Hulu’s ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2: TV Review

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“The truth is that people don’t want to spend their commutes hearing about run-of-the-mill tragedies,” superstar podcast host Cinda Canning (Tina Fey) sneers at our central trio in the second season of Only Murders in the Building. What they do want to hear, she insists, are tantalizing stories of missing girls and murderous beauties. She’s not necessarily wrong, if TV’s true-crime boom is any indication. And Only Murders in the Building knows it too, as a series centered around a homicide.

As in season one, though, what elevates Only Murders in the Building beyond a run-of-the-mill crime drama is that it does care about those run-of-the-mill tragedies. The new volume delivers another juicy mystery, bursting with gasp-worthy twists and giggle-worthy jokes. But it’s threaded with a humane curiosity about the unremarkable loneliness of an old woman living alone, or the everyday pain of a father unable to connect with his child. That peculiar but pleasant mix of tones is the show’s signature, and it’s one in full bloom with the new run of episodes.

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The new season picks up immediately in the aftermath of the last one, with Oliver (Martin Short), Charles (Steve Martin) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) getting arrested for the murder of Arconia board president Bunny (Jayne Houdysell), whom they’d found stabbed to death in Mabel’s apartment in the finale. The fame they’d enjoyed for solving the Tim Kono case and documenting every step of their investigation on their podcast warps into notoriety once they become suspects in Bunny’s death. (Mabel weathers the worst of it as photos of her soaked in Bunny’s blood go viral, earning her the nasty moniker “Bloody Mabel”; Oliver, meanwhile, is just happy to be described as a “person of interest” after huffing over a newspaper photo that had cropped him out.)

The only way to get their lives back on track, as they see it, is to solve the case themselves. And with Cinda sharpening her knives for her own damning report on the trio, the only way they know to tell their side of the story is to record another season of their podcast along the way — even if, as Charles points out, second seasons of podcasts rarely work. “They usually move on to a new case that never hits like the original,” he sagely observes.

Only Murders in the Building is nothing if not self-aware, occasionally to a fault. It’s funny (and appropriate for his showman personality) when Oliver tries to engineer a nonsensical callback by complimenting Mabel on the Beats headphones she isn’t wearing; it feels more defensive and self-pitying when the fans haunting the gang’s favorite diner keep complaining that Only Murders in the Building is moving too slowly this season.

I don’t think it is, though the storyline admittedly is more sprawling. Bunny’s death appears to tie into Charles’ past the way Tim Kono’s did Mabel’s. But the focus feels more diffuse this time, with more supporting characters (and at one point, the history of the Arconia itself) stepping into the spotlight. This is, on the whole, a lovely thing. Bunny, portrayed last season as a delightful but one-dimensional crank, is tenderly fleshed out with an entire episode devoted to her last day on earth. Theo (James Caverly) returns to reveal even more quietly heartbreaking depths. We discover this season that Michael Cyril Creighton’s Howard belongs to a “yodelshop quartet,” and yes, we do get to hear him perform. But the satisfying click of clues falling into place seems more muted, at least in the eight episodes (of ten for the season) sent to critics.

Otherwise, the series largely continues to do well what it always has, balancing levity and warmth with hints of sadness. Oliver and Charles still can’t help bickering between themselves, whether they’re serving up dueling Bunny impressions or a haphazard recap of the Iran-Contra affair, and Mabel can still be counted on to throw cold water on their nonsense with a perfect deadpan remark. The frequent gags about the generation gap between 20something Mabel and her 70something companions get a sweet twist with the introduction of Charles’ teenage ex-stepdaughter Lucy (Zoe Colletti). Charles likens talking with her to “watching Squid Games without subtitles,” but Mabel looks no less flustered when Lucy starts gushing at her in Gen Z lingo.

There’s no single chapter as formally audacious as last season’s “The Boy in 6B,” but there’s an episode that manages to unfold during a blackout without looking indecipherably muddy (hey, Game of Thrones spinoff — take notes), and an extended party scene that redresses the sets and actors in ’70s glam just for the vibes. The discovery of secret passageways that snake through the building offer our central trio, and maybe this season’s mysterious villains, the chance to literally peek in on other people’s lives.

What they find, very often, are people unable to move on from the tragedies, big and small, that have defined their pasts. Reflecting on their last interactions with Bunny, the trio come to a realization. “We at Only Murders in the Building did not kill Bunny Folger,” Charles says, “but there’s a chance we could have saved her life with a simple act of kindness.” The series takes care not to make the same mistake. It doesn’t turn away from the isolated and forgotten souls who haunt the Arconia. It invites them in for a chat, a coconut liqueur cocktail and some hearty laughs to see what they have to say.

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