Only Murders in the Building season 4 episode 4 recap and review: The Stunt Man

After episode 3 ended with such a major cliffhanger, one would have expected the fourth episode of Only Murders in the Building season 4 would have picked up right where we left off. Instead, the episode kills teh momentum the previous episode built, but fear not! By the time the episode comes to a close, the show does a brilliant job of building that momentum back up with a closing scene that is sure to leave fans on the edge of their seats between episodes!

Warning: The following contains spoilers from Only Murders in the Building season 4 episode 4, “The Stunt Man.” 

Charles dreams a little dream of Sazz

The episode begins with what turns out to be a nightmare for Charles, a dream in which he’s following Sazz through the woods aimlessly. When he asks her where she’s heading, she simply tells him, “Paradise,” before we hear gunfire and Charles awakens from the dream. 

Unable to fall back asleep, Charles spends the night making a second murder board which he shows to Oliver Mabel bright and early the next morning. As he tells the group, he feels it only right Sazz has her own murder board since she was the one murdered after all which Mabel loves – telling the group that could be the hook of the season: they’re not only looking for the killer, but for the victim as well. 

When reviewing the board, all makes sense except the word “Paradise” which Charles has placed at the center of the board. He holds back on the explanation as the conversation shifts to Mabel being iced out by the Westies after she started squatting in hopes of drawing out Dudenoff, before finally landing upon Oliver. It turns out he also had a restless night as Loretta ended their nightly call early and he noticed a mystery man appearing in several photos on Loretta’s Instagram. 

As Mabel pulls up the social platform to follow Loretta, she discovers Sazz was also on Instagram and that her last post was from a stuntman bar called Concussions. 

Paul Rudd makes a surprise return as Charles tracks down a lead 

After seeing Sazz’s final Instagram post, Charles, Mabel, and Oliver head out to Concussions in hopes of getting some answers. Despite trying to grease the palms of the bartender, he refuses to tell them anything and puts the group on blast for only looking into Sazz’s death for their podcast. 

As Charles tries to reason with the group, we get a fun and unexpected return from Paul Rudd playing Glen Stubbins, the stunt double of Rudd’s season 3 character Ben Glenroy. As Glen prepares to help show them to the door, they notice a mysterious woman enter the backroom which gives Mabel a glimpse of the purple lighting where Sazz’s final Instagram photo was taken. 

Just when it looks like the mission is a failure, Glen comes outside and asks Charles to help him out by allowing him to take over as his new stunt double and they end up striking a deal with Glen. They’ll get him a job in the Only Murders movie if they get them into the backroom to meet with the mystery lady Mabel spotted, who it turns out is a chiropractor who comes in to help treat the stunt doubles. 

Glen agrees and escorts Charles in to see Dr. Maggie, who only agrees to speak with him if he lets her treat him. As she takes a literal crack at Charles, he learns that Sazz was preparing to finally retire and was struggling with getting away from a difficult relationship. When she unlocks his tightened back, the sensation sends Charles back into his dream state where he again sees Sazz trying to make her way to Paradise, just before he comes back to and confesses his worry that he was the bad relationship Sazz was trying to end. 

Mabel unearths the Westies secret

Elsewhere in the episode, Mabel enlists Howard’s help in staying in the Dudenoff apartment knowing someone has to be in the apartment at all times for her squatter plan to work. While Mabel is out with Charles and Oliver, Howard is lured away by a flyer for opening casting calls for the Only Murders movie and races off without thinking. 

As Howard ironically fails at his attempt to land the role of Howard for the movie – a role that has gone to Josh Gad it seems – Oliver and Mabel make their way to Olvier’s apartment where Oliver opens up to Mabel about his relationship with Loretta. After seeing the mystery man’s arm in her photos, Oliver created a burner account to spy on Loretta in hopes of getting intel which Mabel strongly encourages and ultimately succeeds in convincing him to shut down.

Oliver reveals to Mabel that he almost proposed to Loretta in LA before they came back home, but ultimately chose not to out of fear following his previous failed marriages. As Oliver puts it, he’s afraid this one would fail too. Their heart-to-heart is cut short when Howard storms in which is when Mabel realizes no one is in the apartment meaning her plan is at risk. 

She races to the Dudenoff apartment and is surprised to discover all of the Westies inside. She finally confronts them and calls the group out for being a cult, which is when they reveal the truth about their involvement. It turns out that the group is involved in a rent control scheme connected to Dudenoff. 

As they explain to Mabel, they’re illegally subletting the rent-controlled apartments that Dudenoff apparently rented years ago. While they’ve all met Dudenoff at one point over the years, they double down on him moving to Portugal and explain they have a deal that allows them to live in the building for just $200 a month in paying the rent to Dudenoff. 

So what of the voice on the ham radio? Well, it seems that was Rudy’s ex-girlfriend Helga, who was originally from Finland and who the group claims isn’t all there. Vince assures Mabel they never met Sazz and offers to cut Mabel in on their arrangement so long as they don’t mention it on the podcast. It’s a deal too good to refuse, but Mabel makes it clear that she’ll be telling Charles and Oliver still which she later does. 

Charles finds Paradise

As the episode comes to a close, Charles decides to be the stand-in for Sazz for a change by helping her friends at the Concussions bar give her a stunt double funeral – something they told Charles earlier in the episode wasn’t possible since there was no body. 

What Charles doesn’t realize when he agrees to be Sazz’s stand-in is that the stuntman funeral entails Sazz’s friends pouring one out for their departed friend and then hitting the corpse’s body with a breakaway glass. Charles pushes through the first few hits, but when Glen’s bottle ends up being a real one, Charles blacks out and flashes back to a memory from his time with Sazz filming Brazzos. 

In the memory, Charles recalls Sazz telling him about her dream to open the  Sazz Pataki Impact Academy after she retired to which he suggested buying the lot where they were filming, aka the woods we had seen in Charles's previous visions. 

After he comes to, Oliver, Mabel, and Charles go to the lot Sazz bought in Paradise, NJ. When they approach the building, they hear a noise and go inside to find Bev Melon (the producer of the Only Murders movie) inside with a gun. As the episode closes, Bev turns the gun on the group and tells them not to move or she’ll blow their brains out as she pulls the trigger. 

Clearly Bev might not be who we thought she was, or perhaps this will just turn out to be one big misunderstanding that leads to a bigger reveal in the following episode. Either way, we can’t wait to see where the season goes next and to learn just what Bev might be up to!

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