Only Murders In The Building “Valley Of The Dolls”

If you have ever, in your entire life, for any reason whatsoever, wondered what it would look like to see Meryl Streep and Melissa McCarthy throw down, then this is the episode for you.

The season is heading into the home stretch, and after the reveal in the previous episode that someone is watching Mabel, Charles, and Oliver, the three fled the city for the comparative safety of Long Island.  As someone who currently resides in New York State but hasn’t spent more time in Long Island than I absolutely have to–I had a really bad experience driving there once–I will say that this show’s version of Long Island seems about as on-the-mark as its depiction of New York City.  That is to say, some guy with a thick Long Island accent narrates the episode where he indicates the city sucks and Long Island is great.  Who is this guy?  Eh, he’s Big Mike, Charles’s brother-in-law, a cop currently living on a boat in his driveway because his wife, Charles’s sister Doreen, threw him out for spending too much time as Can-Cans, a restaurant that does for butts what Hooters does for boobs.  That sounds very Long Island stereotype to me.

However, Big Mike doesn’t appear onscreen until the end of the episode when he makes up with Doreen by reminding her he only goes to Can-Cans because they offer lunchtime prices for the dinner menu for cops, and come to think of it, that is a good deal.

Oh, and since Doreen is Charles’s (much) younger sister, she has to be played by a recognizable guest star in the form of the aforementioned Melissa McCarthy.  Thanksfully, McCarthy’s husband Ben Falcone is not playing Big Mike because I tend to think McCarthy can only really be funny when Falcone is not involved in whatever she’s doing.  Here?  She’s a doll-collecting woman who teases her brother still about a lost spleen and falls for Oliver for some reason.

I pretty much feel anytime anyone falls for Oliver, it should be classified as “for some reason.”

That means when Loretta shows up to make up with Oliver after an awkward break-up text caused by a misunderstanding, there’s a fight with Doreen.

Actually, for a place where the podcasters are hiding out, a whole lot of people keep finding them.  Molly Shannon’s Bev Melon pops in to get drunk, regret all of her life choices, and then forget she regretted a single thing when she sobered up.  The actors playing the podcasters all show up too, and Mabel, the only one of the trio still investigating the murder because Charles is more worried about fortifying the house while Oliver stews over his love life, reluctantly agrees to let Eugene, Eva, ans Zach do their own side investigation.  It turns out actors are good at that sort of thing.

As for how these people kept finding Charles, Oliver, and Mabel while they were all hiding out in Long Island, that would be Howard’s fault, but Howard comes up big in this episode too as something like Oliver’s personal assistant/investigator, he finds out who has been cashing the late Professor Dudenoff’s checks while the actors point out all the unresolved plot holes from season one, plot holes so well-hidden that I forgot about them.  Yes, there has been someone monitoring the podcast since then, and the West Tower Weirdos are all taking turns cashing Dudenoff’s checks.

I am inclined to think something odd is going on over there, but I am not sure I would go so far as to pin the murders on the Westies just yet.  Mostly because this show will probably pull the rug out of that theory in the next episode before revealing who the real killer is in the season finale.

I mean, why would I keep watching after the season finale to see who the killer is?  Oh wait, because these people are charming…