Season 5, episode 5 of Only Murders in the Building, “Tongue Tied,” proves that this season’s strategy for dealing with an overly complicated plot is to focus on one element at a time. This episode barely includes the billionaires and ignores the podcast company, choosing to follow the Sofia and doorman plotline, providing a decent, entertaining, and focused episode. “Tongue Tied” largely follows Charles, hooked on Testosterone, trying to get information from Sofia about a mysterious “Tommy the Tongue.” At the same time, Mabel and Oliver follow the lead to the basement of the Arconia, interacting with the staff who are growing obsolete due to the robot doorman. Their attempt at a worker’s revolt fails, and they find very few leads until Charles reveals that he forgot his phone in Sofia’s car. The trio follows the phone, bickering about Oliver’s potential plans to move out of the Arconia, all the way to Lester’s wife’s house.
This episode, however, is a great example of an average episode of Only Murderers in the Building, with a tight focus, charming side characters, and entertaining scenes. The twists and plot progression in this episode were some of the most interesting thus far in the season, especially with the ending tease. Involving Detective Donna Williams again was a great inclusion, as she adds an exciting factor to the main trio. In terms of the trio, Steve Martin’s Charles Haden Savage stole every scene he was in. Focusing his story around constant innuendos and hyper-masculine outbursts worked extremely well. Charles’s story alone helped elevate this episode from an ordinary installment of Only Murders to something more entertaining and consistently funny. While the plotline with Mabel and Oliver has fewer standout jokes, it was nice to be reminded of Ursula (the Gut Milk woman) and the unsung workers of The Arconia. This plotline, while necessary and decently engaging for the mystery of the season, felt particularly mundane when surrounded by scenes of a drunk, charming Charles at Hibachi.
Additionally, the robot L.E.S.T.E.R. gag remains hit or miss on both a comedic and thematic level. While the robot gag is fairly generic, the payoff within the episode was one of the biggest laughs all season. Specifically, the scene in which Mabel is outlining everything she knows and her concerns to Charles includes her being cut off by the robot doorman falling to its doom out of the window and screaming in a hilarious autotune. This bit was incredibly refreshing, especially because of the show’s reliance on dialogue and banter-based jokes centering around the clashing personalities of the main trio. Seeing a well-executed visual gag (as well as the redecorating in the previous episode) was an extremely welcome element. Overall, this was a solid episode of Only Murders in the Building, with certain scenes and gags standing out as particularly memorable. The concern of the overly-complicated plot still remains, but “Tongue Tied” managed to keep everything simple and contained. The inclusion of the robot doorman is fairly on-the-nose thematically, but it at least contributed to one of the biggest laugh-out-loud moments of the season thus far.
Rating: 7/10