Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Only Murders in the Building Season 4 Episode 4.
As we approach the halfway point of Season 4, Only Murders in the Building is slowly starting to reveal more of its twists. After Episode 3 served as more of a filler episode for the season and brought in the Hollywood crew for a fun multitude of plots, Episode 4, aptly titled “The Stunt Man,” returns to form and gets back to the mystery. Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) find some new leads to follow in Sazz’s (Jane Lynch) murder, and new information about the colorful inhabitants of the West Tower is revealed to Mabel, which brings the trio back to square one.
Oliver and Loretta Can’t Communicate in ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 4 Episode 4
In Season 3, Oliver became smitten with Loretta (Meryl Streep) when she starred in his musical Death Rattle Dazzle. They spent the majority of the season flirting before finally making things official by the end of the season, and as we saw in the Season 4 premiere, they were still going strong despite Loretta moving to Los Angeles. They were doing so well, in fact, that Oliver even thought about proposing. But Loretta has been cutting her and Oliver’s phone calls short lately, and a selfie has recently been posted to her Instagram where a man’s arm is visible and wrapped around her shoulders. This sets off alarm bells for Oliver, but rather than asking her about it, he makes a fake account to keep tabs on Loretta. He names his alter ego Ronnie, and poses as one of Loretta’s biggest fans, going so far as bonding through a made-up love for decoupage.
Mabel rightfully calls him out for this behavior and tells him to just call Loretta and ask her about the arm himself, but he worries that doing so will result in him getting hurt. He tells Mabel that he worries about his relationship with Loretta failing because all of his previous relationships have failed. She understands where he’s coming from of course, but tells him that if Loretta learns what he’s doing instead she’ll be even more upset than she would if he had just asked her about it. Ultimately he says goodbye to “Ronnie” (though he gets Mabel to push the button as he can’t bear to do it himself) and mentally prepares for what could be a potentially tough conversation with Loretta.
Mabel Learns the Truth About the West Tower in ‘Only Murders In the Building’ Season 4 Episode 4
As we saw in the previous episode, Mabel decided to squat in Dudenoff’s apartment as he would have to show his face in order to kick her out and take back the apartment for himself, at which point she, Charles, and Oliver could grill him for information. We also heard a rather concerning conversation when the three of them tuned in to a frequency on a ham radio and were told to stop asking questions about Sazz’s disappearance. This leads to even more suspicion surrounding, not only Dudenoff, but the West Tower itself and its inhabitants.
Mabel explains that the tenants have been freezing her out since she started squatting in Dudenoff’s apartment, and when she finally confronts them, she learns why. As it turns out, the people living in the West Tower aren’t a cult, like Mabel briefly pondered. When she arrives back to the apartment, she finds them moving her bed from the wall and calls them out on their strange behavior, which is explained by Vince (Richard Kind), much to the apprehension of his fellow tenants. He says that the information he’s going to tell her could ruin many lives and can’t leave the room, but Mabel says she’s going to tell Charles and Oliver anyway. Rudy (Kumail Nanjiani) collects a folder from a hidden place in the wall behind the bed and passes it to Mabel, as Vince explains. The folder contains leases; they’re illegally subletting rent-controlled apartments. It’s a scheme, not a cult.
Inez (Daphne Rubin-Vega) and Rudy shed some light on the situation — and specifically, Dudenoff. As it turns out, Dudenoff is a real person and rents every apartment on the floor. Each tenant has met him at one point or another and he saw that they were, as Inez supplies, “weirdos,” and took pity on them, explaining that it can be hard to live in the city when you march to the beat of your own drum. He retired to Portugal but still takes care of them, allowing them to live in the apartments for a mere two hundred dollars a month. Mabel is flabbergasted by this and they say that she can be a part of it, so long as she doesn’t share their secrets on her podcast. She just has one last question to ease her mind: What is up with the ham radio? Again, there’s a pretty simple answer. It was just Rudy’s ex-girlfriend Helga. According to Vince, they’ve never even met Sazz, let alone killed her, and blames the comment Helga made telling them not to ask any more questions on her paranoia and the problems she’s working through. Nothing more is explained about Helga or the apartment situation. But an apartment in New York City that only costs two hundred dollars to rent is far too good to be true, so it’s likely the West Tower sub-plot isn’t quite as settled as it may seem.
Is Ben Alive in ‘Only Murders In the Building’ Season 4?
Season 4 is a very Charles-heavy season due to his close relationship with Sazz, and Episode 4 is no different, beginning with Charles dreaming of his friend. In it, he’s following her through what seems to be the woods, and she asks him if he’s coming with her to paradise. When he wakes up, he invites Mabel and Oliver to his apartment and shows them his new murder board, which solely includes clues about Sazz. Some sleuthing through Instagram reveals that Sazz posted a photo of herself the day she died, and it leads the trio to a bar called Concussions, which is a stuntman bar.
Naturally, they have to go and investigate — but when they show up, they immediately don’t feel welcome in the place. They attempt to ask the bartender some questions about Sazz, but he refuses to speak, even when Charles feebly tries to bribe him. More people approach the trio and express their disdain for them. The bar frowns upon actors as they, the stunt doubles, do all the hard work but the actors get all the praise and recognition. They believe the same to be true for Sazz, despite Charles explaining that they were actually close friends. But there’s little more to be said because a man suddenly comes tumbling out of a room and falls to the floor. The trio looks on in surprise, only to gasp in realization — because it’s Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd)! “Ben” stands up and greets them with a thick accent, revealing that he’s not Ben, but rather his stunt double, Glen Stubbins. After a closer inspection, they realize they were quite silly in believing him to truly be Ben Glenroy (which is always a funny gag) and move on from their initial shock.
Glen explains that he spent 15 years taking every bump and fall for Ben, only for him to be murdered and thus take away everything he worked for. He then threatens the trio with violence, much like the rest of the bar’s inhabitants, and ushers them to leave. But before they do, Mabel notices a woman walking through and into the back room, where a purple light glows from within, and when they get outside she concludes that Sazz’s picture had a similar light. This is when Glen shows up again, apologizing for riling them up inside, as he was just playing along with everyone else. He actually wants a role in their movie. Charles says they don’t have a need for a stunt double, but Glen doesn’t take no for an answer so easily, and decides to prove to them that he’s right for the job by first smashing his head with a garbage can lid, and then throwing himself against a parked car before climbing atop it and cannonballing into a dumpster. Mabel finally relents and offers to get him a job in the movie on the condition that he gets them into that back room. He explains that Dr. Maggie resides back there, and that she’s a miracle worker. She’s their chiropractor, and Sazz supposedly spent a lot of time in that room.
Charles Can’t Escape His Guilt in ‘Only Murders In the Building’ Season 4 Episode 4
From the moment Sazz’s murder was discovered, Charles has been carrying the weight of her death on his shoulders. While he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, she was killed due to her likeness to him, since he was the target — so in a way, it was partially his fault, or so he reasons. In Episode 2, “Gates of Heaven”, he even has a conversation with her ghost where she tries to dissuade him of his guilt. This leads in nicely to this episode, especially to the scenes at Concussions, because when Glen shares that Sazz spent a lot of time with Dr. Maggie, Charles is immediately sad, not knowing Sazz was in pain all the time.
Dr. Maggie is more forthcoming than the bartender or the other occupants in the bar, but she tells Charles that he looks very tense, and she’ll only speak to him if he lays on her table and allows her to work her magic. Dr. Maggie reveals to Charles that Sazz was going to be retiring from stuntwork and transitioning into a new career, and also divulged at one point that she had a difficult relationship in her life. Charles assumes the bad relationship Sazz was talking about is him, something made all the more worrisome when he has an out-of-body experience after a particularly good back crack, which results in another vision Sazz. They’re walking through the woods again, only this time she’s bloodied, and she again asks him if he’s coming with her to paradise.
Charles Taps in For Sazz in ‘Only Murders In the Building’ Season 4 Episode 4
During a conversation with Oliver and Mabel later on, Charles realizes there is something he can do for Sazz after all. He shows up at the bar and tells them they can have a stuntman’s funeral for her, using his body. After getting him in position on the pool table, Glen asks him if he’s sure about doing it, to which Charles says, “Sazz stood in for me so many times, the least I can do is lie down for her.” It may be a small thing in the grand scheme, but this is a very healing moment for Charles, as he’s felt so helpless and responsible for Sazz’s death — or at least, it’s healing at the start. He soon learns exactly what a stuntman’s funeral entails, and it’s not what you’d expect. For starters, everybody has a stuntman’s margarita: a tequila shot and a squirt of lime in the eyes. Then they get into their eulogies. Everybody comes up to the pool table where Charles is tapping in for Sazz, and they say their heartfelt goodbyes to her. Each message is finished off by smashing a fake bottle off the top of Charles’s head. This obviously wouldn’t hurt if he really was dead, like intended, but he’s very much alive, and very much caught off guard. But he grins and bears it for Sazz — that is, until it’s Glen’s turn. When he goes to smash his bottle, it doesn’t break, and he realizes that it isn’t a fake bottle like the rest, but Charles has already been knocked out.
In his unconscious state, Charles dreams of Sazz again — only this time it’s a memory. They’re on the set of Brazzos, and he asks her if she’s OK, because it looks like she took a pretty hard hit. She assures him that she can take it but that someday she won’t be able to, and at that point, she’d like to open up a trampoline park, just like the ones she and her dad would go to when she was young. She wants it to be a place where kids can learn how to fly and how to fall, a place that will shape the next generation of stunt people. Charles suggests she open the trampoline park where they are now, and Sazz says she’ll think about it. This helps ease Charles’s mind a bit, and it also answers the episode-long question of what Sazz’s paradise is.
After the stuntman’s funeral, Charles brings Oliver and Mabel with him to what seems at first to be an abandoned park. A sign tells us differently: Future Home of the Sazz Pataki Impact Academy. But there’s no time for Charles to reminisce about his friend or tell Oliver and Mabel the story behind it because they suddenly hear some creaks in a nearby shed. Naturally, they investigate the noises, and inside they find Bev Melon (Molly Shannon) — but she’s also holding a gun, and she’s pointing it right at them, delivering a steely “Don’t move, or I’ll blow your fucking brains out” right before the credits roll on Episode 4, leaving us on a major cliffhanger.
Only Murders in the Building is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S. New episodes premiere every Tuesday.
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