In addition to its fantastic Tina Fey scene, ONLY MURDERS 104 features an insane twist: Martin's Charles looks up at one point and we cut to life-size Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig characters sitting there, listening to him. The first time we see them just for a moment, but within in the episode they keep reappearing, as Charles tries to get up the courage to go on a date with and then be real with the lady he's smitten with, Jan. And the episode ends with Charles revealing their existence to Jan and also giving us the painful story of his ex and her daughter that explains their presence in his life.
On the one hand, I think the episode moves a bit faster through all this than it probably needs to. The idea that this show also includes hallucinations of Warner Brothers Cartoon characters is a lot to take in, and also a lot to play with. If there can be life-sized formerly-cartoon characters walking around, what else might we be in for? It's like the pilot ep was a school friend inviting us to come to their house to hang out and then after a couple hours there they showed us that their parents have a massive underground lair. Yes, we want that explained, but first can we just see everything?
But what I find most fascinating about the move is that it absolutely works. It shouldn't. There's been absolutely nothing in the first three episodes to signal the possibility of something so weird playing a part in this series. And there wouldn't seem to be any need for it, either.
So how the heck do they do that?
Three thoughts:
1) They Maintain the Rules of the Series: The reveal of Bugs and Porky occurs within the context of the ongoing story of the show. It's still a murder mystery, and Charles a lonely man who has had his heart broken. He can't now fly or read minds. He's just a wee bit disturbed/haunted.
Even the way the reveal first happens, the cutaway reaction shot to them and Charles acting like this is normal, is a way of teaching us how to think about it. This is about Charles and nothing else. The world we've been introduced to is still the world.
2) They are a Way of Expressing Something about Charles' Character and Journey: Really this is the same note as from yesterday about keeping your eye on the ball--Bugs and Porky work because they are at the service of Charles' story. They expand our understanding of what is holding him back, offering a physical manifestation of that burden he's been fighting against. So rather than making the story somehow uncanny or fantastic they give flesh to Charles' human struggle, make it a physical antagonist that he has to wrestle with. Which leads to the last point...
3) They are (Bizarrely) Relatable: We all have hard things that have happened to us in the past. And even if those things are long since over, some of them continue to be operative in our present day lives. They may only live in our minds, maybe even in ways we're not fully conscious of, but still they are agents with whom we wrestle.
And so even as the presence of these silent spooky furry versions of animated characters gives us some wild and fun new information about Charles, as we learn why they are there in the first place they become more and more familiar. My version of Bugs might be the fifth grade math teacher who liked to make me stand up in front of the class and compete in math exercises against everyone else to humiliate me or the guy who said he was my friend and then stabbed me in the back, but the point is, I do have my own internal cast of characters. And so rather than making Charles seem crazy, the revelation of his eventually makes him that much more relatable and sympathetic.
And maybe that answers my opening question as to why the writers would give us so much on these characters so fast--because the point of them is the human struggle in Charles they reveal.
One one level my takeaway is that we can potentially get away with a lot more creativity in what might seem a rather straightforward concept than we might think. But also, I think I'm left with the question, When I'm dealing with a character with a deep internal battle going on, how can I creatively externalize that struggle?
