The latest episode of Only Murders in the Building makes some solid progress toward determining who killed Ben Gilroy, an actor who was sometimes an asshole but mostly a nice guy who likes to sew. So, does the latest installment, “Thirty,†fully solve the case? I say not quite, which means we’ve got one last round of semi-informed guessing serious detective work to do.
Exonerated
For the record, here’s a link to last week’s column, which includes all the previous suspects taken off the list.
Maxine (Noma Dumezweni)
Sure, she wrote a review so negative it seemingly caused someone — Donna DeMeo, specifically, and more on that momentarily — to commit murder. As a fellow critic, all I can say is: career goals. But panning so hard it drives others to kill is not the same as killing. Maxine is innocent.
Uma Heller (Jackie Hoffman)
Despite her decision to snag a handkerchief out of Ben’s cold, dead hands, there’s nothing to suggest Uma did it.
Detective Williams (Da’Vine Joy Randolph)
She definitely did not do it, but I still have questions about the cops’ decision to do such a crap job of investigating. As I wrote last week, I think good ‘ol Tobert may be key to answering those questions, another matter we will address momentarily.
Bobo Malone (Don Darryl Rivera)
It’s time to accept two things: that Bobo didn’t do it, and that we’ll likely never learn the whole story about his mother with one foot.
Ty Wessex (Gerald Caesar)
Ty could theoretically be the most fascinating person in the third season of Only Murders in the Building, but we’ll never know if that’s true because he didn’t kill anyone and he’s not a Meryl Streep-level guest star. Sorry to this man!
Probably Didn’t Do It
Joy (Andrea Martin)
My guess is that Joy will show up in the finale, if only to get her wedding dress back. There could be an 11th-hour twist that somehow involves her, but now that we fully understand why her lipstick was connected to the (first) crime scene, it would be a pretty big stretch for her to be the killer.
Too Soon to Count Out
Cinda Canning (Tina Fey)
While I don’t think she is responsible for Ben’s death, I still haven’t fully ruled out the possibility that Cinda is in some way connected to the murder. Let’s say Tobert pushed Ben down the elevator shaft, a thing I am about to say in a few paragraphs. If he were friends with Cinda — and it would make sense if they were, given that they both work in the documentary space — he might have asked her to offer Mabel a job to stop her investigation into Ben’s murder. If that is indeed why she reached out to Mabel, clearly that does not make her a murderer. But it could implicate her in the cover-up aspect of the crime.
Harry Styles
What kind of lunatic not only keeps Harry Styles on this list when his name has been mentioned only once this entire season, but then upgrades him to Too Soon to Count Out when there’s only one episode left? This lunatic right here!
Look, you can call my decision to put Harry in this category delusional, idiotic, or the work of a drunken miscreant who’s just trying to stir up trouble. I call it: manifesting. Like, what if Harry shows up at the very end of the season finale, AS he does in Jenny Lewis’s video for “Puppy and a Truck,†but instead of removing his dog mask he takes off … his Tobert mask like Tom Cruise in the Mission: Impossible movies, and it turns out Tobert has been Harry this whole time, which means Harry pushed Ben down the elevator shaft and also slept with Selena Gomez, famous bestie of Harry’s ex, Taylor Swift? Tell me that wouldn’t be the most amazing thing that’s ever happened on this show and, possibly, the history of all humankind?! That’s why I’m writing it down, with the hope that putting this absurd idea into the universe will force it into becoming reality. Hey, it worked for Travis Kelce.
The Most Suspicious Suspects
Donna DeMeo (Linda Emond)
In last week’s analysis, I wrote the following about Donna DeMeo’s nervousness during sitzprobe: “The producer attributes her queasiness to pre-opening jitters, but it strikes me as out of character for the seemingly unflappable Donna to be that nervous during an orchestra rehearsal. She might, on the other hand, be nervous about the cops showing up unannounced to re-open Ben’s murder case, especially if she poisoned Ben so they could close Death Rattle and allow her son to avoid the ego-bruising experience of having his first show be a flop.†As the kids used to say back in 2005: Boom goes the dynamite! If I can’t gloat about being right in an ongoing citizen detective column, what’s the point of even writing one?
Based on the timeline laid out in this week’s episode by Mabel, Charles, and Oliver, that’s exactly what Donna did. After leaning on one of her sources at the newspaper where Maxine works, she got an advance copy of Maxine’s review, immediately shredded it, then sprinkled a little rat poison on Ben’s Schmackary’s cookie, which of course Ben devoured in his dressing room. That clip of Ben telling someone he wanted them even though it would ruin his career: he was talking to a delicious baked good! It’s just like that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry broke the non-vomit streak he had maintained since June 29, 1980: “Look to the cookie!†(And kudos to all the Vulture commenters who figured this out at least five episodes ago.)
Wouldn’t Ben have noticed there was poison on his cookie? I’ve never eaten rat poison, but I suspect it would not taste good. Whatever, doesn’t matter, Ben ate it, but the amount of poison Donna used was not enough to take him out. Now Mabel, Charles, and Oliver are assuming Donna also pushed Ben down the elevator shaft, which is the kind of mistake an amateur would make. I expect more from them.
Donna appears to be guilty of attempted murder, a thing she perhaps plans to confess to, which is why she shows up at Loretta’s arraignment. In any case, we now know who poisoned Ben, but we still don’t know who pushed Ben, which is the important part, since the push actually killed him. Which brings us to our other potential suspects …
Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep)
We know Loretta didn’t poison Ben, the part of the crime she seemed most likely to have committed. That doesn’t mean she didn’t shove him to an untimely end, though. If she were frustrated with Ben treating Dickie poorly and somehow ran into Ben before leaving the Arconia after the cast party, she easily could have done it. That feels less likely to me, though — the idea that she thinks Dickie did it and is trying to take the fall for him is more plausible.
Dickie Glenroy (Jeremy Shamos)
Dickie’s got motive, and his comments to Loretta about reaching his breaking point after Ben miraculously survived the consumption of a defiled cookie suggest he may have snapped and accidentally offed his brother. But that wouldn’t be very surprising, and Only Murders loves to throw a shocking plot twist into its season finales.
Cliff DeMeo (Wesley Taylor)
What if mother and son are unwittingly both involved in Ben’s two-part murder? Maybe Cliff was as anxious as Jonathan about having to shoulder the success or failure of a Broadway show and, without knowing Donna had masterminded the ‘ol rat poison/cookie trick, pushed Ben to his death so the show would have to close. This seems pretty unlikely to me, but it’s worth consideration, especially because this scenario links up nicely with the themes about parenthood and murder that Death Rattle Dazzle is exploring.
Tobert (Jesse Williams)
Tobert being the killer seems the most likely outcome. I say this for a lot of reasons: He has deceived Mabel more than once, he’s been poking around aggressively in her murder-solving business, and I am pretty sure he is the one who was talking on the phone with Det. Biswas at the end of episode seven, getting a head’s up from a cop that the investigation into Ben’s death was being reopened.
There’s another reason I think Tobert did it: When Ben fires him on opening night and grabs Tobert’s camera from him, Tobert looks enraged. After learning Ben recovered, it makes complete sense that Tobert would go to Ben’s apartment to try to get his camera and footage back, get into a fight with Ben about it, then push him into the elevator during their altercation. It’s possible Dickie was there and witnessed it, which would explain his profound guilt for not doing more to save his brother.
That all tracks so perfectly that I will be truly surprised if it’s not how the season-three murder is resolved. And then, after Tobert admits he did it, he will tear off his face, reveal he’s actually Harry Styles, and the season will end with a spirited musical number set to “As It Was,†featuring updated lyrics by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul. Universe: Manifest it!