[This story contains spoilers for the first three episodes of Only Murders in the Building season five.]
The new season of Only Murders in the Building begins with someone dying, of course: As set up in the final moments of season four (and reiterated in the season five trailer and press materials), the newest victim is Lester (Teddy Coluca), the Arconia’s beloved doorman.
As Charles, Oliver and Mabel (Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez) begin investigating Lester’s death, however, they’re quickly pulled into another mystery, also set up in the closing scenes of last season. A mobster named Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale) has gone missing, and his wife, Sofia (Tea Leoni), wants the trio’s help finding him. They initially turn her down — until they see a photo of Nicky with Lester at Oliver’s wedding, which they discover shortly after finding a severed finger in Oliver’s shrimp cocktail.
What at first seems like a fruitless trip to Staten Island — where the Caccimelio family lives in the Corleones’ house from The Godfather — eventually leads to Charles and Mabel discovering a gambling den underneath the Arconia. At the same time, Oliver, hoping to prove to his fellow residents that he and Lester were close, takes the doorman’s hat to the dry cleaner’s in the building, where he discovers Nicky’s body.
“As always with the show, we first start asking questions about our victim, because that’s where everything is centered,” co-creator and showrunner John Hoffman told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Tuesday’s season premiere. “And then what things and what ideas can come off of this person and what his life was like, and what kind of things was he getting himself involved in?”
As for the last part, the season’s second episode reveals — via a series of flashbacks to Lester’s career at the Arconia that paints a touching picture of both his life and those of the people he served — that Lester had been taking payouts from Nicky to escort guests downstairs to secret, high-stakes games in the basement. And, as the team discovers at the end of episode three (the last released Tuesday, with the rest of the season coming in weekly installments), those games were likely attended by a trio of billionaires (played by Christoph Waltz, Renee Zellweger and Logan Lerman) — one of whom happens to be missing a finger.
It’s a twist on a twist, but it also points to a theme that Hoffman said OMITB will be exploring throughout the season. As Oliver puts it, the billionaires are “the new mob of New York.”
“To me, it felt like a real opportunity, both to look at New York in a way that we hadn’t before, through a sort of global view and pulling from headlines that are literally happening right now in New York, and also to talk about our home and how much is it worth fighting for?” Hoffman told THR. “How much is it worth, [in terms of how much it’s] being sold for, and how much is it worth protecting?”
Using Lester as the entry point into that story felt natural, Hoffman said, since the job of a doorman involves very human skills — connection and anticipation of others’ needs high on the list — that are in shorter supply in a tech-fueled world.
“I don’t see that being replaced in New York City,” said Martin, who co-created the series with Hoffman. “I mean, there might be electronic versions of self checkout like at the supermarket for these buildings, but the personal aspect, all the little details, I don’t see it being replaced.” Jermaine Fowler plays Randall, Lester’s replacement at the Arconia, but (to foreshadow a bit) the ideas Martin alluded to will also come into play later in the season.
Only Murders in the Building has gradually widened its focus outside the boundaries of the Arconia over the course of its four previous seasons. The new season sets up to take Charles, Mabel and Oliver further outside the building, and into a world they have less control over, than they’ve been before, thereby threatening the small connections that they’ve built up.
“[Lester] found himself in the middle of a power pull, the old mob and the new mob in New York,” said Hoffman. “That sort of thing felt really interesting to me, and then to sort of lean into, in our own winking way, [the idea that] in our little microcosm of the building, what if our trio was smack dab in the middle of solving a murder that had much greater stakes around it than they’re even aware of? … I very much wanted to lean into the connective. The show has always been about lonely people connecting through something they loved, even though it’s a murder podcast. There’s great joy in the show. Joy comes from the center of people recognizing a humanist point of view, and why it’s important, and why the connections like that are critical.“