Funny / Only Murders in the Building

Now would be a good time to step outside and call your therapist.

Being a murder mystery television series starring Steve Martin and Martin Short, this show was bound to have its funny moments.

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Season 1

• When Oliver asks Teddy Dimas to advertise their podcast at a very low price of $32,000.00:
  Teddy: OLIVER MOTHERFUCKING PUTNAM!
• The entirety of Oliver describing Splash: The Musical. Especially when he gets to the part when during a preview, the trap door for the pool failed to open but Oliver had the performance go on, leading to ALL 12 actors jumping and badly injuring themselves. Shortly after singing the lyrics "Make a Splash..."
• Charles performs the musical score for the show with a concertina, only for Oliver to criticize the choice.
  Oliver: You're scoring a murder mystery, not DJing a Hobbit's wedding.
• In the season 1 finale, Charles gives a passionate "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Jan. And then it turns out to be an Imagine Spot, as he's not recovered from being poisoned by her and is still mumbling and slurring the words.

Season 2

• Charles and Oliver trying to explain Iran-Contra to Mabel and bickering over how the other is telling the story, getting completely sidetracked.
• Episode 4:
  • The stage production that Oliver's son is stressing out and begging his dad to help with... is directing a school play of The Wizard of Oz.
  • Mabel finding herself on the other side of a generational gap when she tries to bond with Lucy, who has been following news about the group online, and quickly calls Charles and Oliver back to the room.
  • Charles turns out to have made a music album in the 80s called Brazzos Sings; a bit of the opening track, "Angel in Flip-Flops" ("pitta putta pitta putta") has been sampled by a lot of rap artists over the years, earning Charles $200K a year in royalties.
    • When Oliver hears about the royalties, he gasps and grabs his chest like he's having a heart attack.
  • Oliver mentions having made a Macbeth musical starring Vanilla Ice in 1991 called Macbeats.
  • When the group finds the murder weapon planted in Charles' knife rack just as Howard is at the door, Oliver panics and throws it into the ceiling, where it sticks for most of the episode until it falls to the floor near the end.
• When Alice meets Charles, she recognizes him not from Brazzos like everyone else, but Encounter at Uppsala, a little-known Swedish arthouse movie where Charles had a minor role as a park ranger.
• Episode 6:
  • Detective Kreps calls in the Only Murders team as well as Cinda Canning to tell them both to stop podcasting about the case:
    Kreps: Thanks to you, we get more anonymous tips than a Penn Station glory hole.
  • After he's made to understand that he cannot, in good conscience or common sense, maintain contact with Jan, Charles agrees to end it. But he's afraid of confrontation, so he sends his stunt-double Sazz to the prison. With a script. After the initial shock, Jan actually seems turned on.
  • Despite the extremely dramatic and awful circumstances, Charles and Oliver's attempt to hug each other at the end. It isn't "awkward" so much as it is "an abject failure." They're still sitting a yard apart and reaching towards each other's ribs as the camera pulls back.
• Charles and Jan talking in prison. Because Jan doesn't want to break up. Just because she tried to kill him and gas the building does not mean they're broken up!
  • Gets extra hilarious when, because he's genuinely afraid of doing a formal break up in person and thinks doing so over the phone or a letter is crass, Charles sends his stunt double to do it for him.
• Detective Williams goes to talk to Charles and Oliver, saying she has a problem that's been constantly weighing on her and keeping her up at night. Oliver sarcastically asks if she's talking about her new baby, which she refutes, while the baby in question sits up in his pram and turns to look at Oliver, as if he somehow understood and is offended.
  • Before this, Oliver answers a knock on the door to see the baby in his pram outside. Not seeing Detective Williams at first he reacts by saying "Oh great, now we've got a baby to look after" as if the baby was left behind for them to take care of. What really sells it is how he just reacts to it like it's a minor inconvenience.
• Oliver's reaction to Teddy being his son's biological father. Oliver screaming at and attempting to strangle a thoroughly confused Teddy in the elevator is funny enough, but then the doors open and suddenly Howard is standing there watching. Howard asks if he should just get the next elevator, but Oliver politely says no, it's fine, come on in. So Howard does... and Oliver promptly lunges at Teddy again behind his back. Meanwhile, Howard desperately presses the lift button to get out of the situation that he walked into.
  • Teddy swears he only slept with Roberta once, but then, when pressed, admits it was twice in one night.
    Oliver: Now you're just rubbing it in!
  • "Aren't we square? You send me to jail, I fuck your wife?"
  • The Brick Joke at the end of the otherwise touching scene where Teddy and Oliver discuss fatherhood.
    Oliver: ...Twice?
    Teddy: [sheepish] I was younger.
• Teddy assures Oliver that on his worst day, Oliver never got Will involved in crime or covered up his involvement in a death. Oliver replies that he did encourage Will to get into theatre—and Teddy silently acknowledges that's pretty close.
• The final moments of the last episode introduce us to the next victim, and like Tim Kono and Bunny Folger, he's a total Jerkass...played by Paul Rudd, who is so famously typecast as Nice Guy comedic protagonists that its hard to not crack at him being a petty and vitriolic jerk butting heads with both Oliver and Charles (moreso the latter).
  • The final moments of the episode, where we see the murder play out. Ben collapses on stage, and is swarmed by Charles and a few stagehands calling for help. Oliver and Mabel get out of their seats in shock and look at each other as dramatic music plays...and Mabel lets out one final line before the Smash to Black:
    Mabel: You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Season 3

• In the opening of "The White Room", Mabel is touring an apartment... well, a 460 square foot studio, which the realtor still says "feels like a palace". She also describes the rent as "an absolute steal" at $4,800 a month. Plus utilities and maintenance fees. And advises her to slip the angry guy downstairs $5 every time she sees him, "just to keep the peace".
• In "The White Room" Charles repeatedly enters a fugue state and goes into the titular "White Room" where he happily dances around, oblivious to what's happening in the real world. When the scene smashes back to reality, we're not told what he did but it's clear he wreaked havoc and destruction so severe that witnesses can do nothing but stare.
  • After the first episode, which ends with Charles in one of the cribs with his pants down (which provides the page image), Howard rushes from the room saying he needs to call his therapist.
    Charles: Am I dead? Am I on drugs? Am I dead and on drugs?
  • In the second episode, Charles does something to offend Tom the pianist's Christian sensibilities:
    Charles: ...Well my pants are still on, so that's a good sign.
    Oliver: I have never heard FILTH like what just came out of your mouth!
    Howard: Tom is a Christian, Charles! [Tom hastily packs his things and leaves]
    Oliver: Take the day, Tom! Find a priest! Pray it out!
  • As Charles tries to break up with Joy, he ends up in the White Room again. When he snaps out of it, it turns out that he actually just proposed to her, putting the trio in yet another sticky situation.
• Mabel volunteers to "girl talk" with Kimber while Charles and Oliver search the theater for clues, and the latter two seriously doubt her ability to do so. Sure enough, when Kimber pokes her head out into the hall:
  Kimber: You guys okay out there?
  Mabel: (in an affected Spicy Latina accent) Heyy, mama! Yeah, we're like, a-yaas and work and slay and yaas over here, like, yaas.
  Kimber: (rolling with it) Yaas, queens!
• Charles isn't happy to find Oliver wants Matthew Broderick to replace him in the musical.
  Charles: It's not the first time Matthew has stolen a role from me.
  Matthew Broderick: For the last time, you would not have made a good Ferris Bueller, you were 41 years old at the time.
• Broderick plays himself as a Large Ham into Method Acting and Lost in Character. Oliver reaches out to Mel Brooks to talk about working with Broderick on The Producers with Brooks telling him, "you're fucked."
  • Also, it turns out Oliver never saw The Producers.
    Oliver: I was busy at the time.
    Mel Brooks: It ran for six years!
• The trio force their way into the back of a clothing store, expecting to find a secret brothel. Instead, they find a sewing circle of five elderly women and Oliver exclaims, "You're the five whores?".
  • Afterwards, Oliver apologizes for calling the women whores. Their leader takes it in stride, saying "It's okay. I used to be one."
• In a tragicomic moment in the season's climax, Cliff hallucinates that Ben is alive and on stage, giving Paul Rudd a chance to go broad and do an impression of Martin Short as Oliver going full Large Ham in a showstopping musical number.