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Only Murders in the Building Recap: Cardiac Arrests

Season 3 Episode 2 Editor’s Rating3 stars ***

Photo: Patrick Harbron/Hulu/ HULU After reneging on his initial onstage death, Ben Glenroy is officially our murder victim for this season of Only Murders in the Building, having plummeted down the elevator shaft of the Arconia, a phenomenal place to live if you love being murdered.

Thus far, in our limited time with Ben, he hasn’t proved to be the most sympathetic of victims. Instead, we’ve seen him simply play the role of a classic Hollywood asshole, an archetype that’s a delight to watch Paul Rudd take on but one that doesn’t necessarily prompt mourning. But of course, with any mystery, as the story continues to play out, new layers are peeled back. And in this episode, we slowly begin to learn more and more about Ben Glenroy, making us viewers and our onscreen sleuths much more invested in solving his murder.

But everybody gets there at their own pace. Mabel, for example, has been jonesing to investigate from the jump (or fall, rather), even sneaking photos of the crime scene before the police showed up. We already know that she’s a fan of Ben from his TV show Girl Cop, and now thanks to an imagined conversation she has with the deceased, we also know that she feels lost in life. She’s 29 with nothing figured out, and a quick (albeit temporary) fix for that rudderless feeling is a little murder investigation.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Oliver, who is less concerned about cracking this case and more concerned about the murder shutting down his play. His sets are being disassembled at the theater, and his producers are ignoring his calls, so naturally, the only way to save his show is to track them down at Ben’s glitzy, star-studded funeral and convince them that the show must go on.

Since that’s also a sleuthing opportunity too good to pass up, Mabel joins Oliver and Charles for the funeral, but when they arrive, Oliver is horrified to discover that they’ve been relegated to “Overflow 3,” a room playing a live stream of the service happening in the main cathedral upstairs. While Oliver plots his escape to the A-list tier of the funeral, Mabel meets Ben’s security guard Greg, who’s been doing some investigating work of his own, and offers to share his files with Mabel.

She and Charles go with him to his apartment (a rookie mistake for such seasoned investigators), where they discover his shrinelike collection of Ben Glenroy memorabilia. But it’s only upon seeing that Greg has Photoshopped himself into a gallery wall’s worth of photos with Ben that the pair realize they need to get out of there. But before they can escape, they’re both chloroformed by Greg and chained to a pipe in his basement. Things aren’t looking too good for our pals, but given that there are eight more episodes left in the season, I think somehow they’ll find their way out of this jam.

Meanwhile, we get to dig further into both Mabel and Charles’s relationships with Ben, giving deeper meaning as to why they’re so invested in solving his murder (apart from the fact that solving murders is already their pre-established hobby). Though we already knew Mabel to be a Girl Cop fan, she explains that it was the show she turned to for comfort after her father died and how it helped her connect with her mother during that time. Because of that, even though she didn’t really know him personally, she feels a connection to the late actor.

For Charles’s part, we learn that his relationship with Ben was more complicated than we knew. In a flashback to the play’s rehearsal, he confronts Ben about his rudeness, and Ben reveals that when he was 8 years old, he landed a part on Brazzos, which Charles got him fired from for being “phony.” That rejection plagued Ben throughout his career, but rather than get Charles fired from this play in return, Ben decided to just make his life hell. And now it’s too late to make things right … but maybe catching his killer would be a start.

Since Mabel and Charles are understandably convinced that the crazed stalker who chained them up in a basement full of weapons is the killer, they’re surprised when Greg accuses Charles of killing Ben. Though they initially thought Greg was going to kill them because they knew too much, it seems like it might be to avenge his favorite actor’s death. One of those classic oopsie-daisy misunderstandings.

But incredibly conveniently, just as Greg is about to light them up with a crème brûlée torch, the police raid the basement. It feels a little too convenient, like our characters threw down a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, but I’m willing to allow this show one of those cards per season. Since they already spent it on episode two, moving forward, I’m going to want to see them put in a little more work the next time they have to escape the clutches of a madman.

While Mabel and Charles were narrowly avoiding their own funerals, Oliver was busy trying to sneak into Ben’s. But while en route to the main cathedral, he runs into Maxine (Noma Dumezweni), a theater critic who’d been set to review Death Rattle. Thinking that hearing a good review would encourage the producers to save the show, he begs Maxine to share her review with them.

“After Splash, I spent 15 years in Broadway jail thinking about what I’d do if I ever got another shot, and now this … just my luck,” he pleads. Oliver is so desperate to make this show happen by any means necessary, not just because he loves the warm, welcoming glow of the spotlight — but because he knows how cold it gets when that spotlight gets taken away … and how difficult it can be to get it back.

Unfortunately, even if Maxine were willing to share her scrapped review, she breaks the news to Oliver that it was a pan — saying that the show didn’t sing the way his other work has. This revelation knocks the wind out of Oliver, who seemingly hadn’t considered this possibility. Could it be possible that the show has bigger problems than its lead actor being murdered? That at least is a solvable problem — you simply get a new, non-murdered actor. But Oliver being a bad director is a tougher problem to fix.

The thought of that, and the implosion of this one chance to get back into the industry, rocks Oliver, and he suffers a minor heart attack right there at the church.

Minor means that it doesn’t warrant a hospital scene — a house call from his doctor and son will apparently suffice, and they urge him to reduce his stress levels. But Oliver keeps downplaying it, calling a heart attack a right of passage in the theater, saying that Bob Fosse had five of them. This reference leads to a fever dream in which Oliver sees Mabel, Charles, and his son Will put on a Fosse-inspired, snap-filled musical number about having to relax. Whereas most would come to and think, Huh, weird dream, Oliver sees it as a revelation.

He rushes across the building to tell Mabel and Charles that he figured out how to save the show. Taking Maxine’s words about making a show “sing” a little too literally, he declares that he’ll be turning the production into a musical. Yes, the doctor told him he shouldn’t direct a play in his condition, but to be fair, he didn’t say anything about a musical. But when he reunites with them to tell them the good news, he spots the recorder in Mabel’s hand, which can only mean one thing. The podcast is back, which means there’s a mystery to be solved.

Because although Greg, the kidnapper, was arrested, Mabel’s not convinced that he killed Ben. However, their little involuntary excursion to his basement wasn’t all for naught because she found out that Greg had stolen Ben’s handkerchief. That means the one found with the body must have belonged to one of the people working on the play who received it as Ben’s opening-night gift. It’s a good old-fashioned clue. So who was given one of these handkerchiefs? Or a better question: Who doesn’t have theirs anymore?

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