First off, the good: any time I’m still watching a show in its fifth season, that’s a sign that I’m a pretty big fan of what they’ve been producing. And Only Murders in the Building is a genuinely good show. The first season was fantastic. Steve Martin and Martin Short and Selena Gomez play off each other wonderfully, and I had a blast watching it. The concept (that a trio accidentally fall into making a murder podcast together when a murder happens in their apartment building) was unique and fun, and the execution of was great. (Of the show. No people were executed.)
However.
Since that fantastic first season, the show has generally slid in its quality. It’s not that the characters or actors are phoning it in. The core trio continue to do a great job, and the guest star actors are all fun to watch. Rather, I think the premise is simply not quite up to holding together a TV series for season after season. The third season was all about musicals (with the show going so far as to stage an actual musical), and now the fourth season is all about movies and Hollywood. The theming of these allow the creators to look for humor in various areas of society, but they also pull the show away from what made it so good in the first place.
In the fourth season, this becomes increasingly obvious when there are entire episodes that seem to exist for no real reason other than to . . . Well, I’m not sure why they existed. There’s an episode where the trip goes to Steve Martin’s sister’s house and hide there for a single episode. It’s bizarre and does nothing for the plot other than advance a few back stories. That’s a problem.
In the end, I still had a fine time with the show. I gave it a 7/10, but I’m not sure I’ll continue to the fifth season. There are so many other things to watch, and it feels at the moment as if this particular series has given me its best and it’s time to move on.