Oh Brother! A Break In The Case Shakes Up Only Murders In The Building Episode 5
Talk about a cliffhanger! Only Murders in the Building episode five tore Sazz’s murder case wide open. With a movie in the making and a murderer still lurking, the clock is ticking to find the killer. Mabel, Oliver, and Charles lock in with their detectives' lens in this episode, and it truly pays off.
We return to Sazz’s trampoline park, where episode four ended with Molly Shannon’s Bev Melon surprising our trio at gunpoint. However, in classic cliffhanger fashion, she is not the killer. She was just spooked by three strangers sneaking up on her, so she grabbed the gun she found at Sazz’s place. Melon reveals that she was snooping around Sazz’s things to look for any clues about her death because Sazz called her on the night of her murder, claiming she had bad news about the upcoming podcast movie adaptation. Melon ignored her calls, and within hours, Sazz was dead. Melon’s morals aren’t in the best place for this investigation. Rather than wanting to give Sazz justice, she wants to make sure her movie doesn’t get canned. Melon lets the trio know that she’s fearful that someone on the film crew wanted Sazz silenced. Shannon is the perfect choice to play a pushy, greedy, yet hilarious Hollywood producer. What she lacks in screen time, she makes up for in every second she graces the screen.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph returns as Detective Williams and hilariously roasts the team’s murder boards. The Oscar-winning actress has her fair share of screen time this season, and it’s delightful. Her quick-witted jabs at the podcast team never fail to leave audiences chuckling, but she really gave them endless laughs in her short scene for this episode. Randolph leaves the episode promising to get more information on the gun Melon found at Sazz’s trampoline park. Even though Williams thinks it’s totally amateur hour, our trio’s hard work led them to new suspects.
The quirky, off-putting directors of the film known as the Brothers Sisters arrive at the Arconia with oddly shaped luggage that looks like a shotgun case. Could this be the same shotgun that killed Sazz? The Brothers make Mabel, Oliver, and Charles participate in the film photoshoot. Instead of resisting, Charles and Mabel take this as the perfect opportunity to snoop on the production crew. No one seems particularly nervous around the podcasters except for the film’s screenwriter, Marshall.
Marshall doesn’t seem concerned when Mabel tells him he’s a suspect in Sazz’s murder. He’s actually relieved. Suffering from an intense case of imposter syndrome, we learn that Marshall hides behind a beard, glasses, and a mustache—none of which are real. He explains that he’s trying to be what everyone thinks a writer is, but Charles is elated when he reads the script and notices that Marshall was spot-on about their stories. Even though he’s a little too excited about the murder investigation, he seems harmless and has a killer alibi: he was performing stand-up and has video proof.
While Marshall was a bust, he did help the team see a flaw in their theory. How could the murderer have shot Sazz, made it to the east tower, dragged her body to the incinerator, and cleaned up the crime scene in only a 12-minute window? Oliver boldly decides to reenact the killing to prove it’s possible. In this episode, Oliver is battling insecurities about his masculinity because of Loretta’s new, manly love interest on her television show. In a last-ditch effort to prove his manliness, he is determined to complete the reenactment in just 12 minutes. Martin Short commits to the bit in his ‘80’s-style track jacket, short shorts, knee-high socks, and incredibly underwhelming athletic ability. Arguably, the funniest montage of the season was Oliver’s 12-minute excursion, which turned out to be a sluggish 40-minute marathon. This question lingers in the team's heads for the rest of the episode: Truly, how could one person do all this in only 12 minutes?
Even though they’re at a loss with this question, Mabel remembers a forgotten clue left at the crime scene. Detective Williams told the team that a shoe print was recovered from the scene, and Mabel hopes they can match the print to a crew member from the movie’s photoshoot. Eva Longoria, Zach Galifianakis, and Eugene Levy return for the final scenes of the episode, and Longoria even helps lay the groundwork for Mabel’s investigation. Longoria insisted that tacky paper must line the entire floor so she won’t breathe in dust particles. However, this diva moment was really a genius ploy to pick up every shoe print that stepped on the paper during the shoot.
As the shoot progresses, no one catches the team's eye until the Brothers take full control of it. Charles notices the shoe print of one of the sister’s boot is an exact match to the clue. The other sister easily lifts Oliver onto his mark for the shoot. Within seconds, the podcast team has connected the dots. The Brothers could’ve committed the crime as a team. But why? Before they can dig any further, Charles notices one of the sisters has disappeared, and the screen cuts to black with a single gunshot. Who fired the gun? Who got shot? Are the Brothers murderers? It’s all one big mystery for now.
New episodes of Only Murders in the Building premiere every Tuesday on Hulu.
