Is ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Getting TOO Real?
by Tara Ariano · Cracked.comIn Season Five, the cozy mystery show is starting to lose its coziness
September 08, 2025
What Only Murders in the Building lacks in airtight mystery plotting, it makes up by bringing its charming fantasy world to life. At The Arconia, the titular Building, a dry has-been actor and an exuberant never-was Broadway producer can form a true friendship with a mopey millennial, turning their shared love of true crime into their own successful podcast, which shares its title with the TV series. They can run their empire among their three beautifully appointed apartments — and whenever they visit a neighbor’s, it’s just as enormous, welcoming and plush as their own. Sure, living at or even just visiting The Arconia means there’s a one in a few hundred chance yours could be one of the Building’s eponymous Murders, but what a way to go! This imaginary Manhattan has always been one of the show’s big draws, but as we roll into the show’s fifth season, it seems like it’s getting harder for Only Murders in the Building to bar reality at the door.
As is customary, the Season Four finale closed on a new corpse, and a cliffhanger: The Arconia’s doorman, Lester (Teddy Coluca), is found dead in the courtyard’s fountain. This occurs moments after podcast co-hosts Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Charles (Steve Martin, who also co-created the show with John Hoffman) are approached by Sofia Caccimelio (Téa Leoni) about her missing husband Nicky; Charles and Mabel tell Sofia they aren’t private detectives for hire, but could Lester’s death and Nicky’s disappearance be related?
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In the cold open of the Season Five premiere, it seems like the answer is officially no: Offscreen, the cops have ruled Lester’s death an accident, which security footage seems to confirm. Oliver (Martin Short) soothes his pain — not only has he missed out on a new case for the podcast he co-hosts; he’s also had to see his new bride Loretta (Meryl Streep) off to New Zealand for her current acting job — by licking the cocktail sauce off the leftover shrimp from his wedding reception. When Charles and Mabel notice that the shrimp Oliver’s holding has a fingernail, the members of the podcast team realize there is something for them to investigate after all.
Without revealing details that aren’t in the trailer: Season Five has our co-hosts meeting a trio of New York billionaires who’ve become very serious about casino gaming, seemingly in an attempt to alleviate the ennui of their very comfortable lives. Sebastian “Bash” Steed (Christoph Waltz) is the longevity freak whose actual age is his most closely guarded secret. Camila White (Renée Zellweger) is an exacting lifestyle guru somewhere between Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow. Jay Pflug (Logan Lerman) makes a lot of social media content about expiating his guilt over his blood-stained family money by giving it away, but he’s a feckless boob in sweat shorts, Sam Bankman-Fried by way of the Sacklers.
Only in the Only Murders fantasy land would three of the world’s most powerful people make themselves available to the hosts of only the 17th most popular podcast in the country to discuss said hosts’ suspicions about them. Of course, they have ulterior motives that only reveal themselves later, but there’s still something adorably preposterous in portraying them doing their own dirty work at any level.
Surprising no one, the show didn’t cast someone of Leoni’s stature only to use her in a single scene: Sofia has more to reveal about Nicky (Bobby Cannavale) than she initially realizes. Eagle-eyed trailer watchers may have recognized the Godfather mansion on Staten Island, and we find out in the premiere that Sofia and Nicky live there with their five adult sons, the most ungovernable group of tertiary hooligans I’ve seen since Liz’s boys in Shrinking and Happy’s boys in Happy Gilmore 2. (Only Murders makes three: it’s officially a trend.) Sofia and Charles soon figure out each needs to work the other for information, and a sexy dinner out at a hibachi restaurant lets Leoni show off physical comedy chops I assume she probably had less occasion to deploy in her years headlining Madam Secretary.
But amid the progress of the cozy mystery and the slapstick that occasionally breaks out around it, our leads are dealing with real-world concerns. Lester’s death shakes up Oliver’s worldview. Was he, as Lester’s widow Rainey (Dianne Wiest) reports, a needy “cuckoo chick” constantly making demands on Lester? Is Oliver, in fact, such a narcissist that he married Loretta despite knowing hardly anything about her? Charles spent Season Four seeing apparitions of that season’s corpse, his former stunt double Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch). Were they projections of his guilt over her death, or is he experiencing neurological decline?
Through the season, we get occasional mentions of longtime tenants moving out, and a way-over-market offer comes through from someone looking to buy a unit from a character we know well. Does a strongly-capitalized entity have designs on The Arconia that will change its essence forever?! (Mabel’s self-doubt and aimlessness already drove her Season Four arc; we’re still dealing with them in Season Five.)
Rapacious business interests aren’t the only newsmakers to appear this season: If the late-season redemption of LESTR, a robot doorman, is an example of the sort of pro-A.I. propaganda we can expect in future seasons, the show might as well just end now. (We’re told the city’s residential workers’ union blocked LESTR from taking over the job completely: human Lester is replaced by human Randall, played by Jermaine Fowler.) Even if that’s not the plan, given that two of the show’s leads have been eligible for the senior discount at the movies for decades now — Short is 75, and Martin just turned 80 — it’s hard not to wonder if all the reality encroaching on the characters this season reflects the reality behind the scenes at the show’s production, and the necessity for an exit strategy.
Mostly, the show is as comforting a comfort watch as ever. It just may need to wrap things up before the viewer has to start really worrying that everyone’s going to be okay.
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