Only Murders In The Building Season 5 Episode 10 Wraps Up This Season's Mystery But Isn't Entirely Satisfying

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

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Only Murders In The Building Season 5 Episode 10 wrapped things up, as usual for the end of the season, but the solution didn’t feel satisfying.

We got a new murder teed up for Season 6, so that answers one question: despite no official renewal yet, the series likely isn’t finished.

Hopefully, the new murder will be handled better than the old one was. Maybe it was just me, but it felt like the killer’s identity was arbitrary.

Only Murders In The Building’s Wrap-Up Demonstrates The Biggest Problem With This Season

Only Murders In The Building‘s charm is in the premise of the three amateur podcasters becoming a sensation because they always end up solving a murder in their building.

The number of murders at the Arconia that they have to solve makes the whole show unrealistic — who would continue to live in a building where people keep meeting violent ends? — but as long as the trio was podcasting and actively solving crimes, that was easy to overlook.

However, Only Murders In The Building Season 5 was a bit short on the investigative angle. 

The entire season felt as if it was full of good ideas that weren’t fully realized. 

For example, the subplot of the podcast being controlled by powerful interests was terrific, but nothing happened with it. The trio was barred from podcasting, whined about it a little, and listened to Cinda’s final podcast at the end of the season instead of having one of their own.

That made the investigation feel different, and in many ways incomplete.

They weren’t investigating and then reporting it on their podcast, and instead, their investigation was very insular, focused almost exclusively on the three billionaires that had caused them trouble.

Unless I Missed Something, The Mayor’s Culpability Came Out Of Nowhere

My biggest pet peeve in any mystery show is when the killer’s identity feels tacked onto the end of the final act, and that seems to be what happened here.

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Granted, I might have missed something, but I watched most episodes twice and still didn’t catch a single clue that the mayor was involved.

Sure, he was self-involved and insisted that he couldn’t do anything to stop the bad guys because of corruption, but that wasn’t enough to suggest that he had a motive to kill, never mind that he did it.

His reason for killing Lester turned out to be ridiculous. He lost his finger in the fight between Lester and Nicky, and Lester… didn’t give it back.

Come on! There should have been a better motive than that, though that finger did have outsized importance throughout the season.

Also, the mayor was Black. The other people whose finger they thought it might be were all white.

Didn’t anybody check the skin tone? I don’t recall it being so discolored that they couldn’t tell.

Anyway, the cleverest clue/twist was that “beautiful” was an autocorrect fail, and Lester was trying to warn his wife that Beau was no good.

That was great, but again, there weren’t enough other clues for the conclusion of the mystery to be satisfying.

Howard Finally Got To Be The Hero

Once the trio was locked in the basement of a building scheduled for demolition, it became a question of how they would get out of this latest predicament.

Our heroes always get into life-threatening danger at the end of a season, so there wasn’t any question that they would survive, but that didn’t make this sequence less fun.

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Charles trying to climb a pole while chained was funny despite the fact that I could tell those chains weren’t really wrapped around the actors’ arms, making it look like they could just slip out whenever they wanted.

That was likely done for actor safety, but I wish it had looked more believable.

In any case, the best part of this climax was Howard’s involvement.

Howard has always wanted desperately to be part of the investigation, so for him to be the one who saves the day was brilliant.

Of course, he had some help from Althea, who provided a hilarious decoy by turning on that awful song of hers that everyone loves and starting a dance marathon.

I was surprised that Althea didn’t turn out to be involved in the murder, which I had been predicting all season, but I’ll take a redemption arc.

Althea is another one who is desperate to be part of the investigation, and she played one of the most important roles in the end, but I won’t be sad if she disappears next season.

The Central Mystery Wrapped Up Cleanly, Leaving Only The Set-up For Only Murders In The Building Season 6

Howard got a new boyfriend, Charles found his self-esteem and rejected Sofia, and the billionaires all went to jail for helping cover up Nicky’s murder (as did the crooked cops).

But there were ten minutes to go, which meant that all that was left was the introduction of the new murder.

New murders are never a surprise at the end of the season anymore, though I was disappointed in the choice of victim this time.

It wasn’t so much that I liked Cinda — I didn’t — but she was played by Tina Fey, so killing her seemed like a waste of talent.

Still, despite the hiccups in Only Murders In The Building Season 5, I’m looking forward to Season 6, assuming the series is renewed.

What about you? What did you think of the way the murder was wrapped up and this season overall?
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If you enjoyed our coverage of Only Murders In The Building Season 5, check out our thoughts about Elsbeth, which has a similar vibe. You might also enjoy Watson, which features medical mysteries.

Only Murders In The Building Season 5 is available on Hulu.

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