Only Murders In The Building “Ghost Light”

Wait, after an episode that meditated on love, we get one where there’s maybe a ghost?  Did we go from Valentine’s Day to Halloween when I wasn’t looking?

OK, to be honest, the ghost is mostly theater superstition for Howard, but the general plot for this episode does have the threesome finally looking into the case together.  Or not.  Charles brings the lone goldfish Joy left behind, Mabel is being accused of inviting Tolbert to join the group, and Oliver might care more for the show than he does anything else.  Or he cares for Loretta.  The point is, the three go to the theater where Mabel runs into Tolbert and finds their suspect is maybe not so suspicious, Oliver runs into another Broadway director who is squatting in the theater, and Charles locks himself in a boiler room with the fish.

Oh, I suppose Charles’s nearly getting flattened by some sandbags might account for something too, but the bigger issue is that the three finally have the big blow-up that was coming the whole season.  Mabel is trying to do the investigation.  Charles is missing Joy and communing too much with a fish that he nearly kills.  And Oliver, well, he’s caught destroying evidence to protect Loretta.  Oliver’s friend has seen Charles punch out Ben before the first show to protect Loretta, something he’d told neither of the others, and Mabel reveals she got a job offer from Cinda.

Dude, don’t take a job from Cinda.  She’s not a good boss.

Now, Mabel wants to solve Ben’s murder because, well, she got through some tough times thanks to his work.  Charles and Oliver are both a bit of a mess, and it does truly look like their friendship is over as Charles quits the play and Mabel continues the investigation alone while Oliver carries on the show.  This is truly the end of the road…except there are four more episodes left this season and a fourth is on its way.

But really, this is the appropriate place to put the blow-up, and it’s not like the series is also just a lot of calm seas.  I think the fact the three are more or less at-odds over whether to even have an investigation is a different sort of problem…though I mostly watch this show because it’s funny, so maybe it doesn’t matter much.

Oh, it’s got heart too, and the mysteries are usually compelling.  But this season just has a different feel, possibly because love is in the air for all three, even if Mabel and Tolbert just don’t make much sense to me right now.