Only Murders Solves the Ben Glenroy Mystery but Fails to Kill Off Its Now-Useless Podcast

The trio of Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), Oliver Putnam (Martin Short), and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) is now three for three in solving murders — but not all murder mysteries are created equal, and the same is true for seasons of Only Murders in the Building. The just-concluded third season started off as a welcome rebound from Season 2's convoluted sophomore effort. But in wrapping up the mystery surrounding the death of Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd), this week's season finale reveals a TV show that is a very good musical-theater dramedy, a pretty decent murder mystery, and wholly past-its-prime show about three podcasters. Which may not be great news as the final moments of the episode set up the just-announced Season 4.

Heading into the season 3 finale, titled "Opening Night," the murder of Ben Glenroy had been 90% solved. It was Donna DeMeo (Linda Emond) in the dressing room with the rat-poison-laced Schmackary's cookie. The motive? A scathing review that would have killed her son Cliff's (Wesley Taylor) producing career in the crib.

The finale of a mystery show like this always throws a wrench into the works, and indeed, we discover that while Donna may have poisoned Ben for murder attempt #1, it was Cliff who shoved Ben down the open elevator shaft for attempt #2 (the one that stuck).

Mabel, Oliver, and Charles did the heavy lifting to put together the means, motive, and opportunity of the killing last week. In “Opening Night,” they just kind of stand by while the culprits, overcome with Oedipal emotion, confess their crimes. Mabel, inspired by eavesdropping on Loretta (Meryl Streep) and Dickie's (Jeremy Shamos) rather touching mother/son moment (privacy truly is dead for the millennial generation), figures out the Cliff of it all, and then it's just a matter of whether he will plunge to his death from the rafters or if he will live to see the inside of a jail cell.

As a mystery, the Ben Glenroy murder is a satisfying one, in that its resolution makes emotional sense (it's a whole mothers-and-sons theme, which ties back to the fathers-and-sons theme of Season 1) and doesn't pull any ludicrous fast ones at the last minute. Was it all a little too easy to figure out, even for someone (hi) who's famously not great at figuring this stuff out? Sure. Loretta was an obvious red herring, and the DeMeos (not to mention the Schmackarys) were such obvious appendages to the story, waiting to get picked up when the plot required them. But overall, a solid B+ of a murder mystery.

What Season 3 really excelled at was being a dramedy set in the world of musical theater. Oliver Putnam's quest to re-stage Death Rattle as a musical (Death Rattle Dazzle!) no matter how many cardiac events his dip-clogged arteries endured was the story of the season. This ludicrous story of a murder at the foot of a Nova Scotian lighthouse and the three infants accused of killing their mother was a delight every time the show returned to it. And the bits and pieces of the full production — unbearably shiny costumes and all — that we saw in "Opening Night" only served as further proof that this thing needs to be staged as a real production in some way.

In reinventing Only Murders for its third season, creators John Hoffman and Steve Martin turned a hyper-specific show about the real-estate-obsessed Upper West Side of Manhattan and its peculiar character types and social mores into a hyper-specific show about the Broadway theater and its peculiar character types and social mores. Asking an audience drawn to Upper West Side in-jokes to pivot to musical theater in-jokes isn't asking for that much of a leap. And every winking nod to local businesses (if I mention "Schmackary's" a third time, maybe the cookies will appear before me like Beetlejuice), characters like the DeMeos who are meant to invoke Jordan and Daryl Roth, or references to Oliver's disastrous experience directing Splash! The Musical, were all perfectly calibrated to the show's intended audience without feeling overly pandering. And the songs! Partnering with the likes of Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Sara Bareilles, Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, and Michael R. Jackson produced some incredible songs that worked as both parodies of Broadway ditties but genuinely good songs in their own right.

Only Murders was so successful in its transition to a musical-theater dramedy that it's going to be a genuine bummer if the show pivots to something else for Season 4. Hulu greenlit a new season just as the finale was dropping on Tuesday, a finale which, true to the show's form, sets up the next season's murder in its final moments.

This is your last chance to skip to the next paragraph before you learn that the identity of the latest murder victim is Charles' trusted confidant and stunt double Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch). Sazz showed up at the Death Rattle Dazzle opening-night party with something urgent to tell Charles. Whether she was sniped through Charles' kitchen window by someone mistaking her for Charles or she was the intended victim will have to wait until Season 4. As will the question of whether the Arconia crew will be packing up for sunny Los Angeles — Oliver and Mabel both have open invitations from their respective love interests, Loretta and Tobert (Jesse Williams), and Sazz was a TV industry lifer, so surely the mystery of her urgent message will lead our heroes to a murder-solving, podcasting adventure out West.

That last part is the problem, though. For as successful as Hoffman and Martin were at delivering a musical theater-themed season, they were equally inept at anything to do with continuing the conceit that podcasting is an essential tenet of the show. Yes, that was a huge part of its initial hook: a murder-mystery show about a murder-mystery podcast solving the mystery of a murder. That worked for a season, then the show creaked under the weight of trying to make the podcast even more integral to the story in Season 2 (remember the superfans?).

In Season 3, the podcast felt extraneous to the point of making characters unpleasant when they brought it up. The musical production was so new and exciting and full of fun songs that whenever Mabel started whining to Oliver or Charles about them never having time to dedicate to their podcast anymore, it was hard to sympathize with her. Whenever Tobert tried to connect with Mabel over their shared instincts as documentarian and podcaster, it felt like the show was pulling our leg. Mabel constantly pulled out the recording equipment that she seemed to lug around with her at all times just in case the time was right, but never once did the podcast regain its momentum in the way it did in Season 1. How many actual episodes of "Only Murders in the Building" got made over the course of this season? One? Two at most?

This would have been fine if the season had come to the conclusion that Mabel, Charles, and Oliver don't need their little murder podcast to be friends. They're in each other's lives; they clearly care about each other very much. And even though murders continue to follow them around at a Jessica Fletcher-like pace, they really don't need the pretext of a podcast to be able to solve them.

"Only Murders in the Building" (the podcast) is the vestigial tail on Only Murders in the Building (the show). It's the Valerie Harper to the show's The Hogans. It's the man-on-the-street interviews in Sex and the City. It's Chuck Cunningham on Happy Days. Murder podcasts aren't even cool anymore. Let Mabel get really into making goofy food videos in Season 4. Only Murders in the Building should carry on — in Los Angeles, if it truly must — but it's probably time to pack up those podcast mics for good.

Only Murders in the Building Season 3 is streaming on Hulu. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.