Season two of Only Murders in the Building has done a good job so far of taking characters that we either knew about or heard of in season one and expanding them.
I’ve just finished watching episode 6, and while I’m very intrigued by that episode’s ending, I think that my favourite episode of season two so far has to be episode 3, The Last Day of Bunny Folger.
I’m going to start this discussion of episodes 3 & 4 by saying that I hope Bunny appears in more flashbacks. I don’t know if Only Murders in the Building will go on to have a third season because realistically, how many murders can happen in one building, and how many times can our trio be framed?
Season one had a great premise, avid podcast listeners decide to create their very own murder investigation podcast when someone in their building ends up dead and this dynamic worked really well and it also allowed the show to build up towards a second season that had a reasonably logical premise. Podcast trio got too close to the crime, they exposed the truth, and now someone wants revenge so season two follows our trio as they try to clear their names after being blamed for Bunny’s murder.
The show is still satirical. It very much breaks the fourth wall and acknowledges that it is in its second season. The characters make jokes about how things are heightened, evolved, they’re clearly aware that season one’s formula worked and so they’re doing the same thing, just on a slightly bigger scale because as the old saying goes, if it isn’t broke…
Bunny Folger is a character. When I say someone is a character, what I mean by this is that this person stands out. Bunny had a reputation of being the mean lady who was very strict, she didn’t like Oliver, and she had certain standards for the building that she grew up in, the building she inherited, the building that is her family’s legacy. Bunny takes great pride in the fact that her home has not been turned into just another modern building that could be anywhere and I said in my last review how I really enjoy the fact that the apartment building itself is just as much of a character as everyone else in the show.
Episode three gives audiences the details of Bunny’s last day alive. In this episode, in my opinion, we learn that Bunny was a firecracker. She was determined, she was opinionated, she knew her own mind, she didn’t suffer fools. Bunny was a New Yorker through and through. She was very generous when she wanted to be, a fact that she didn’t flaunt, she even seemed to have a sense of humour tucked away. It was a side that she didn’t share with many, but throughout this episode I found myself saying “I love Bunny.”
Bunny is planning to retire and so she spends a lot of time in episode three thinking about moving to Florida however after a few moments trapped in a hot elevator with Charles and Mabel, she declares that she hates the heat. It was my favourite moment in the show. The line was delivered so perfectly.
Bunny’s character arc also showed the downside of keeping your caring, funny side hidden away from so many because when she ventures out of her apartment with a bottle of bubbly for our trio, they completely miss the hint that she would like to drink with them, and then when they hear how upset she is, they feel too awkward to go into the hallway and get her, and this awkwardness is topped by the fact that because of their less than perfect relationship with Bunny, she is not exactly someone they want to celebrate with in the first place. With that being said, my heart broke for Bunny when she cried in the hallway because that moment showed that she is not heartless, she does not want to be friendless, she is just a woman who has built walls to protect herself. She has a hard job. She deals with every problem, every complaint, and it is not always fun to have to be the responsible one, the one who gets things done. She runs a tight ship, and it is often something that people don’t appreciate until the person running that ship is no longer around, but also when you have to be so firm, you won’t always be someone that people feel they can let their hair down around and while this is unfortunate, this is very true so those uncomfortable scenes with Bunny trying to fit in after being firm felt painfully realistic.
I enjoyed episode 3. It felt like a character episode rather than an episode fuelled by new clues, however I enjoyed this. I felt this episode rounded out Bunny’s character because honestly even though it is Bunny’s building and she spent season one being less than best friends with our trio, I originally thought she was an odd character to kill off even though I will say I think killing off a character we already knew worked much better than it would have if they brought in a completely new victim but I still think it was smart to include Bunny flashbacks, especially since I feel they were designed to allow us as the audience to warm to Bunny a bit more.
Let’s talk about episode 4.
In this episode, we finally got to meet Lucy. We learned a lot about Lucy in season one. Charles dates her mother. He was part of Lucy’s life for a significant amount of time. He clearly cared for her as though he was her father and he found it difficult after the relationship ended and Lucy was no longer in his life. We had that very sweet moment in season one where he reached out and his face lit up when Lucy texted him back.
I will pause here and say that I think Steve Martin is the dad of all dads in dad roles.
I cry when I watch Father of the Bride. I just think he plays the doting dad part so well. He’s very endearing, and so seeing his character Charles have to navigate seeing Lucy again now that she’s older and her mother has married someone else was really interesting and really sweet.
Something that I didn’t love is how they made Lucy almost cartoonishly “young.”
I’m saying “young” because the show is never afraid to mention generational gaps. Mabel is obviously younger than Charles and Oliver and now Lucy is much younger than Mabel, but they made Lucy, for the first few minutes anyway, impossible to talk to. There is a scene where she talks to Mabel about TikTok and she speaks so quickly about so many different things that even Mabel finds it hard to have a conversation with her.
I understand the joke here is that Mabel is saying “she makes me feel old, and I’m the young one”, but I’m very glad they calmed this down because if Lucy continued to speak this way for the entire episode, it would have become very grating. In my opinion, this would not have been fair because Lucy so far is a very intelligent young girl, who is dealing with a lot, and she articulates herself very well and I think having her reconnect with Charles whom she loved as a stepfather figure would be a really lovely arc.
Spoilers ahead, although if you’ve read this far then you either don’t care about spoilers or you’ve watched the episodes but it turns out that Lucy was hiding in the passages the night that Bunny was murdered so I’m intrigued to see how that storyline will play out as the season continues.
Based on Lucy’s flashback to the night of the murder, a figure snuck into Mabel’s apartment by going through the secret passages. In my opinion, I think Bunny’s killer was a man based on the tall, broad figure that Lucy hid from in the passageway.
I think it is a little bit interesting that the show is almost backtracking a bit on season one because in episode 4, Lucy explains how she came to the building and hid from Charles and left after the chaos, but I think I would have preferred if we had have seen her in season one. It would have been better if there was a shot of her entering the building and then we could have wondered who that was, where did she go, and then when she came into the show properly in season two, we could have said “that’s the girl who walked into the building, so she was there that night, ohh what happened?”
It’s just my opinion, but I feel that although it is an interesting storyline and I’m interested to see what the show does with it, it feels a little bit as though the show decided to say “Look, see. Lucy was there too!”
Out of all the new storylines in season two so far, this one just feels a little clunky, but it is not ruining my overall enjoyment of the show.
Still no Oscar. I am disappointed.
I am writing this review of episodes 3 and 4 having already watched episodes 5 and 6, but I am going to write about 5 and 6 separately, so I already know how things take an odd turn with Alice, but at this point, in episodes 3 and 4, I like her. I like how we are not sure yet if she can be trusted or not. I said already, I have no problem with Mabel dating other characters, but I am disappointed that Oscar does not seem to be appearing after everything they’ve been through. They don’t need to date. They can be friends. Oscar was acknowledged so briefly that I think it does season one a disservice. I’m hoping that he is at least mentioned more before the season ends.
Things have taken a turn in episodes 5 and 6 and to be honest, while I have some thoughts, I don’t have a clear guess yet on who I think the killer is. I’m hoping that I will be able to guess because when I watch any kind of mystery I like to lock in a guess and see if I am right or wrong, but I’m not ready to lock in a guess yet so I’m still wondering who killed Bunny?
Let’s keep watching and find out.
Do you have any ideas about who the killer could be? I’d love to read some guesses/theories so let me know.
Kate xo.
Katelovesliterature.com 