Were you worried that Arconia was running out of tenants to murder? Fear not! Because, as it turns out, we’ve only just scratched the surface these past three seasons. This week, we were introduced to the West Tower — the redheaded stepchild of the building, across the courtyard from our protagonists’ digs. Sealed off from the rest of the building after someone opened up a brothel, the apparently lesser units were largely excluded from the hubbub these past few years. But now, with bullets flying across the way, our attention is finally turning to those windows and the cast of characters behind them.
Before we dive into that investigation, Charles has to figure out how to clean Sazz’s ashes off his hands after sifting through her remains in the incinerator. He can’t just wash them off and let her go down the drain, so he hatches a plan: He’ll wash his hands into a bowl, then put the ashy water into a Mason jar like it’s a flaxseed smoothie. Once the water evaporates, boom! Ashes! The elaborate plan is a funny aside — but also reflective of how much care he has for Sazz. Charles must feel somewhat helpless that it’s too late for him to look out for her, so this extensive effort to salvage her ashes is all he can do now.
Somehow, the show manages to make the death of a cartoonish character named Sazz Pataki — who, to reiterate, is Jane Lynch essentially in drag — incredibly moving. While Mabel and Oliver head off to investigate the West Tower, Charles is left by himself waiting for 911 to take him off hold and to contemplate the death of his friend. And since this is Only Murders in the Building, being “alone†means he’s joined by the spirit of Sazz by way of his own subconscious (which means a season-four payday for Jane Lynch, after all).
Together, the pair have themselves a postmortem of sorts of their decades-long working relationship and friendship. As his stunt double, she took the literal hits for him, tapping into scenes where he’d be in danger and protecting him. But she also looked out for him on other levels, like when she turned his lonely lunches into poker games with the crew to ensure he had friends on set. She watched out for him, and he wasn’t able to do the same. That’s part of the reason Charles is so reluctant to believe Mabel and Oliver’s theory that he was the intended target, not Sazz. Because, as Sazz’s spirit tells him, if that’s the case, then he’s to blame for her death. And who wants to deal with that enormous guilt?Â
Meanwhile, Mabel and Oliver turn their attention to the West Tower and our new batch of suspects lurking inside: Stink-Eye Joe (Richard Kind), the Sauce Family (led by Daphne Rubin-Vega), and Christmas All the Time Guy (Kumail Nanjiani). Plus one mysterious apartment that never opens its blinds. But their first stop is to the “menacing†Stink-Eye Joe, who, they quickly find out is actually the delightful, albeit contagious, Pink-Eye Joe — whose actual name is Vince Fish. Richard Kind, whom I could devote the remainder of this recap to if I so chose, is a character actor so well suited to this show (which famously loves character actors) that it feels crazy that he hasn’t been on it until now. In fact, let me use this opportunity to list some other actors who you might be shocked to find out have not yet appeared on Only Murders in the Building: Linda Lavin, Rosie Perez, Sandra Bernhard, Harvey Fierstein, Jane Krakowski, Cole Escola, Julie Klausner, and Amy Sedaris. They all have the exact right vibe for this show, and yet where are they? Fingers crossed for season five!
When Mabel and Oliver see that Vince’s windows are painted shut, meaning he couldn’t have shot from them, they move on to their next suspects. Conveniently, Vince introduces them via a card game they all play called “Oh hell,†which is also what I say when someone makes me play a card game. Inez and her family host the game, where they find out that Charles is her celebrity crush. Could that jealousy make her husband Alfonso go after him? Maybe … and on top of that, they all keep leaving the game to do something secretive with a knife in the bathroom, which is never a good thing. But when Oliver “achieves,†a.k.a. wins the game, he gets to go to the bathroom as a reward, where he finds ham imported from Portugal hanging in the shower. So sometimes a bathroom knife is a good thing after all.
With their leads diminishing, Mabel asks about the shuttered apartment, which Inez’s daughter lets slip is the “Dudenoff†place, earning her a kick under the table from her mother. In fact, the entire room suddenly gets very weird and secretive when it comes up. Not only that, but Dudenoff was the name on one of Sazz’s mysterious notes. Pieces are beginning to come together, and it seems like Sazz knew something about that unit.
While Mabel and Oliver are off with suspected killers, Charles finds himself face-to-face with a proven killer: Jan (Amy Ryan). The OG killer of OMITB is back, bursting out of Charles’s closet having made a parkour-aided escape from prison. And while Sazz is just a figment of his imagination, Jan is really there in the flesh. But she’s not there to kill Charles; she’s there because she hasn’t heard from Sazz and is worried. So Charles has to break the news that her girlfriend is dead, and together they mourn her. Jan tells Charles how much he meant to Sazz and how, right before she died, she had been suspicious that there was another killer in the building with their eyes set on Charles. That would explain all of her notes and clues — perhaps Sazz was doing a preemptive investigation of her own to protect Charles. That, paired with Jan explaining that they got rid of the body in hopes of not tipping off their actual target, makes Charles finally accept that he was, in fact, the intended victim.
As quickly as she arrives, Jan disappears once again as Mabel and Oliver return to collect the code they found on Sazz’s desk, which they hope will open the lock on Dudenoff’s door. And it does! Inside the abandoned apartment, they find a whole new set of clues: a ham radio, footprints on the radiator, tinsel, and paint chips indicating that the window had been pried open. Looks like they found their sniper’s nest. But they also found even more ham: a live pig chilling in the bathroom. The tinsel is, of course, meant to point to Christmas Guy. But what about the radio? And why the pig? Are the Westies actually butchers who raise their own victory ham for their little card game? Could be, but didn’t they say it was imported from Portugal? They can’t linger with questions like this for too long because someone starts banging on the door. When they check to see who it is, there’s nobody to be found, and the pig runs off. So now there’s just a pig on the loose.
Speaking of, back in Charles’s apartment, the NYPD suddenly swarms on account of Jan’s breakout. Luckily, this means the return of Detective Williams (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, fresh off of her Oscar win), who is perturbed when Charles reveals that Jan was just there and he didn’t report it. Right on cue, 911 takes him off hold, and he tells them (and Detective Williams) about Sazz’s murder.
With the cops busy at the incinerator, Charles, Mabel, and Oliver use luminol to see where exactly in the apartment Sazz was shot. The chemical illuminates the blood stains, and with it, they see that she had written a message in her own blood — “Tap in,†the same words she’d say to Charles when she’d swap out with him to do his stunts. She died as she lived, protecting Charles from harm’s way. But there’s another revelation in the episode’s final moments. As it turns out, the code used to get into the Dudenoff apartment spells out “Oh hell†when turned upside down. Our Westie game players seem to be up to more than just chowing down on ham.