I've only just discovered ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING. And I have to say, every episode so far has stunned me. It presents as a comedy--you've got Steve Martin and Martin Short as the leading men alongside Selena Gomez. And the premise--two washed theatrical types decide to start their own true crime podcast along with a young mysterious woman after someone in their building gets murdered--very much feels like it could fit in that standard Martin and Short slapstick space.
But within the first three minutes it's clear that ONLY MURDERS is going to be a lot more than that. And the surprise of that alone had me sitting me and paying attention. Every episode, in fact, I find myself asking, how is it this show is grabbing me so hard?
So that's what I'm going to look into for the rest of this week. Starting right now with the opening pastiche of the pilot.
After what presents as a typical Martin and Short opening--the two of them running through a building freaking out--MURDERS backs up two months and gives us a vignette for each character, over narration from each of them about living in New York. And each vignette skillfully sets up the character and their main problem. Steve Martin's Charles-Hadley Savage is an actor with one big hit from long ago who despite his general cheeriness is more or less the butt of the joke of life at this point. Selena Gomez' Mabel Mora is a badass with fears of being assaulted by men that she counters dreaming of stabbing a would-be rapist to death. And Short's Oliver Putnam is a theater lover who is trying to reassure himself over his feelings of being lost.
It's such a simple technique--just let the character talk and have a moment. And yet it's so effective in helping me care about each of them right away.
I particularly love the opening given to Short. They never tell us he's involved with the theater, but all of his references come from there. He leads with a take on New York based on the musical ANNIE, which plays in the background. Then he recalls what I found to be the incredibly emotional moment of the dancer who keeps falling off the stair case and then bouncing back up. You could turn the sound off completely and understand exactly who Short is and how much you immediately feel for him.
In a way the three vignettes demonstrate three different ways of making an audience fall in love with a character: Make them an outsider; Make them active; Have them give us something.
We love Martin because we watch him go through an embarrassing moment and just accept it. It's just built in for us to root for an underdog.
We love Gomez, on the other hand, because she acts to overcome her fear. Actually really we just love her because SHE ACTS. I've said it before--what really compels people to invest in a character is the choices they make.
And then we love Short really, I think, because he shares something beautiful. He gave us a gift. Who isn't going to love a guy who does that?
The other thing I find fascinating about that opening is that the three vignettes have radically different tones. Martin is very much in a comedy, Gomez a thriller and Short, despite one standard comedy beat at the end, a quiet human drama. And yet their three moments only seem to complement each other. And in doing so, the writers teach us how to watch this show. I'm not going to be surprised when things suddenly get grisly or emotional, precisely because that opening scene trained me to be open to it.
Today's a great day to look at the way you introduce characters in one of your scripts. What does that first moment we get with them tell us about them? And how does it serve to get us loving them?
