‘Only Murders’ Just Aired the Best, Most Shocking Episode Since Season 1

Only Murders in the Building has made a tradition of throwing in one episode each season that completely shakes up the established formula.

Season 1 gave us “The Boy From 6B,” which offered a proper introduction to deaf Theo (James Caverly) through an episode entirely without spoken dialogue. The result was a masterclass in visual storytelling, one of the most captivating half-hours in the show’s history. A lot of fans recall this episode as the one where they suddenly locked in, where they went from passively enjoying this cozy mystery series to having their eyes glued to the screen.

The next two seasons gave us “Hello Darkness,” the blackout episode, and “Ghost Light,” the haunted theater episode. Both felt like spiritual successors to “The Boy From 6B,” offering a fun change of atmosphere from their respective seasons, but neither of them were quite as successful. Neither played around with the format as much, and it wasn’t clear if the show would do something so bold again.

Thankfully, “Blow-Up” is the most ambitious Only Murders episode since Season 1. It abandons the show’s traditional directing approach to give us a found-footage episode instead. It starts off by limiting us to Howard’s camera, and for a few minutes the format almost seems random and unmotivated. But then Howard’s asked to turn the camera off, and we’re treated to one of the most chilling twists in the series so far: Instead of the show returning to its usual directing style, it continues the documentary approach, this time with cameras hidden throughout Oliver’s apartment.

Yes, that’s right: Someone’s been hiding tiny cameras throughout the trio’s homes, and they’ve been spying on them since God knows when. The implications are terrifying, especially when you remember that odd moment back in the premiere, where the killer texts Charles through Sazz’s phone right as Charles mentions how worried he is over Sazz. “Blow-Up” lets the audience dwell on these implications for a few seconds, before revealing (with a flashback through the same cameras) that the culprits were none other than the Brothers’ sisters, planting the bug without any apparent guilt.

The trio themselves don’t realize they’re being spied on until the end of the episode, leaving us to wonder: Have the Brothers been watching them since Sazz’s murder, or have the cameras been there even longer than that? How far back has the trio’s privacy been violated? Either way, it seems impossible by this point that the Brothers sisters aren’t the killers.

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This is the recurring format for these experimental Only Murders episodes: They’re thrown at us right as the walls are closing in on the biggest suspects. In Season 1 it was Teddy and Theo, two suspicious characters in desperate need of an episode diving into their backstory. This time it’s Trina (Catherine Cohen) and Tawny (Siena Werber), whose shoeprints have seemingly given at least one of them away as a killer.

But as was the case with Teddy and Theo, Tawny and Trina are mostly vindicated in the end. Their only crime was tricking the trio into letting them bug their homes, all so they could make a documentary alongside the film. It’s a shady move from the Brothers, but at least it isn’t murder. The only thing they killed were “the rules of narrative cinema,” but not even: Their documentary still abides by a traditional story structure, with all the act breaks labeled no less.

While the Brothers are off the hook, this episode throws further suspicion on Bev Melon (Molly Shannon), who surely must’ve known about the contract trickery and never bothered to let the trio know.

I’ve made it clear that I don’t trust Bev Melon, although this episode helps her in at least one minor way. Although many fans have given her the side eye for not realizing the Brothers sisters aren’t identical twins, positing that she’s the killer who confused Charles for Sazz (Jane Lynch), I’ll admit that I can’t reliably tell the difference between the Brothers either. Even though Trina and Tawny are fraternal, the show writes them as two halves of the same whole. Like the Weasley twins in the Harry Potter franchise, the Brothers look, act, sound, and dress so similarly that they might as well be the same person split in two.

As a twin myself I’ve always found this approach to twin characters sort of insulting (we’re complex individuals, dammit!), but for a season obsessed with doppelgangers, it fits. The season’s filled with people seemingly being mistaken for each other, with tragic results—first Sazz for Charles, and now poor Glen Stubbins (Paul Rudd) for Oliver.

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But the Brothers sisters, with their tight-knit bond and their identical worldviews, have unwittingly shielded themselves from this sort of tragedy. One Brother can’t be accidentally killed for the other Brother, because unlike Sazz and Charles, nobody would want to kill one Brother and not the other. There’s no secret one knows that the other wouldn’t. Meanwhile Sazz seems to have been filled with secrets, and we still don’t know what sort of info Stubbins’ been hiding.

This brings us to the episode’s opening scene, which reveals that it was Stubbins who was shot in last week’s big cliffhanger, with Zach Galifianakis injured as well. And although Oliver wasn’t shot and is perfectly fine, he still decides to lay flat on the floor alongside the other two anyway, leaving everyone in suspense until someone turns him over. Geez, what a drama queen.

We learn that the gunshot once again came from a sniper rifle, fired from outside the building. It’s an odd development, because Stubbins is disconnected from Charles and Mabel’s revelation about the Brothers’ bootprints matching the one in Dudenoff’s apartment. This incident implies two things: The first is that the shooter is not someone who was in the room at the time. One of the Westies must be involved somehow, as they’re the only other group of suspects established.

The second implication is that Charles’ earlier theory might be correct: The killer doesn’t seem to be going after the trio, but after the stunt doubles. It sure may have seemed like Charles was the main target in the Season 3 finale, but what are the odds that the killer would make this mistake again, trying to kill Oliver but just so happening to hit stuntman Stubbins? Stuntmen have been the two main victims this season; when Glen wakes up next episode (fingers crossed he does!), hopefully the trio is smart enough to start grilling him for anything he might know.

The other thing we learn this week is that Dudenoff (Griffin Dunne) does exist, he really is a professor, and he was the one who helped the Brothers get their big starts as directors. “Never look away,” he tells his students in a flashback, a phrase that’s reminiscent of the “Looking at Charles” note on Sazz’s desk. Another piece of filmmaking advice he gives: “Chaos can be good. Chaos can be art.” Just a throwaway line, or is this a key insight into the killer’s motivations?

Dudenoff also, it turns out, helped give Vince Fish (Richard Kind) his big start as an actor, letting him star in the Brothers’ first movie, Desecration of Alice. He plays a creepy creator who advises his twin creations, played by the Brothers, to “spill some blood in my name.” This brings the trio back to the Westie apartment, where Fish is happy to explain all this to the gang. He thinks back fondly about Dudenoff, but both he and Rudy (Kumail Nanjiani) have no love for the Brothers. Rudy in particular is jealous of them, enraged even, and has to be calmed down by Vince multiple times. (Very suspicious behavior—I’m writing it down on my own suspect board.)

But the most exciting revelation about Dudenoff has nothing to do with Dudenoff as a potential killer. The trio figures out that Dudenoff’s been dead since before the season started, thanks to a metal joint replacement of his found amongst Sazz’s ashes in the incinerator. (Side note: shame on the NYPD for failing to notice this!) So it seems like Sazz suspected Dudenoff’s been killed and was looking into it before her death; more importantly, it seems like Dudenoff was murdered in or near the Arconia. So in the weeks since his murder, who’s been picking up his checks?

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Detective Williams says someone’s been cashing Dudenoff’s social security checks “on a bodega at 125th Street,” about 40 blocks north of where the Arconia should be. This raises the question: Where was Concussions, the stuntman bar, supposed to be located? Anywhere close to 125th?

Money in general has been a quiet theme of the season. First there’s the subplot about the Westies’ rent-control scheme, then there’s Mabel joking about how she’d kill to rent an apartment, then there’s Stubbins out of a job, and now someone’s stealing Dudenoff’s checks. In the climactic confrontation between the trio and the Brothers this episode, we also learn that Dudenoff and the Brothers had a falling out that’s partially due to money; the Brothers started taking on mainstream projects for the pay, and Dudenoff considered them sell-outs for it and shut them out of his life.

All season, most fans have been assuming the killer’s motivated by obsession and hatred, but maybe it’s all about something as simple as money. With Season 4 jumping back and forth between the rich Hollywood suspects and the not-so-rich New York suspects, it’s worth re-examining this mystery from a financial lens. Of all the suspects we’ve met, whose wallet has benefited the most from these shootings so far?

In the episode’s closing moments, the gang finds a camera in Oliver’s apartment that doesn’t belong to the Brothers. Each of the trio soon receives a text from Sazz’s phone, showing footage of themselves in their rooms with a target on their heads. Finally, they each get a message reading “I’m Watching You,” which freaks them out to the point where they’re running out of the building. The stakes have never been this high.

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Clues From the Crime Scene:

• The “previously on” segment shows us the scene from “Two for the Road” where Vince Fish explains to Charles his “moderate-to-severe case of bacterial conjunctivitis,” and then this episode has a little moment where Charles is confused by Vince’s eye-hopping pink eye, even though he already knows about this. It’s odd the show would draw so much attention to this again if they weren’t going somewhere with it.
• The episode once again tortures Oliver over his situation with Loretta (Meryl Streep). This time he calls her up and proposes, only for her to respond with a few annoyed groans. Loretta’s only talking like this because she’s filming a scene where her character’s covered in bandages and recovering from major burns, but poor Oliver doesn’t know that. This raises an interesting question, though: does Loretta have a stunt double too? If so, where is she? What’s she been up to? Could her name be Helga?
• The movie’s screenwriter, Marshall (Jin Ha) is suspicious in this episode. He faints just as Melon’s talking about how the police are investigating the recent shooting. Then he cheers awkwardly when Melon says “the show must go on!” Odder still is his conversation with Mabel, where he’s a little too happy to throw the Brothers under the bus. He tells them to check out the Brothers’ student film, but how does he know about it? It doesn’t sound like it was ever a big hit.
• Going off the money motive, Marshall’s definitely a prime suspect as the young, novice writer with only one accepted script under his belt. He’s got more of his career riding on this film than any of the other Hollywood characters.
• It’s unlikely Marshall’s the one cashing Dudenoff’s checks, however. Williams makes it sound like the checks are being cashed on 125th Street regularly, which implies this culprit is a New York-based character. Of all the New York suspects so far, Stubbins has the clearest motivation for stealing someone else’s checks.
• In the killer’s message to the trio at the end, he uses the Comic Sans font. It’s a widely hated font, especially when used in formal settings, and there’s no way the writers would throw it in flippantly.
• Detective Williams mentions that Jan (Amy Ryan) is suspected to be back in town, meaning that she’ll certainly pop up at least one more time this season. As a Charles/Jan shipper (yes, still), I think this is great news.
• The reason the trio figures out Dudenoff’s dead is because he had a metal plate in his ashes, just like Ben Stubbins and Sazz Pataki. Was Dudenoff a stunt double before he became a film professor? We found out in “The Stunt Man” that Sazz was planning a career change; was she planning to follow in Dudenoff’s footsteps? Either way, this is yet another bit of evidence that the stunt doubles are the main targets, not the trio.