Note: The following story spoilers from “Only Murders in the Building” Season 4, Episode 9.
Tuesday’s episode of “Only Murders in the Building” appears to have finally answered the season-long question: Who killed Sazz Pataki?
After learning about Project Ronkonkoma in last week’s episode, Charles (Steve Martin), Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Oliver (Martin Short) visited the hospital to talk to Glen Stubbins (Paul Rudd) about what happened on the film and whether he killed Sazz, but are turned away by his nurse, who said she’d call them when he woke up. While sitting in the waiting room, the trio ran into the bartender from Concussions, who revealed that Glenn was brought in to replace the stunt double on Project Ronkonkoma after they messed up so bad that Sazz had to blackball them. He added that the only people who know what happened were Sazz, Glenn and the director — who turns out to be Ron Howard (or Ron Ron as he is affectionately referred to by Oliver — who recalled their wild night together at a Chinese restaurant in 1988).
In order to track down Ron Howard, Mabel went to Bev Mellon (Molly Shannon), who told her that Howard was working on a movie in New York and that no one knew who’s in it or what it’s about, but that it’s “very autobiographical and personal.” She agreed to give her Howard’s address in exchange for helping Marshall Pope (Jin Ha) with polishing the script for the “Only Murders in the Building” movie.
When the trio arrived at the set of Howard’s film, they were stopped by security, who refused to let them in. But they were able to get onto the set along with a group of background actors — joining the cast of “Escape to Planet Kongo.”
Meanwhile, Glen Stubbins finally woke from his coma following the on-set shooting earlier in the season. Shortly getting suited up as extras — with Charles and Oliver hilariously squeezed into motion capture suits — Mabel was notified via text that Stubbins was awake and left to go visit him at the hospital. But Stubbins was suffocated to death by a figure dressed in all black before Mabel could make it.
Back on set, Charles and Oliver got into a loud argument over the latter’s bachelor party in preparation for his wedding with Loretta (Meryl Steep) — resulting in the pair getting kicked off set moments before Ron Howard was set to thank all of the extras for their participation. The two were able to reconcile and decide to have food at the Chinese restaurant previously referenced, where Howard showed up and immediately remembered Oliver.
Throughout the episode, we also got flashbacks of Sazz on the set of Project Ronkonkoma, where we learn that the stunt double protege — who she met after hitting him with her car — had a fire-related disaster on set that ended up burning Howard’s eyebrows off.
Howard revealed that the stunt double protege is none other than Marshall Pope/Rex Bailey, who was going over the script with Mabel back at the Arconia. At the same time as this revelation, Mabel learned that Marshall stole the film’s script from Sazz, which was tucked away in the cold case of beer that she had been carrying around. The episode ended with Mabel questioning him about why Sazz’s name is on the script and him staring at her before cutting to black.
While Marshall/Rex is in the hot seat, there’s a few questions that remain unanswered, most notably how he pulled off Sazz’s murder in 12 minutes? Did he act alone or is there a second killer? And how did he get his hands on her script? We’ll find out in next week’s Season 4 finale.
Read on for more insights from showrunner John Hoffman about this week’s episode below:
We learn that Ron Howard is the director of Project Ronkonkoma. How did getting him to cameo in this week’s episode come about?
It’s a miracle, and this season I’ve read of some people who are bothered by how many guest stars and all that sort of thing. But I would only say this is a season where we’re at the movies, and we’re making a movie, so the people around it should pretty strongly be people who make these things. So that was a concern in certain ways that I was like, “Oh, are we going too far with all of this?” But once you get down to it, you’re like, “OK, story that has to make sense for this narrative.” And it’s not just this move, it’s also “Escape From Planet Kongo” and they may not see the light of day. Certainly Project Ronkonkoma didn’t.
Where did “Escape from Planet Kongo” come from?
I saw that title come through. The writers were working on this script and we had been in production already. So I was like, “Wait a minute. What is this title? ‘Escape from Planet Klongo’ is a Ron Howard movie?” Once they put in that line about Steve Martin where he says “What is this thing anyway? Are witnessing the end of Ron Howard’s career?” I thought, “OK, now we can do it.”
Once we were in that land and we were building something specific for a director who had an experience with a stunt person that was traumatic and memorable, that held a key for our trio. Then it was like, “Well, then who was the director?” So Ron, of course, knows Marty and Steve well, and I happened to be working with Ron and his partner Brian Grazer at Imagine on a project right now for Apple and have talked to him a little bit about the show and how much he loves the show, which is very sweet. But to be able and call him and say, “Can you come? We could make it a day, right now it’s two days.” But he was deep in it, he was doing so much and had no time in his schedule. And he said, “I really want to try and make this happen. I really want to do this.” And I said, “Ron, don’t. We would love it, but don’t worry, if you want to just give us a day.” And he said, “No, no, if you need the two days, let me give you the two days. I would love that.” So there he was and it’s all because of everyone involved in a show that he loves.
Whose idea was it to have Steve Martin and Martin Short argue with each other while dressed in mocap suits?
I love them together in that story, which was written by Ben Smith and Alex Bigelow, who we call Biggs and she’s our writer’s assistant. It was a first time to have her name on a script and they both did so beautifully with that episode.
One of the things I found really touching was when we talked about it as a friendship story between Oliver and Charles that we were telling, and watch it being tested that way. The reveal of Charles saying, “I love Loretta, but now I’m that awkward third wheel and I’m just adjusting to that,” and admitting to the friendship that he now has with this guy that he hated at the beginning of the whole series.
Steve has been remarkable this season. I think they all have been, but Steve because of this story with Sazz and this episode with Oliver, I’ve just been moved by his performance. There’s a much more fragile, emotional, open quality to Charles that Steve is bringing. There were times during that scene between him and Oliver where we were all a mess watching on the monitor. We have variations of performance level. But there were times when it was a beautiful struggle.
Paul Rudd has now died three separate times on “Only Murders in the Building.” What was his reaction to finding out he would be killed off yet again?
That was a welcome thing. If you know Paul Rudd, he likes his repetition. So it’s in line and a little bit of an homage to Paul Rudd in the very same vein as his running gag with Conan O’Brien playing the same clip from his movie over and over again through past a decade now.
How far into the process did you decide that Marshall Pope/Rex Bailey would be Season 4’s killer and steal Sazz’s script for the “Only Murders in the Building” movie?
Day one. This has evolved because it wasn’t the case in Season 1. We had various possibilities for the killer in Season 1 when we started the writers’ room. But ever since then, we have to work backwards or just figure out the end and everything that really happens around the incident that caused the murder, so we can’t really go anywhere with writing until we have that and then twist our way to it. So that was all figured out right at the beginning.
When we were shooting Season 3, we very purposefully put in the moment in Episode 5 where she’s talking about her ham radio to Charles and saying there’s some chatter “I’m picking up that people say they wanted to be you” so that when what happens at the end of Season 3, we would have made some connection.
At the end of Season 3, when she brings in her cold case, it felt like that was one of those lovely things that happen in the writers’ room when you realize, “What does she have in that cold case that they don’t know about that’s been sitting in Oliver’s refrigerator the entire season and holds really the key clue to everything Sazz started and what she was needing to talk to him about for months that now had to be rushed?” So all that felt exciting to me as a clue that could make you go what the hell by the end of it all and then also the dance of hiding it as best we could.
The emotional relationship that we explore and reveal in Episode 10 between Sazz and Rex is meaty and, in general, lines up with exactly all of the clues that we’ve laid out across the season as to how and why that all happened.
The “Only Murders in the Building” Season 4 finale will be released Tuesday, Oct. 29, on Hulu.
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