the bonus shoulder joint. It belonged to a Milton Dudenoff. He wasn’t a murderer, he was murdered. Trina and Tawny are devastated by the news, sharing that they upset their former professor three years ago when they moved to L.A. to make money rather than remaining starving artists. He stopped answering their calls, so they took this job knowing it would bring them back to his apartment and hopefully force a reunion.

Charles pulls out the big black case and opens it. Instead of a rifle, he finds padding to protect many small camera boxes. Trina and Tawny share that they hid them all over their apartments as part of a documentary they were making alongside the film, which the trio would’ve known about if they actually read through the life rights contracts they signed. Mabel questions who has been pretending to be Dudenoff, telling Charles and Oliver they need to find out who has been cashing his rent checks at the bodega.

Act IV – The Denoumont

The Brothers sisters move through Oliver’s apartment collecting the hidden cameras they placed. Oliver finds one all on his own, bringing it to them. They scoff at the low 720p video quality, saying that’s not theirs. Just then, Charles gets a text message from Sazz’s number – a link to a live video feed of them from the camera Oliver holds. Oliver gets a text too with a similar video, but this one isn’t live, it’s from five days ago. Mabel gets a text with a video of her in bed in Dudenoff’s abandoned apartment where she’s been squatting. “The killer is watching us right now,” Charles realizes. They all get a text with the same message – “I’m watching you.”

Feeling unsafe, Charles stomps on the killer’s camera. We see them run out of The Arconia.

“We murdered the rules of narrative storytelling, but nothing more,” Tawny concludes as a closing statement to their short documentary film.

Only Murders in the Building returns next Tuesday, October 8th, with the seventh episode of Season 4, titled “Valley of the Dolls.”

Terrified by a threat inside the Arconia, the trio race out of the city. A member of Charles' family provides refuge and yet, this safe house proves to be anything but.