‘Only Murders In The Building’ Season 2 Episode 5 Spoiler Recap/Review

he Following Recap/Review Contains Spoilers for Episode 4 of Only Murders In The Building. Check out our review of Episode 4 here.

Only Murders in the Building changes things up this episode with a more serious episode devoted to Oliver (Martin Short). It delves deep into how well Oliver thinks he can read someone’s poker face by figuring out their tell (aptly the name of the episode). He knows it all, from his son Will (), to the person across the room. It shows a depth into how he’s been able to get some of his shows funded, but in the spirit of ‘Twist’ we have to dive into Mabel’s (Selena Gomez) romantic life yet again. Alice (Cara Delevingne) is in the spotlight this time, especially after Charles (Steve Martin) visits Jan (Amy Ryan)! And finally, we have to, just absolutely have to dive into a shattering element for Oliver as a character. Let’s dive in shall we?

Only Murders in the Building episode starts off exploring Will and Oliver as a unit, one we were getting in to in episode 4, but it’s really at the forefront of this episode, including going into the past to show Will’s tell. Will asks if Oliver can contribute to his son’s school project on genealogy, wanting to know their ancestry, and yes, you guessed it. Oliver is not the father! That’s skipping to the end of the episode, but it’s probably the biggest shock of the episode, especially considering what Dimas said to Oliver in episode 4, and Will’s 50% Greek so it’s the closest guess. The big question is how will this play out over the last half of the season, will Dimas end up dead and Oliver suspect because we know there’s a season 3 coming now?

We get to travel back to the 70s with everyone in era appropriate garments, with an artistry party for the collective which Oliver and Charles end up invited to! Oliver pulls out illicit substances, and the Son of Sam card game!  He wants to find the “killer” of the blondes in the game, and in doing so, interrogate Alice. It’s a good transition from last season, when Oliver and Mabel just disliked Jan, but didn’t put any effort into knowing them and then she ended up the killer.

So they’re trying to do their due diligence, but it falls flat. Alice is pushed to her limit, and admits she’s lied about her credentials in order to maintain her status in the art world. She is not “the son of Sam”, Mabel was. Paralleling back to Oliver’s past, it shows Oliver’s obliviousness when he cares about the people around him. He ignores the need to pay attention to their lying tells because he trusts them, but should he?

Hitting the Charles’ metric of the story, he spends a lot of time in the “arms” of Jan, who we knew from last week, has been calling him relentlessly. Seems a little like Charles is fretting over Lucy’s mom getting married, and is running back to the known, even if she tried to kill him. He uses several comments from Jan, including that the killer is “an artist with a story to tell”. He sticks with Jan throughout the episode, to the point where it looked like we were gonna get some phone you know what while Charles was in bed. Ryan and Martin are SO good together, the chemistry is great.

Overall, this episode of Only Murders in the Building is EVERYTHING. There’s drama, there’s interrogation, there’s love from multiple angles, and it still packs so much of a punch. My only qualm is there is so much going on in this episode, there’s not enough time. For a season to total under six hours, and being a mystery series, I understand cliffhangers, but there’s so much hanging on Mabel and Alice’s relationship, especially after seeing the Son of Sam card in Mabel’s bag, and Oliver’s reaction to not being Will’s father (Oliver says he’s 100% Irish). One seems like it will get left by the wayside for the next episode and we’ll be hanging on to the other for a couple of weeks to figure it out. Mabel’s got some things to explain to Oliver and Charles for sure. A nearly perfect episode for sure, but definitely some questions needs answering! – Katie Rentschler