Only Murders in the Building
There’s a particular pleasure in the referential. A well-used allusion can trigger nostalgia, add depth, provide context. A lot of work can be done by evoking other work.
"Only Murders in the Building" — the new Hulu mystery-comedy starring Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez — runs on invocation. It's a murder mystery, while also commenting on murder mysteries (true crime, specifically). You know how I love a good 'is the thing and is commenting on the thing.'
The premise is that the trio all live in the same building, The Arconia. Martin Short plays a washed-up theater director, Steve Martin is a one-hit-wonder actor hiding away from the world, and Selena Gomez is a secretive, hard-edged millennial drifting through her own life. They're brought together when, by chance, they learn that they all love the same true crime podcast. They're united when a murder in the building prompts them to start an investigation (and a podcast) of their own.
It would be easy for a show like "Only Murders" to be making fun of its characters and the kinds of real world people they represent (true crime fans; amateur podcasters; lonely older people). That's the cheap, convenient thing to do; a quick laugh at someone else's expense. But this show is really generous! The laughter is loving, not punitive. It's delightfully earnest and often whimsical.
While the show has much to recommend it, for me what makes this show so good (beyond its incredibly charming trio of leads) is its masterful use of pastiche. I love the way it joyfully and sincerely uses iconography and tropes from other media. So many shows buckle under the weight of trying to pretend that they're wholly original; that they're special; that they're better at what they're doing than other media doing the exact same thing. But I don't necessarily need a show to be original — I need it to be exactly what it is. I want it to lean into its own muchness.
A great example of how "Only Murders" uses the referential to weave the fabric of the show is in the credit sequence.
I know this is weird, but one of the reasons I started watching "Only Murders" is because of the title font. It's the same font as The New Yorker. I can't really say why that grabbed me (coincidentally it's also the font used by "Everybody Loves Raymond", but that didn't ping for me). Maybe it's because I know that Steve Martin has had a robust literary career outside of comedy and that seemed interesting. Maybe it's that the primary colors used also remind me of something (I still haven't figured out what). I had seen the trailer weeks before, but it really was the look and feel of the title that made me start the first episode.
The artwork of the credits also feels New Yorker-esque, like the kind of illustration you'd see on the cover. The 2D animation looks almost like paper cutouts. The credits open on a breezy fall day, a woman in a fur-trimmed coat walking several dogs while a yellow taxi drives by. We're at the beautifully arched white stone entrance of The Arconia, the wrought iron gates standing open. We don't go through the gates— instead, the camera travels up the side of the building, briefly pausing at the window of each of the main characters to give us a look inside their lives.
We get a peek at some of the other neighbors as well, each illuminated by a differently colored light. Silhouettes in apartment windows is exactly the kind of imagery we're used to seeing to convey the anonymity of New York. The loneliness, but also the intrigue, of being one person among hundreds - all living your separate lives with only a window to see each other through.
The sequence ends on the three main characters' backs, each of them facing into the large courtyard of the building. The camera backs away from them, the wrought iron gates slam shut. The woman walking her dog is traveling in the opposite direction of when last we saw her and an NYPD cruiser has taken the place of the cab.
While this opening is introducing us to the characters, it's also introducing us to the building. The location is integral to the story and what's more iconically New York than a building with a name and a storied history? And while The Arconia isn't a real building, the exterior it's shot in/based on very much is. The real building, the Belnord, is in the National Register of Historic Places, is a New York City Landmark, and, according to the New York Times, has "one of the most fraught real estate histories in all of New York City.” (The show has spawned dozens of articles about the building and others like it.)
Everything about the opening art, and the building it's depicting, has a specific kind of New Yorkness about it. It's a construct out of a literary fantasy. Like the friend who, when we were in New York, wanted to see the lobby of The Algonquin Hotel because of the literary greats who hung out there (including, incidentally, the founder of The New Yorker). In this fantasy of New York the city is lonely, but that’s sort of romantic. It makes it all the more meaningful when you find people who will stare at the cold, hard city along with you.
The final thread to pull on is the theme music playing underneath all this beautiful imagery. Voices somewhere between ethereal and haunting vocalize alongside tinkling piano music. The vocals sound like a whimsical ghost story. The piano sounds like the Serial theme music.
When Serial premiered in 2014 it started the avalanche that brought both podcasting and true crime into the mainstream. It didn't invent, or even particularly revolutionize, either but it got a large volume of people interested and talking about both. The first season of Serial proved that there was an appetite for audio stories of a single mystery parsed out week by week. Now it's a big enough part of the culture that we're not just consuming true crime media, we're consuming media about people making true crime media. Without Serial, there would be no "Only Murders".
One of the things I love about this tapestry of references is that even if you don't consciously recognize them, they’re working on your subconscious. The layered bits of culture all add up to create a certain kind of immersion, a fantasy that feels real because it's populated by elements that we know so well.
Plus, it makes for a really cute opening for a very clever show.
New episodes of “Only Murders in the Building” are released on Mondays at 9 PM (there’s a new one tonight!). The final episode of the season will be out on October 4th.
If you’ve never seen the SNL Serial sketch, now is a great time to watch it: https://youtu.be/ATXbJjuZqbc
The Vibe
ICYMI
On The Bi Pod we talked to Anna Kochetkova, author of “Bi & Prejudice” (out October 4th) and founder of the @biandprejudice Instagram community.