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For the Love of Pop Culture
Only Murders in the Building returned to the ties that bind in season four.
Per usual, the gags and deep-cut references are meant to point out the absurdity of this world, from the mysterious Brothers Sisters directing duo planting hidden cameras around the Arconia Three’s apartments for authenticity in their filmmaking to Charles’s perpetually renewed disappointment when someone doesn’t recognize him as the TV detective Brazzos.This industry, OMITB says, has the ability to hurt us, but it also comforts, entertains, and bonds us. Most poignantly, the Westies, whom Charles, Oliver, and Mabel had labeled as weirdos and suspected as murderers, get a heartbreakingly vivid collective backstory in “Lifeboat,” which explains how Dudenoff drew them all together with his encouragement of their creative pursuits and appreciation for their artistic flair, then trusted them to carry out his final wishes following a terminal diagnosis. The season’s emotional high point lands as the camera revolves 360 degrees around Dudenoff’s dinner table, depicting the Westies eating a meal together, talking about movies, and bonding as a found family — a moment that evokes exactly how the relationship between Charles, Mabel, and Oliver grew from shared podcast interest into something more.
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