Only Murders in the Building Season 2 Episode 8 Review: Hello, Darkness

This Only Murders in the Building article contains spoilers.

Only Murders in the Building Season 2 Episode 8

As we reach the final three episodes of season two, Only Murders in the Building has to find a way to both close strong and prepare for the future of the program. This means continuing to flesh out peripheral characters who may factor into the third season, and closing out the arcs of other bit parts who probably won’t. Seeing who is part of the latter group will help us determine who killed Bunny Folger, and the eighth episode does a great job of juggling all of these folks. 

We last left off with Oliver, Charles, and Mabel at a local diner. A blackout occurs right as Charles is trying to get a hold of Lucy. His pseudo step-daughter is waiting for him back at the apartment, and Charles is worried she might be in danger after a photo of both of them was in the pocket of the glittered man in the last episode. 

A city-wide electrical outage is one of the most New York-ish things that has happened in this show so far, as there have been several in the real-life Big Apple in the last 50 years. Adding the setting to the plot of a show and making it an instrumental part of what’s happening is something most have a hard time doing, but Only Murders in the Building has been doing a spectacular job of it the last two years. This week’s Northeastern flavor is a perfect backdrop for the increase in tension and the fleshing out of some more side characters. 

When Charles, Oliver, and Mabel return to the Arconia after the lights go out, they arrive in a lobby that is packed to the brim with concerned residents and worried neighbors. They wade through the mess to go back up to Charles’s apartment to check on Lucy, but Oliver has a hard time climbing the stairs with his excess bag of dips he took from the restaurant. This adds some levity to a situation that they don’t know is happening with Lucy – the young girl has been the victim of a break-in. 

It appears the presumed killer has decided to go after Lucy because they know that she is privy to some pertinent information about the night of the murder. She escapes out the secret passage underneath the building, and the killer is right on her tail. When the trio arrives in the apartment, they immediately realize what has happened and go into tracking mode to find her. 

Elsewhere in the complex, Howard (Michael Cyril Creighton) gets his first major storyline in a while. He takes a keen liking to another resident in the building, and decides to take advantage of the blackout to kindle some romantic flames that are missing in his life. He plans on going over and asking for batteries to his flashlight to get the ball rolling, but the man has the same ideas. 

Their budding intimacy really starts to get going when they both start singing a rendition of “Sound of Silence”. The rest of the Arconia hears the tunes, and they join in. Even Oliver can’t help himself down in the building’s catacombs with a killer on the loose!

Lucy and the gang finally reconnect, and Lucy gives some intel that the killer was a sneezer the last time she came into contact with them. This correlates to the B plot with Howard, as his date starts sneezing due to his cat allergy. The connection is most likely supposed to throw the audience off, but perhaps it’s a detail that will be important in the final two episodes. 

We also get to see how Nina (Christine Ko) is faring again. She has a conversation with the doorman about her frustrations that we don’t know who killed Bunny yet. The doorman responds by talking about his guilt that he most likely let the discrete suspect in without even noticing. This seems like such a small storyline, but every puzzle piece matters to solving the mystery. 

The final act of the episode shows Oliver, Charles, Mabel, and Lucy trying to escape from the supposed slasher underneath the building, but it’s revealed the man chasing them is just one of the folks from the podcast’s fanclub, Marv (Daniel Oreskes). He was trying to help them escape from the actual suspect, and they rewarded him by offering him a chance to speak on their podcast. 

All of this looks to set up for a daring penultimate episode after Detective Kreps (Michael Rapaport) comes up to Mabel to start poking around in the trio’s business again. After an inadvertent shove from Howard as he is walking through the hall with his partner, Mabel sees blood on the neck Kreps right behind his ear. What does this mean? And how will Howard factor into the picture after getting a more pivotal role here? Not much time left to find out!