Only Murders in the Building ended its first season last night with an episode that was both funny and exciting. One could argue the series hasn't achieved the depth to its characters it seemed to be aiming at occasionally but as a comic bookish caper it's a hoot so I see no reason to complain.
Spoilers after the screenshot
And I was right, it was Jan. I'm not usually good at guessing the killer on these things, especially because I don't usually feel like trying, so maybe it was obviously Jan to everyone. I will say my prediction that it was Jan had nothing to do with any clues presented on the show but entirely on story mechanics which, for a detective series, is not a good sign. If you suss out the killer, it should be because you notice something about their schedule not adding up, an object that places them on the scene of the crime, a witness you think is unreliable. In this case, it was entirely because of her level of connexion to the main cast, the point in the season in which she appeared, and the way she was written into the group with a ruse function ("the annoying new girlfriend").
But on the point of story mechanics, remember at the start of the season I talked about the writers secretly wanting a relationship between Mabel and Charles? Well, it turns out Jan was sleeping with Tim Kono--so Charles' girlfriend was sleeping with Mabel's boyfriend. The characters make a point of saying there's nothing wrong with there being such a vast age difference between the two. I still don't think the writers have the guts to pair Mabel and Charles in this day and age but I think this is a sure sign they really want to. Often writers have villains do things they'd like to get away with having their heroes do, like when Steven Moffat had the Master regenerate as a woman on Doctor Who or Simone Simon in Cat People having the greater psychological nuance than the supposed heroes of that film.
It turns out Jan isn't an especially nuanced character, though. But that's not such a bad thing because her scheme to gas the whole building and her maniacal, fixed stare and grin made her a delightfully campy, very comic-bookish, villain. Steve Martin on the other side of the relationship, talking about how he was finally able to open up because of his relationship with her and the podcast team, doesn't quite have the same traction. Neither does the resolution of Martin Short's relationship with his son or Mabel's relationship with Tie-Dye Guy. All that stuff is overshadowed by the brilliant physical comedy of a partially paralyzed Steve Martin trying to use an elevator (and being ignored by his neighbours) or the dialogue when Mabel and Oliver try to break down a door.
I was reminded again of the inevitable Twin Peaks influence when Charles delivered his summation speech about how Tim Kono's murder brought the community together. This used to be one of the primary appeals of the pilot episode of Twin Peaks, how, instead of the shows about weekly murders and the whole thing being about the puzzle, Laura Palmer's death was something with emotional weight for a whole town, something that by itself should be enough to occupy an entire series. Recently I've had two different Gen Z people tell me they like the pilot episode of Twin Peaks less than subsequent episodes. My suspicion is that the episode is still having the same effect on viewers but these two people I talked to interpret that effect differently--that is, they don't know how to interpret their own emotional reactions to a filmmaking style that isn't as Apollonian or as much about dialogue as popular shows and movies tend to be nowadays. I keep remembering how one reviewer of Twin Peaks season three said she is normally able to just listen to shows without looking at the screen but found she couldn't do that with Twin Peaks.
Only Murders in the Building can tell me it was about one murder that brought people together, but it's not exactly what it makes me feel. Even so, it's pretty entertaining.
Only Murders in the Building is available on Disney+ in Australia and on Hulu in the U.S.
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