TV Recap: "Only Murders in the Building" Season 5 Kicks Off with a Dead Doormen, Mob Mysteries, and a Human Finger
The Arconia won’t be the same without doorman Lester Coluca, who was found dead in the courtyard fountain in the Season 4 finale of Only Murders in the Building. At this rate, Charles, Oliver, and Mabel’s podcast will never end! The hit Hulu series returned tonight with a three-part season premiere, and we’re back to break down all the twists and turns with individual episode recaps. Let’s see if we can figure out who killed Lester before our trio does!
Season 5, Episode 1: “Nail in the Coffin" - Written by John Hoffman and Taylor Cox
We return to The Arconia four days after the wedding of Oliver Putnam and Loretta Durkin. Loretta is back in New Zealand filming, and Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) is determined to eat the leftover shrimp from the catered affair that was cut short by Lester’s death. He’s overly critical of Lester Coluca’s obituary as he reads it to Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) in his apartment, believing he could’ve given it more substance. The obit reveals that Lester left behind a wife named Lorraine and two kids named Frank and May. In lieu of flowers, the family asked for donations to two of Lester’s favorite causes - the National Audubon Society and Hollywood Improv East.
Mabel can’t believe that the police have ruled Lester’s death an accident. Howard Morris (Michael Cyril Creighton) enters looking depressed, feeling ignored by his cats and missing his boyfriend Jonathan, who is on tour with Thoroughly Modern Millie. He gossips about Lester’s wake, which is happening right now in the lobby, and shares that everyone is talking about the security camera footage, not because of Lester, but because they’re trying to determine how hot the new doorman is. Howard leaves with some shrimp, hoping to buy his cats’ affection.
Oliver grabs another shrimp, which he’s mostly been using as a conveyor vessel for dip. Mabel and Charles stop him when they realize he’s not holding a shrimp, but a human finger! Oliver throws it behind him in horror, and it lands on his piano keys. Mabel picks it up to inspect it, noticing green fungus on the nail. Charles thinks it could be a message, like from the mob, and Mabel remembers the offer they received on Oliver’s wedding night to find a mob wife’s missing husband. She grabs the card from Sofia Caccimelio. They decide their first step should be ruling out whether the finger belonged to Lester or not.
A large crowd has gathered in The Arconia lobby to pay their respects to Lester, including Mayor Tilman (Keegan-Michael Key), who gives a speech despite never having met Lester. Residents were asked to send a photo of themselves with Lester for a poster board, and Oliver is the only tenant who didn’t send one in, despite acting like he and Lester were very close. They see Lester’s widow, Lorraine Coluca (Dianne Wiest), and Charles asks Oliver and Mabel to keep her occupied while he checks the body.
Mabel and Oliver witness Lorraine give the new doorman, Randall (Jermaine Fowler), Lester’s building legend. Oliver asks Lorraine if Lester was “fully complete" the last time she saw him, a question that confuses her. Howard intrudes to congratulate Lorraine on the lovely display case she made in tribute to Lester. She laments that she couldn’t get his hat cleaned in time, which contains drops of blood from the fountain, sharing how meticulous her husband was about the cleanliness of his suit. Lorraine is confused when Oliver talks about how close he was with Lester, and when Randall tells her that Oliver lives in apartment 10D, she squeals, “You’re the cuckoo chick!" Lester used bird code names for all of the tenants, and Oliver was the neediest of them all, taking and never giving.
The body of Lester Coluca (Teddy Coluca) lies in an open casket as Charles approaches. His hands are straight under the foot panel, and Charles rests his head on Lester’s chest to try to see his hands, but the overlay skirt covers them. He’s about to try another tactic when Mayor Tilman recognizes him, not from Brazos, but from Only Murders in the Building. He’s up for reelection and really wants to appear on the podcast, but Charles tells him they’re apolitical. He has a member of his staff, Romy (Caitlin Houlahan), give him a card in case he changes his mind.
Charles tries to quietly open the foot panel, but it’s locked. Mabel sees he needs a distraction, so she goes to the podium to give a speech about how excellent Lester was to her as a child visiting her aunt. Charles reaches under the foot panel, feeling around Lester’s hands, and manually counting his digits. Unfortunately, nosy neighbor Uma Heller (Jackie Hoffman) notices him and calls everyone’s attention to Charles, who looks like he’s caught in a precarious situation with the doorman’s corpse. He quickly pulls his hand out of the casket, with Lester’s wristwatch somehow in his hand.
“It was either 8 or 11," Charles tells Mabel in her apartment about how many fingers Lester’s body had. Oliver rushes in, excited to have found a photo of him and Lester together. In reality, it’s a selfie of Oliver on his wedding day; Lester just happens to be in the background talking to somebody. That somebody, however, turns out to be a very recognizable somebody to Mabel - Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale). Mabel texts Howard, asking for the footage he said proved that Lester’s death was an accident. Charles wants to visit Sofia on Staten Island, and Oliver turns flighty about dealing with the mob, revealing that he once borrowed $400 to finance a flop of a show called Newark, Newark, which he never paid back. Mabel and Charles pretend to leave without him, reminding him that this season of the podcast will have to be a duo. It takes Oliver about ten seconds to change his mind and join them.
After a trip aboard the Staten Island Ferry and a taxi ride, the trio arrives at The Godfather house with a thermos full of ice and a human finger. Knocking on the front door, an intimidating young man named Johnny (Dane DiLiegro) takes them inside and brings them to a dining room, calling in “the boys," his brothers Tony (Shea Buckner), Mikey (Cory Jeacoma), Vinny (Evan Mulrooney), and Braden (Aaron Dean Eisenberg). They make the trio sit as they tell them a story from 1970 about the Gambino crime family. They end the story by pulling out a gun and aiming it at Oliver, pulling the trigger.
The gun was actually a Bluetooth speaker, a merchandise item for their podcast “Ey, I’m Talkin’ Here," where they retell old mob stories. The brothers hum a theme song to the trio, asking their advice as they prepare to embark on a podcasting venture. In their excitement, the thermos tips over and the finger spills out, with the grown brothers jumping in fright at the sight. Their Nonna (Elizabeth D’Onofrio) rolls in on an ECV to see what the commotion was, sees the digit, and says, “Keep your fingers out of my gravy."
Sofia Caccimelio (Téa Leonii) arrives home from shopping just in time to see the chaos in her dining room. She’s offended that the trio thought she would send a human finger as a warning to them for not helping find her missing husband. Mabel asks what Sofia meant when she said her husband has everything to do with The Arconia, showing her Oliver’s photo with Lester talking to Nicky, who was, at that time, already missing. Sofia says her husband owns Clean-Ups, the dry cleaner in The Arconia. She says the mob is dead, but her husband likes to keep up the appearance and regularly disappears for various reasons. They ask if the finger could be Nicky’s, and she says it isn’t hairy enough.
Outside the house, Sofia rushes after Charles, who forgot his hat on the table. Oliver and Mabel watch the flirtatious way they talk to each other. He tells her she shouldn’t settle for a womanizer, and she tells him the marriage is over, and finances are thin. Charles promises to do what he can to help. She gives him a deck of cards from her husband’s nightstand in case it leads to anything.
In his apartment that night, Charles fans out Nicky’s cards while enjoying a glass of red wine. He’s about to put the whole deck back in the box when one of the cards picks up a few paperclips. He realizes it’s magnetic. While taking a sip and examining it, he discovered a hidden message only visible under red light. It appears to be a map, and there’s a number on it - “62400."
Mabel looks through the security footage Howard sent her, realizing it proves nothing. The feed of the courtyard is missing. She sees Lester looking alarmed in the lobby before rushing out. He’s not visible on other cameras. She begins a walking tour of the property, mapping out where cameras are and what their field of vision should be.
Charles, following the map on the card with his wine glass, ends up in the lobby where he bumps into Mabel. He shows her the secret map, and she realizes the path is designed to avoid the cameras she was mapping out. Charles accidentally finishes the wine, but Mabel thinks outside the box, putting red lipstick on his right eyeglass lens so he can still see the map. It takes them to a closet behind the doorman’s desk, which Mabel remembers hiding in as a kid. She finds a latch on a shelf, which opens a secret doorway. They go down the stairs and arrive at a metal door that’s locked.
Oliver, meanwhile, was looking for a way to prove to the building that he cared about Lester. He decides to have his hat cleaned, taking it to Clean-Ups and finding the dry cleaners closed for the night. However, the door is unlocked, and he sees Lester’s uniform hanging on the rotating racks. He decides he can at least bring that back where it belongs, but he can’t reach it, so he turns on the garment conveyor.
The metal door requires a magnetic key to enter, and Charles tries the card, finding it works. Opening the door, Charles and Mabel find themselves in a lavish underground gambling parlor full of card tables. They look at the tables, one of which has a scratch in the green felt. Charles wonders what the numbers could mean as Mabel notices the roulette wheel looks like a large combination lock. They try the code: 6-24-00. A drawer pops open. Inside, they find an envelope of money, which Nicky was handing to Lester in Oliver’s photo. The envelope is covered in drops of blood. “Lester was here the night he died," Charles says. “We need to find Nicky Caccimelio."
Oliver pulls Lester’s suit off the rack. He’s about to leave when he sees something big coming down the line towards him - a dead body hanging like a piece of dry cleaning. The body of Nicky Caccimelio falls on Oliver, pinning him to the ground.
To be continued in Episode 2, “After You."