The Delight of Red Herrings on ‘Only Murders’

By Alison Lanier | | September 8, 2023 |

By Alison Lanier | | September 8, 2023 |

We’ve just passed the half-way, tipping point of Only Murders in the Building’s third season, and the mystery is heating up, as is the tension among our beloved trio of intrepid podcasters.

Only Murders is a wonderfully off-beat murder mystery show, which is also incidentally the only reason I still have a Hulu account. Starring Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin as an unlikely intergenerational team of true crime enthusiasts-turned-podcasters, each season revolves around the murder of a victim inside their upscale Upper West Side apartment building.

Season three has been the most out-on-a-limb the show has been so far, wandering from the Arconia to the gorgeous Goosebury Theater where Oliver (Short) is putting on his new production, which includes Charles (Martin) among the cast … as well as Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep, in campy, hilarious, and complex roles typical of the show.

As we pass the halfway point of the ten-episode season, there are still no clear answers and plenty of suspicion being thrown around, especially toward the core trio’s current romantic interests. The clues are piling up haphazardly as the trio’s personal lives become increasingly embroiled in the mystery, Charles bonds with a fish named President McKinley, Oliver reconnects with an old friend living out a true Phantom of the Opera lifestyle, and Mabel (Gomez) begins to struggle for purchase in what come next in her actual grown-up life.

As always, the show feels joyfully slapstick and emotionally earnest. Watching week by week has reinforced my sense that this is a show built for bingeing, but the week-by-week murder mystery format is too good to give up. Finding out who did it the first day the season’s out? While selfishly, yes, I really want to know, half the fun of the ride is the tension of guessing, being misdirected, trying to judge who’s dating the murderer this time around, etc etc.

This season the built-in closed-room murder suspects—the cast of Oliver’s new and as-always ill-fated Broadway production—are unfurling their details and personalities slowly and patiently, while I remain very impatient. There are still members of the cast yet to be explored, and some suspicious characters who have slid by the wayside for now.

But front and center is the season’s most spectacular red herring: Meryl Streep as Loretta, an endearing hit-or-miss actress still searching for her big break after years in pursuit of success on stage. Only Murders knows how to use a nuclear-level talent like Streep, as it gave Shirley MacLaine her due last season.
Loretta, though, is (SPOILERS) in a romantic relationship with a chronically lonely and stressed Oliver and lives in an apartment so chock full of easter eggs it’s positively dizzying. As evidence accumulates against her, we watch Oliver scramble—sacrificing his relationships with Charles and Mabel—to cover for her. But of course, on episode six of ten, this damning evidence can’t be THE damning evidence.

This season holds up—and I’m sure it will hold up even better once the full season is out and bingeable. This is the first time we’ve seen the trio truly fracture at this level, though—which adds to this season’s theme that true crime is a grisly and also definitely unhealthy place to mire all your energies. But hey, old news.