‘Only Murders in the Building’s Stuntcast Celebrities Are the New Season’s Least Shocking Element

Warning: Contains spoilers from the first three seasons of Only Murders in the Building

The only thing celebrities love more than reminding normies that they’re our superiors is convincing us that they really know how to laugh at themselves. Larry David was relatively unknown as a show business personality when he created Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which he could continue litigating social niceties as he had as a co-creator of Seinfeld. The new show allowed him to portray “himself,” still technically working in entertainment, but now so wealthy he didn’t have to suffer fools or exert himself too much trying to set up his next project, and could spend most of his time having lunch with other stars playing “themselves.” Matt LeBlanc in Episodes, Pamela Adlon in Better Things and Steph Curry in Mr. Throwback all have taken their turns goofing on themselves in sitcom star vehicles. In the latest season of Only Murders In The Building, Zach Galifianakis, Eugene Levy and Eva Longoria take their turn, and while they’re all perfectly fine, it also feels like maybe it’s time for celebrities to take a break from spoofing themselves if they’re not really going to take any risks.

Only Murders has, of course, always been a gentle satire of the entertainment business, starting with the fictional true-crime podcast that gives the show its title. In an earlier phase of life, podcast co-host Charles Haden-Savage (Steve Martin) was an actor, most notably as the titular Brazzos in a network cop show. His current podcast colleague Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) still dabbles in directing on Broadway; his new notoriety on the podcast helps book him to direct a new musical, around which the third season revolves, also encompassing the trope of an unqualified movie actor (Paul Rudd’s Ben Glenroy) trying to stretch. Recurring through the run of the show has been Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch). Formerly Charles’ stunt double on Brazzos, Sazz has gone on both to date multiple Charles exes and to double Scott Bakula. Toward the end of the Season Three finale, Sazz tells Charles there’s something she wants to talk to him about, but they never get the chance: She ends up being the victim whose murder drives the plot in the fourth season, which premieres on Hulu tomorrow. 

It takes a little while for our intrepid investigators — Charles, Oliver and their young co-host Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) — to find this out, however, because they get called out of town. A Paramount executive named Bev Melon (Molly Shannon) wants to turn Only Murders into a movie, so the trio fly out to Los Angeles to let the studio bigwigs convince them to sign over their life rights. At a party celebrating the imminent production, our co-hosts meet their doppelgängers: Charles is to be played by Eugene Levy, Oliver by Zach Galifianakis and Mabel by Eva Longoria. (When Mabel asks whether they aged up her character because she’s an “old soul,” Eva says it’s actually because focus groups found the age gap between her and her male colleagues “creepy” — plus, Eva says, she and Mabel are practically the same age!) Charles is disturbed all along that he hasn’t been able to locate Sazz, including at her apartment in L.A., and when the podcasters return to the Arconia, the case starts to take shape.

CBS’ Elsbeth came for its crown earlier this year, but Only Murders is still America’s coziest mystery. The Season Four story, satisfyingly twisty as always, also rewards the longtime viewer by hanging a light on the holes in the Season One plot and teasing the possibility of closing them up. If you feared a major overhaul in the show’s titular setting when headlines like “‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 4 Will Be Set in Los Angeles” started popping up in the spring, rest easy: It remains such a New York show that the lengths people will go to secure a rent-controlled apartment is a major plot thread for the season. 

The three leads are, by now, very comfortable in their roles, but the characters still have room to learn and grow. Sazz’s death leads Charles into a bit of a crisis over whether he was a good enough friend to her. Oliver stresses about being in a long-distance partnership with Loretta (Meryl Streep), her ascendant career having led her to relocate to Los Angeles. And Mabel worries that Bev’s summation of her movie character — “homeless, jobless, mumbling” (Oliver: “Speak up, dear, I can’t hear you”; Charles: “I missed that last part”) — will lock her into an identity she won’t be able to revise. Though the show still indulges in the intergenerational roasting that’s part of its DNA, it’s actually very thoughtful in its portrayals of the challenges the characters are facing at their different stages of life.

But the stuntcasting is a real mixed bag. For the first time, we meet Charles’ across-the-courtyard neighbors from the Arconia’s West Towers — the Westies, to use the East Tower condo owners’ slur for them. As the man nicknamed “Stinkeye Joe,” Richard Kind is exactly the consummate pro you expect, even if his role was surely described in the casting breakdown as “a Richard Kind type,” and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s wearing his own wardrobe. Meanwhile, I hope Kumail Nanjiani has gotten over his discomfort talking about his body, because his character Rudy has approximately two attributes: being swole, and keeping his Christmas decorations up year-round. The season’s seventh episode introduces Melissa McCarthy; I’m not supposed to spoil what her role is, but I don’t think it’s violating any rules to say she is spectacularly miscast. (It also kind of ruins the fun of all the superstar guest cast’s appearances that they were all announced months ago! Even if we don’t know who they’re playing, we know they’re on their way!)

The podcasters’ famous doubles, though, are obviously the season’s marquee guest stars, which is why it’s too bad the writing for all three of them is so one-note. Eugene, the Canadian one, is the “nicest,” until Charles’ neuroses force him to express some irritation. Zach, the one who comes from alt-comedy, thinks he’s above all this. Eva, the one who made her name as a Desperate Housewife, is a wine-swilling, name-dropping narcissist. As soon as you saw these three actors had been cast, you probably imagined exactly how they would each play “themselves,” then maybe hoped the show would surprise you, so: I’m sorry if the surprise is actually that things ended up playing out so predictably. 

At this point, celebrities taking extremely safe risks with their public images is as old hat as Charles’ signature pork pie. If Zach had been the diva, Eva the polite observer and Eugene the disdainful snob, well, they’d still all be Types, but at least they wouldn’t be the Types you expected.

But: a cozy mystery may be one of the most critic-proof genres there is. If you’re a fan of this show, all you really want to know is whether it’s still doing all the things you like. And it is! Each new Arconia apartment you see will still make you jealous of the elegant lives some lucky New Yorkers get to live. Each Oliver anecdote is still just silly enough to at least make you smirk. Each episode still ends on a little cliffhanger to make the week’s wait for the next episode pleasurably painful. 

The Arconia’s residents may be tortured by the attention its namesake podcast keeps bringing to their home lives, but you will still enjoy descending on it for another 10-week stay.