Only Murders In The Building (Season 3) Episode 5: Charles. Oh Charles. What did you do. That would have been the reaction of everyone after they watched the final moments of The White Room. Charles’s face itself had that sort of look as he took in his actions upon his visit to the white room. Joy became the prime suspect, but as Only Murders In The Building fans would know, the reveal does not happen so fast. It goes against most TV laws. They just need to cast enough doubt on every single person to make things interesting for the finale.
Meryl Streep returned in this episode, making her first appearance since her lullaby.
Only Murders In The Building (Season 3), Episode 5 “Ah, Love!” Recap:
The episode begins with a voiceover from Joy, naming the episode title and wondering how well people know the people they sleep with in the city that doesn’t sleep. Things proceed to two days after the proposal with Mabel and Oliver standing outside Charles’s Apartment, listening to the sound of glass shattering. Charles then walks out and assures them that everything is under control. He explains the noise by saying that Joy is loudly shattering glass for her aquarium. When Mabel asks Charles whether he has raised the topic of the lipstick in front of Joy, he reveals that he has not.
Oliver asks Mabel for advise about his scarf for his date with Loretta. She says she can only see a crayon box to make him change it. Mabel then offers to chat with Joy, but Charles assures her that Joy is not Jan. Mabel then reveals that she is meeting Tobert for a stakeout; which the two old men believed is a date as she has a cocktail dress on.
Charles and Joy meet before their cake and wine tasting. When he tries broaching the subject, she kisses him and asks his reel character, or Brazzos, to hang his badge. When Charles comes out and just asks it, Joy looks stunned. At that moment, Sazzmatazz shows up with a gift. Joy, however, does not let things slide and decides to head to the cake tasting herself. She leaves Sazz to be “interrogated” by Charles.
Mabel and Oliver head for their respective dates. The former’s date sheds light on a new suspect – Jonathan, i.e. Ben Glenroy’s understudy. Mabel is taken aback and walks through the sequence that leads to the meeting.
Sazz has a heart to heart with Charles and drops a bombshell. She continues to see Jan, who had been in jail. Sazz also dismisses Charles’s concerns that he was dating a murderer, branding him as someone suffering from Murderous Girlfriend Derangement Syndrome. Her reason to dismiss these concerns is that they have known Joy for years, from their time on Brazzos.
Oliver loses a tooth while having dinner in Loretta’s house. He snorts and she speaks of a pig that she played in Charlotte’s Web. Loretta then begins imitating pigs when asked about how many pigs she has played during her time on stage. She laughs it off, saying “Fucking pigs”, and then labels Ben Glenroy as one. That sees Oliver sit and take notice before joining Loretta in toasting Ben. She notices that he went white, and decides to stop talking about Ben when Oliver asks her if she had called him a ”Fucking Pig.”
They then take a cruise on the river when they discover how often they were in the same room in their past. It was like the mother and Ted in ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ Loretta and Oliver smoke weed on the ferry.
A still Only Murders In The Building Season 3 Episode 5.Mabel and Tobert spot Jonathan handing an envelope to a person in a red jacket. As Mabel cannot identify him, Tobert decides to see for himself. He stands and turns directly to a waiter and draws attention to himself. Mabel and he hide and then when they poke their heads over the table, they realise that Jonathan is staring at them. He and his companion walk away, but Tobert says he believes he knows the guy.
Loretta comes clean and admits that she called Ben a fucking pig and says she had a fight with him half an hour before the start. A flashback shows them fighting near the lighthouse. Loretta then claims that many people in the theater feel that way about Ben. She also apologizes that Oliver did not get his opening night. She then tells Oliver why she had him come on the boat ride. It is a family tradition that where her mother brought her on a boat whenever she lost a tooth. They did so to toss the tooth into the river and make a wish. When Oliver learns of the ferry-fairy wordplay, he does just that and reveals his wish by kissing Loretta.
Joy returns laden with boxes and then admits that she was backstage on the night Ben collapsed on stage. The reason for the same is a cosmetic emergency, i.e. a big red mask caused by somebody who hit him. Joy then says that her lipstick may have fallen in the room, but she didn’t kill Ben or write on the mirror.
Only Murders In The Building (Season 3), Episode 5 “Ah, Love!” Ending Explained:
What was Jonathan talking to?
Tobert revealed Jonathan was talking to Dr. C. Mabel took him back to her apartment and showed him the murderboard, where they wrote ‘Dr. C’ on a paper and pinned it right next to Jonathan.
Who hit Ben?
Charles told Joy that he had hit Ben after he spotted the scuffle between Loretta and the lead actor.
What did Joy do to Charles?
Joy was appalled that Charles had spoken about the lipstick with everyone except for her. She then rants about how she believes that he had changed and how she thought there was something between them after all that time on set. Further mentions came up about the things she had overlooked in him. Charles then tried to say something that saw Joy ask him whether he could hear himself. He then came up with his plan to embrace Joy. She asked him to embrace this and shoved the cakes into his chest before calling off the engagement. Rough.
What did Oliver discover?
Oliver and Loretta spent the night in Loretta’s hide-a-bed. She then went to the bathroom to draw a bath for the both of them. Oliver explored her house and found a hidden bookshelf. It had a clipping of Ben Glenroy, which led to a discovery of a collage of everything Ben Glenroy. Oliver discovers that Loretta was a crazed fan! Or maybe, she was his estranged relative. That caused him to try to strangle her in that way on the set’s lighthouse.
What remains to be seen is how they will prove Loretta is not it. An additional layer of intrigue will be built around whether the Loretta-Oliver thing goes the same way as the Charles-Joy thing went. Find out next week in Ghost Light.
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Only Murders In The Building (Season 3) Episode 5 Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia
Only Murders In The Building (Season 3) Episode 5 Cast: Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez, Michael Cyril Creighton
Only Murders In The Building (Season 3) Genre: Mystery Comedy-Drama, Runtime: 26–38 minutes
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