Note: This story contains spoilers from “Only Murders in the Building” Season 4, Episode 8.
The mystery of who killed Milton Dudenoff (Griffin Dunne) was solved in Tuesday’s episode of “Only Murders in the Building,” titled “Lifeboat” — and it turns out to be none other than Dudenoff himself, with an assist by the Westies.
After learning in last week’s episode that the Westies had been cashing Dudenoff’s checks despite his death, Oliver, Mabel, Charles, Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria and Zach Galifianakis invite the group over for a game of “Oh Hell” in an effort to confront them about his murder. But the plan quickly fell apart when the Westies revealed that they know the jig is up in their rent control scheme and hold them at knife point.
After divulging the long-winded origin story of how the group came together, the Westies said that Dudenoff moved to Portugal and they hadn’t heard from him — but they admitted to keeping up the ruse and cashing the checks. But the story doesn’t stop there, as the doorbell rings to reveal Helga — the woman from the ham radio — who was invited by Mabel.
Helga revealed that the night she received the letter from Dudenoff that he was leaving for Portugal, the power briefly went out, which only happened when the incinerator was in use. After listening to the trio’s podcast, Helga decided to move out of her rent-controlled apartment and suspected that the rest of the Westies murdered Dudenoff and have been trying to cover it up and were the ones threatening the trio since Season 1.
But Vince Fish (Richard Kind) revealed that Helga wasn’t the only one who received a note the night Dudenoff died and pulled out an old film canister hidden underneath the floor of his apartment. The rest of the Westies’ notes, it turns out, were invitations to Dudenoff’s funeral.
He assembled the group — minus Helga — down in the incinerator room, where he was waiting in a chair with a camera pointed at him. Dudenoff revealed to the Westies that doctors told him that he only had a few months to live and warned that once he’s gone, the group is going to be torn apart.
After taking a bottle of pills, he asked the Westies to put his body in the incinerator, continue to cash his social security checks and tell everyone he moved to Portugal. He also asked them to not tell Helga and recorded a video message to her in the event his plan fails to explain what had happened. The group proceeded to play that message, in which he apologized to Helga and said that he didn’t tell her to shield her from another death after she lost her father. Though Eva Longoria got the Westies’ confession about the checks on a recording, Mabel decided that they will keep the group’s secret to keep them from being kicked out of the Arconia.
Below, “Only Murders in the Building” co-creator and EP John Hoffman breaks down the episode’s biggest moments:
How did you land on the decision that Dudenoff would be his own killer, and that the Westies would help him by throwing him into the incinerator?
Episode 8 has an emotional beating heart about a man who’s lost his wife and has all of these apartments and has not had a family, a man who has taught film studies throughout his whole life and has never made a film himself and the relationship of casting a film, and before you’re out of here, what is the film that I’ve put together that means the most to me? He’s cast this floor of the Arconia filled with people who have got big dreams and the only way to try and have a springboard into those dreams is what he’s given them by not having to worry about rent.
In those last throws of his life, he was looking for directorial control. So knowing the Westies very well, he had to contain the timeframe and the location. He had mapped out this story and this script for how he wanted to go out so specifically. We have to obviously jump over some depth and history between all of them, and there’s a lot you have to assume about how close that group has gotten and how well they know each other. We do that obviously in that series of “Oh Hell” playing so you get a vibe of that. But when we get to that funeral scene, he’s got his group and in some way it’s the group that could only do it because they know him in a specific way. They’re not family in the traditional sense, but they are found family, people that you can rely on for some difficult things that family of origin would have struggles with. So in that way, the wish that he has for them is his wish for himself, which I think is lovely — and a little bit gruesome.
We had started with an homage to Martin Scorsese’s “The Gangs of New York,” and as it developed further, we realized, “Oh, this is more Lifeboat, this is more Alfred Hitchcock.” I’m sorry we don’t have a Scorsese representation in here for this season, but the Hitchcock one felt really right — just in that line of how far people would go to hold on together — and making a sweet analogy between a lifeboat and an affordable apartment in New York City felt intriguing.
One of the episode’s comedic highlights comes from Kumail Nanjiani’s Rudy, whose origin story includes breaking out into a monologue from “A Few Good Men.” Where did that idea come from?
I have never worked with anyone quite like Kumail Nanjiani. I love him so much. Each time he came to work, he had this mountain of additional dialogue and extended from every scene he had. He would button scenes with the most hilarious improv, but he had worked on them all and memorized them all and was able to list through perfectly. We were all howling.
When we got to that monologue, it was not scripted that he would do the entire scene. It was a different organization within the story, but he showed up the day before and said I have the entire thing memorized. And I said what do you mean the entire thing memorized?
When we were on set, we were not intending to do all of it. There were a couple of ways we were going to do it that we had scripted, but I said, “Just in case we want the whole thing done here in the room, could you get up and just do that?” And he said “Yes, I would love to do that.” And we rolled and it was letter perfect, the entire thing. Everyone applauded after and was dazzled. It was one take.
In the cut, we jump through because if we’d done the whole thing, it’d be five minutes. It was like three to five minutes straight through fully acting it out. So what you’re seeing is truly a cut down version of what he did.
At the end of the episode, its revealed that Sazz connected with Helga on the ham radio and said that there was a stunt double protegé who had messed up on a film called Project Ronkonkoma and had been harassing her. What can you tease about next week’s episode, given that we learn in the final minutes that Paul Rudd’s Glen Stubbins was the stunt person on the film and is in a coma?
I can tease that there’s many twists to come. It gives us the opportunity to see Sazz at work, which I really like, and it plays with time a little bit. And there’s also a nice little surprise guest in that one.
New episodes of “Only Murders in the Building” drop every Tuesday on Hulu
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