TV Recap: Billionaire Games and Podcast Traps in "Only Murders in the Building" Season 5, Episode 4

When we last saw our favorite residents of The Arconia, they were stuck behind a bar in the Velvet Room, the recently discovered secret gambling parlor, with three potentially murderous billionaires looking for something, or someone. Only Murders in the Building picks up right where we left off, killing the suspense we were left in all week. Without further delay, here’s what happens next.

Season 5, Episode 4: “Dirty Birds" - Written by Kristen Newman

We open with a glossy, tongue-in-cheek documentary segment featuring Camila White (Renée Zellweger), Sebastian “Bash" Steed (Christoph Waltz), and Jay Pflug (Logan Lerman) musing on what it’s like to be billionaires. Camila claims the first hundred dollars she ever earned felt more thrilling than her first billion because winning is about the bluff. Bash reminisces about outsmarting his father, while Jay demonstrates independence by tossing a ball for his dog… only to reveal off-camera assistants doing the work. The message is clear: these moguls love games, and they’re very good at them.

Down in the hidden Velvet Room, Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) accidentally knock over a glass as they spy on the billionaire. The CEOs begin to investigate the sound, forcing our sleuths to scramble out and race upstairs before they’re caught.

The next morning, Mabel grabs coffee in the Arconia lobby and chats with Charles about the severed finger. Maybe a cleaver sliced it off? Their speculation is interrupted by the debut of LESTR — the Logic-Engineered Secure Tenant Robot. Uma (Jackie Hoffman) sniffs that it’s meant to reassure tenants that automation isn’t out to overthrow them. Randall (Jermaine Fowler) insists the robot is harmless, programmed only to deliver packages and reminders, but it will need to scan everyone’s irises and fingerprints.

Oliver hosts Charles and Mabel in his apartment, proactively having started the murder board in response to being called a narcissist - a Mardis Gras bead-covered murder board charting Lester’s bird-code nicknames for the Velvet Room regulars. Bird-watching pal Vince Fish (Richard Kind) helped him crack the code for last Saturday, when only five birds were listed: Nicky Caccimelio is the Brown-headed Cowbird, Jay Pflug is the Eurasian Jay, Bash Steed is the Kākāpō, and Camila White is the Bowerbird.

Mabel wants to start their interogations with Jay to figure out if his missing finger is the one they found, and she has an idea for how to get him to come to them. Cut to the trio finishing a trailer for the new podcast season and releasing it online.

Althea/THÉ (Beanie Feldstein) has already attracted a following at The Arconia, with Howard (Michael Cyril Creighton) and LESTR seemingly fanning out over her when Mabel and Oliver return to the lobby. LESTR even sings THÉ’s latest hit single (“Bet you wish that you were me"), which Mabel perceives as a targeted taunt. Mabel tells her old friend that the trailer for the new season of her podcast just launched, but THÉ brings up a different true-crime podcast that she and Howard are fans of - Drunk Sluts Do Murder, which is part of a podcast partnership called Wondify. To Oliver’s surprise, Mabel tells THÉ that she’s in negotiations with them, too.

Later, Mabel confesses the fib as she emails an actual pitch to Wondify. She tells Oliver and Charles that she and Althea were once inseparable middle-school friends who made videos under the names Sunny and Cloudy, but when Mabel spent one fateful summer with her aunt at The Arconia, she returned home to find that Althea turned their friends against her. Before Mabel can unpack her feelings, a video ping from Jay Pflug pops up: he’ll come by at 7 p.m. to clear things up.

Oliver prepares his apartment for Jay’s arrival with bowls of salty snacks, including a bit of caviar. He hopes they make Jay thirsty so that he will drink more champagne, get drunk, and tell all. Charles brought everything needed to make his grandmother’s famous duck à l’orange, including her handwritten recipe card. They all seem to expect Jay Pflug to have very expensive tastes.

Jay arrives early with a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon for the host, explaining that the only reason he joined the Velvet Room was to play card games in “the murder building." Before he can sit, Camila White sweeps in with a scented candle, sunglasses on indoors, pretending her visit is purely to clear her name. Moments later, Bash Steed strides in with three hulking bodyguards, prompting Oliver to shoo the muscle into the hallway because there simply aren’t enough salty snacks for them all. Each billionaire seemed concerned that the others would try to pin Nicky’s murder on them.

Gathered around the coffee table, the billionaires instantly demand not to be mentioned on the podcast, threatening a libel lawsuit. Mabel points out that they were all hovering near a mobster’s corpse, and Oliver adds that Lester’s death is part of the same puzzle. When the sleuths hint they’ve examined Nicky Caccimelio’s frozen body, Camila nervously asks how they got it. Jay and Bash exchange glances, clearly unsettled.

To keep control, the podcasters split up their guests. Mabel takes on Jay, since they’re closer in age. In the living room, Jay offers her a beer and admits he’s made more than one bad decision—including losing a finger in the chaos of that night. He swears he didn’t kill Nicky; he just wanted to prove he wasn’t a screw-up after a charity scandal. Their talk veers into Mabel’s uneasy history with THÉ and her ill-fated Wondify bluff. When Jay hums “Bet You Wish That You Were Me," Mabel realizes it might actually be about her.

Oliver takes Camila to the dining room. He shows off his apartment, prompting Camila to critique the décor, joking about his theater box wallpaper looking like Statler and Waldorf’s opera box. She eyes a photo from Oliver and Loretta’s wedding, shocked that any woman would be willing to move into Oliver’s apartment before making major changes. She grew up in Reno, the daughter of a casino magnate with tacky taste she couldn’t wait to move away from. She can’t resist the urge to want to redesign Oliver’s entire apartment.

Charles takes Bash to the kitchen, recruiting him to help make the duck. Bash gamely chops herbs with a cleaver, though he hasn’t handled one in decades and is clumsy enough with it to remove him as a serious suspect. He waxes poetic about handwritten recipes and Christmas dinners "during the war," not clarifying which one to Charles’ disappointment, since nobody seems able to determine Bash’s age. He mentions sleeping nightly in a collagen tank to keep his organs young. Charles nearly loses his grandmother’s recipe card in the sauce, only for Bash to rescue it from the internet thanks to old TV clip of Charles talking about the recipe with Regis Philbin (Fun fact: Regis’ daughter J.J. Philbin is a producer of Only Murders in the Building).

Gradually, the billionaires’ accounts of that fateful poker night converge: Nicky burst into the Velvet Room furious, nostrils dusted with powder, cleaver in hand. Jay, worried that Nicky was going to hurt someone, tried to stop him. Nicky used the clever to chop Jay’s finger off. The three billionaires freaked out, running away from the Velvet Room in fear. That was the last time they saw Nicky. When Charles, Oliver, and Mabel caught them later, they had gone back to look for Jay’s finger.

As Charles announces that dinner will be ready in 3 hours, the billionaire guests all suddenly have a reason to leave. “Enjoy the remodel," Camila tells Oliver, who is confused as he watches a crew he didn’t know was present exit. His dining room has been tastefully redecorated. “She’s a home decor witch!" He exclaims.

Later, the trio enjoy dinner in Charles’ apartment as they share what they learned from each billionaire. They each agree that their billionaire didn’t kill Nicky or Lester. Charles and Oliver razz Mabel about seemingly having a crush on Jay, which she doesn’t deny as she tells them they should reunite him with his finger. Their conversation is interrupted by some good news - Wondify wants to sign them! “Take that, THÉ," Mabel smiles.

The next day, they visit Wondify’s sleek studios. An executive (Simone Recasner) guides them past Drunk Sluts Do Murder’s buzzing control room and into a conference room kitted out with cameras and engineers, their new office. She presents a lucrative contract, which they each sign without hesitation. She then tells them the terms.

Only Murders will relaunch, prominently featured on the app’s welcome page for a month, but they must avoid targeting “stakeholders" — namely Jay, Bash, and Camila, now majority investors in Wondify. At a loss for words, the trio gets in an elevator going down, realizing their investigation has landed them inside a far larger contest, one run by billionaires who never play fair.

We see the last bits of the documentary with the billionaires. Camila warns, “The easiest way to win a game is to make your opponent think they’re playing a different game." Bash adds ominously, “By the time they realize, the game’s over."

To be continued in “Tongue Tied," streaming September 23rd on Hulu.