Only Murders in the Building season 4 episode 3 recap & review: Two for the Road

This week’s Only Murders in the Building does a perfect job of bringing together this season’s two primary storylines as the Only Murder group teams up with their movie counterparts for what shaped up to be one of the funniest episodes of the season so far. 

Now, before we get into the thick of things, it goes without saying that spoilers are ahead for this week’s episode, so if you haven’t yet watched be warned that spoilers are coming! 

As the episode opens, Mabel, Oliver, and Charles are putting together their murder board when they get some unexpected assistance from Detective Donna. Turns out the feds have taken over the case and they don’t want to work with her, so she’s come to give the Only Murders group a few pieces of intel to help them out – knowing full well they won’t drop their investigation. 

While the feds think Jan has something to do with Sazz’s death and hired someone to do it, Detective Donna isn’t buying it. Before she leaves, she tells the team that they found a shell casing in apartment 14F; that the apartment belongs to an M. Dudenoff, a retired professor who the neighbors in the West Tower say is in Portugal; all of the neighbors said they were playing cards with the exception of Mr. Christmas All Year; Sazz’s phone has been turned off; and she too believes that Charles was the target, not Sazz. 

Just as Detective Donna is finishing up her Olivia Benson-style monologue, Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, and Zach Galifianakis show up hoping to shadow Oliver, Mabel, and Charles for the movie. 

The gang reluctantly agrees to be shadowed and start talking through their theories and narrow their focus onto two suspects: pink eye guy aka Vince Fish and Mr. Christmas aka Rudy Thurber. 

Mabel and Eva look into Mr. Christmas

After Charles reveals that he might have angered Mr. Christmas Guy by convincing everyone in the building to sign a petition to ban real Christmas trees one year, Mabel is convinced that he should be their top suspect and decides to look into things. Eva wants to accompany her, but Mabel says she works solo and heads off on her own to look into things. 

Much to her surprise, Eva has beaten her to it and is already at Mr. Christmas Guy’s apartment when she arrives. While Mabel tries to play things causal, Eva decides to take drastic actions and attempts to trigger Mr, Christmas Guy – who we learn is named Rudy – by breaking his decorations and threatening him at gunpoint. Fortunately, the gun was a fake and it seems so is Rudy.

Rudy actually hates Christmas but has been forced to take on this persona after he posted a Christmas workout video that went viral. Now it seems the only way he can get his content to succeed is by playing up the Christmas puns – even keeping a naughty list on his well-defined and incredibly chiseled abs. 

With his help, Mabel discovered the string of tinsel she found at the crime scene was actually not tinsel as it’s not flammable like the real stuff. She also discovered he has a ham radio as well and is thrown off when she hears The Perfect Strangers theme song playing on it – more on that in a bit. 

Charles and Eugene investigate pink eye guy

While Mabel and Eva look into Rudy, Charles and Eugene head over to speak with pink eye guy aka Vince Fish, as Charles worries that it’s not pink eye he’s hiding behind his eye patch, but a bruise from the gun he used to fire the shot into Charles’ apartment. 

Charles and Eugene come up with a plan to get him to take off his eye patch by doing a spit-take, but before they enact that plan they try to convince him to reveal his eye by offering up some special eye drops. When that plan doesn’t work, they go with the spit-take plan which ends in Eugene taking a punch to the nose and Vince revealing he indeed has pink eye. 

As they prepare to leave, Charles and Eugene spot a photo of Vince with his fellow West Tower neighbors that happens to have one individual’s face scratched out of the photo. 

Only Murders in the Building season 4 episode 3 ending explained

With the rest of the gang working to track down leads, Oliver spends most of the episode trying to get Zach to like him and become invested in the movie. Oliver does end up getting what he wants with help from an impassioned speech from Howard, but the inspiration Zach finds isn’t exactly coming from where Oliver hoped as Zach is inspired by Oliver’s tragic fails. 

In the closing scene of the episode, Oliver, Charles, and Mabel come together in Apartment 14F as Mabel reveals her plan to become a squatter in the apartment in hopes that it will draw Dudenoff out of hiding. Charles isn’t thrilled with the idea out of concern for Mabel, and she says this way they can hopefully get a break in their case while also keeping an eye on one another. 

As the group sits together on the floor, Mabel begins singing the theme song to The Perfect Stranger which has been in her head since she heard it on Rudy’s ham radio. When she mentions this, Oliver recalls that Howard was clocking the same song on the radio earlier in the day when making a journal of the ham radio output. 

He tells the group that a person came on the line and said, “Meet me at 445,” which is when Charles tells them about the photo in Vince’s apartment and questions whether the voice belonged to the mystery person in the photo. 

The group realizes 445 is a channel on the radio and quickly tune their ham radio to the frequency and sent out a message to see if anyone on the other end answers. Much to their surprise, a woman with an accent answers the calls and tells them they shouldn’t be on the frequency. Mabel, Oliver, and Charles press the mystery voice about who Dudenoff is and whether they’re out to get Charles which is when the voice issues a very clear warning. 

“The last person who came around asking these questions got killed. I tell you, drop this or you’ll be next,” the voice warns the group as the episode comes to a close.

Needless to say, this episode definitely leaves us with the season’s biggest cliffhanger so far and it’s clear things are moving along quite nicely now. We’ve seen the two ongoing threads come together in a perfect manner and look forward to watching Mabel, Oliver, and Charles continue to investigate Sazz’s murder. There’s no telling what might come next after this break in the case, but we hope the show continues to balance the ongoing storylines as it did beautifully in episode 3 as having Eugene, Eva, and Zach playing off Mabel, Charles, and Oliver was such a delight this episode!

Don’t miss new episodes ofOnly Murders in the BuildingTuesdaysstreaming on Hulu!