I watched the finale of ONLY MURDERS tonight. Man was it satisfying. Structurally it followed a pretty standard--and I think tried and true--pattern for mystery shows: the penultimate episode involves some kind of twist that changes our list of suspects entirely. The ep ends with the true killer revealed. And then 110 is both the explanation--we've delayed the exposition as long as we can--and the quest to bring them down--which of course we need, but also well-played becomes a key way of making the exposition more than "and this is the time on Sprokets when we stop and talk for twenty minutes".
(Don't even get me started on the finale of LOKI.)
Two things I really liked about 109: first, it used Jan's apparent attack at the end of 108 to justify using her doing the narration at the top of 109, all of which directed us to look elsewhere for the killer. And second, the key clue that led Mabel and Oliver down the path toward her was a tiny detail from the very first moment they all met Tim Kono. It's just so damn satisfying to have successfully buried something there. And so hard to do.
There's lots to be said about the finale, but for me what was most satisfying, what made it really land, was the way it used Charles. If you were going to predict what the resolution of this show was, of course you'd think that some part of it would be the cementing of the relationship between Mabel, Charles and Oliver. When we met them they were each alone, and in each other they found real friendship.
(One of the things I love about the latter episodes is the way that the intrusion of Jan ends up driving together Mabel and Oliver, who have previously not spent much time as a pair. They're so good together, too, and in a way totally different than Mabel and Charles.)
So yeah, you'd expect some sort of happy resolution about their friendship.
But each of their introductions in the pilot involved more than just a need for relationship. Oliver needed a successful project. Mabel needed to resolve what happened to her friends all those years ago.
And Charles' introduction was actually a lot about being the hack-y TV detective Brazzos (and also along with it a hack-y actor). And in the finale, we get to see him succeed at both things at the same time. He pours out his heart to Jan, and it feels very believable. But then he also reveals that he knows that she was the murderer, and in fact knew before Oliver and Mabel told him. She still manages to get the upper hand on him by poisoning not his drink but the ice pack she gives him. But if anything that only raises his stature; the smarter your villain is, the smarter your protagonist looks when they match them (or come close).
The writers did a nice job throughout the season of alluding to the fact that Charles is not a great actor. But in a sense that became a way of burying the other message they were providing, that he's no detective. And so then to get to the finale and have him secretly ahead of everybody is just so damn satisfying, precisely because they had quietly built in that problem all the way along.
There's plenty more to be said about ONLY MURDERS and that finale. For instance, riddle me this: how is it that Amy Ryan's Jan can turn out to be so crazy, and yet it never ends up feeling over the top? How do she and the writers manage to pull that off? Is it because even as she's telling him all these crazy things she remains fundamentally the same as the person we've met all along?
Or how is it that Martin can spend half the episode doing the hilarious physical comedy that you might have expected from the whole series, and yet again it doesn't feel like a departure from the tone of the series? Is it because he has to fight so hard to get anywhere, and also nobody is on his side? Or something else?
Bottom line, both for storytelling in general and also for detective story writing, this is a great season of television--clever, bold and unexpectedly heartfelt.
I will be off next week for Thanksgiving, but then back at it after that. Hope you have a wonderful holiday.
Write on!
