Only Murders in the Building
Wednesday, 24 January 2024 03:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queer_scribblingS1E10: Open and Shut
It's still the night of Jan's recital, and Charles has gone back to his apartment with evidence of having bled a lot on his shirt. Oliver and Mabel take the bassoon cleaner to him and try to explain that Jan is the killer, but he doesn't seem to want to believe them. Since Jan should still be at the recital, Oliver and Mabel break into her apartment to try to find more direct evidence.
At intermission, Jan stops by Charles' apartment. She fixes them a drink, gets him ice in a handkerchief for his nose, and she tries to explain herself. It's not necessarily unbelievable initially, but then she notices the bassoon cleaner that was left behind. (She likes lonely men with an age difference to her, especially if she can bump into them in the elevator, so there's no denial of having some sort of brief relationship with Tim.) Jan brings up that Charles hasn't been drinking, and he says that he's been taking stage sips. He does agree with Oliver and Mabel that Jan is the killer, but he still has fallen in love with her.
In Jan's apartment, Oliver finds poison and has a line about how Jan uses a label maker even for her poison and would be perfect for Charles. Mabel finds a bloody knife hidden in a vent space (since it was rattling a bit while the air was on, I believe), and she eventually finds the green ring that belonged to Zoe in one of Jan's clothes drawers.
In between finding the knife and ring, we're back with Jan and Charles: Jan confesses and explains her motive, Charles starts to slur a bit and it turns out the poison was in the handkerchief instead of his drink so he didn't avoid it, and Jan reveals that she's going to use the gas in the building to try to take out everyone involved in this podcast, at the very least.
I don't really remember what the exact poison was, but inhaling it didn't cause the same level of effects as directly drinking it. After Mabel finds the ring, we get a series of funny but ever so slightly not-funny attempts on Charles' part to get help while slurring and unable to walk while Mabel and Oliver rush up to his apartment. Good ol' missing each other as one elevator's doors close and the next one's doors open. They do eventually find him and realize he recorded Jan's confession on his phone.
(There's no doubt that it's supposed to be funny that a neighbor thought Charles was doing some weirdly sexual thing on the floor while trying to roll to the elevator and everyone who gets into his elevator thinks he's sprawled on the floor because he's drunk. It is supposed to be funny that the doorman is unhelpful by sending his elevator back up to his floor, and narratively, it needs to happen so Mabel and Oliver who are heading there as well can find the elevator doors closing on him as he can't fully exit on his own anymore.
However, it's also not quite as personally funny because there is a chance that Charles won't be able to metabolize his way out of any harm from this poison by just waiting around. He's not dying as quickly from the poison as Tim did, but he's still in need of medical assistance. And other people he encounters while in this state within the Arconia don't care, don't want to get involved, don't realize how serious it is, and/or don't like him enough to see if anything more serious is going on. I'm aware that this is probably budging up against external-to-the-show baggage, but it still dialed back how funny some of the humor was for me.)
Anyways, the recorded confession is how Mabel and Oliver figure out that something involving the gas intake/outtake system for the building is being used. Someone else on the floor also tried to use his fireplace and smelled gas, so all signs point to getting down to the basement. (They finagle Charles into Winnie's dog-stroller, so he's not left on the floor.) Mabel and Oliver get the gas situation solved, but Jan meets them down there with a gun. The audience gets to experience Charles' internal monologue of being willing to sacrifice himself for his friends because they've helped him to rediscover being alive [1], and Mabel surprises her and gets a punch in while wearing that large green ring.
Sort of happy ending: Jan is taken away alive in a cop car, Charles is taken to the hospital (though I can't say whether or not he truly needs his stomach pumped as Mabel's line suggests), and enough people are grateful that they caught Tim's killer that no one wants to complete the eviction process. Charles reaches out to Lucy to catch up with her, and she's open to talking to him.
Sort of unhappy ending: Remember the flash-forward with Mabel covered in someone's blood and kneeling over someone? And that professional podcaster talking about 'Only Murderers in the Building'? Well, when Mabel goes back to her aunt's apartment to get a bottle of champagne for the 'everything turned out fine' celebrations, an incident happens. Oliver and Charles get a text to leave [2] and notice that police sirens are heading to the Arconia, so they run down to her apartment and are inside when the police show up. The final image is of all three of them being led out of the building to police cars while seemingly every character possible is there to watch.
Clearly, the next season will cover this. The lady who calls the building meetings together [3] has been stabbed, supposedly with Mabel's knitting needle, but already, my family's not entirely sure it was actually Mabel who did the stabbing.
[1] He actually doesn't get out of the dog-stroller and deliver a perfectly coherent monologue while stepping forward. At a certain point, his incoherence didn't sound like what you usually hear for slurring anymore, but it was enough attempted noise that he was trying to talk.
[2] I think Oliver asked who it was sent from, which is why a family member thinks it was an unrecognized number. However, I can't say with 100% certainty about that right now.
[3] I've been calling her Bonnie instead of Bunny.
It's still the night of Jan's recital, and Charles has gone back to his apartment with evidence of having bled a lot on his shirt. Oliver and Mabel take the bassoon cleaner to him and try to explain that Jan is the killer, but he doesn't seem to want to believe them. Since Jan should still be at the recital, Oliver and Mabel break into her apartment to try to find more direct evidence.
At intermission, Jan stops by Charles' apartment. She fixes them a drink, gets him ice in a handkerchief for his nose, and she tries to explain herself. It's not necessarily unbelievable initially, but then she notices the bassoon cleaner that was left behind. (She likes lonely men with an age difference to her, especially if she can bump into them in the elevator, so there's no denial of having some sort of brief relationship with Tim.) Jan brings up that Charles hasn't been drinking, and he says that he's been taking stage sips. He does agree with Oliver and Mabel that Jan is the killer, but he still has fallen in love with her.
In Jan's apartment, Oliver finds poison and has a line about how Jan uses a label maker even for her poison and would be perfect for Charles. Mabel finds a bloody knife hidden in a vent space (since it was rattling a bit while the air was on, I believe), and she eventually finds the green ring that belonged to Zoe in one of Jan's clothes drawers.
In between finding the knife and ring, we're back with Jan and Charles: Jan confesses and explains her motive, Charles starts to slur a bit and it turns out the poison was in the handkerchief instead of his drink so he didn't avoid it, and Jan reveals that she's going to use the gas in the building to try to take out everyone involved in this podcast, at the very least.
I don't really remember what the exact poison was, but inhaling it didn't cause the same level of effects as directly drinking it. After Mabel finds the ring, we get a series of funny but ever so slightly not-funny attempts on Charles' part to get help while slurring and unable to walk while Mabel and Oliver rush up to his apartment. Good ol' missing each other as one elevator's doors close and the next one's doors open. They do eventually find him and realize he recorded Jan's confession on his phone.
(There's no doubt that it's supposed to be funny that a neighbor thought Charles was doing some weirdly sexual thing on the floor while trying to roll to the elevator and everyone who gets into his elevator thinks he's sprawled on the floor because he's drunk. It is supposed to be funny that the doorman is unhelpful by sending his elevator back up to his floor, and narratively, it needs to happen so Mabel and Oliver who are heading there as well can find the elevator doors closing on him as he can't fully exit on his own anymore.
However, it's also not quite as personally funny because there is a chance that Charles won't be able to metabolize his way out of any harm from this poison by just waiting around. He's not dying as quickly from the poison as Tim did, but he's still in need of medical assistance. And other people he encounters while in this state within the Arconia don't care, don't want to get involved, don't realize how serious it is, and/or don't like him enough to see if anything more serious is going on. I'm aware that this is probably budging up against external-to-the-show baggage, but it still dialed back how funny some of the humor was for me.)
Anyways, the recorded confession is how Mabel and Oliver figure out that something involving the gas intake/outtake system for the building is being used. Someone else on the floor also tried to use his fireplace and smelled gas, so all signs point to getting down to the basement. (They finagle Charles into Winnie's dog-stroller, so he's not left on the floor.) Mabel and Oliver get the gas situation solved, but Jan meets them down there with a gun. The audience gets to experience Charles' internal monologue of being willing to sacrifice himself for his friends because they've helped him to rediscover being alive [1], and Mabel surprises her and gets a punch in while wearing that large green ring.
Sort of happy ending: Jan is taken away alive in a cop car, Charles is taken to the hospital (though I can't say whether or not he truly needs his stomach pumped as Mabel's line suggests), and enough people are grateful that they caught Tim's killer that no one wants to complete the eviction process. Charles reaches out to Lucy to catch up with her, and she's open to talking to him.
Sort of unhappy ending: Remember the flash-forward with Mabel covered in someone's blood and kneeling over someone? And that professional podcaster talking about 'Only Murderers in the Building'? Well, when Mabel goes back to her aunt's apartment to get a bottle of champagne for the 'everything turned out fine' celebrations, an incident happens. Oliver and Charles get a text to leave [2] and notice that police sirens are heading to the Arconia, so they run down to her apartment and are inside when the police show up. The final image is of all three of them being led out of the building to police cars while seemingly every character possible is there to watch.
Clearly, the next season will cover this. The lady who calls the building meetings together [3] has been stabbed, supposedly with Mabel's knitting needle, but already, my family's not entirely sure it was actually Mabel who did the stabbing.
[1] He actually doesn't get out of the dog-stroller and deliver a perfectly coherent monologue while stepping forward. At a certain point, his incoherence didn't sound like what you usually hear for slurring anymore, but it was enough attempted noise that he was trying to talk.
[2] I think Oliver asked who it was sent from, which is why a family member thinks it was an unrecognized number. However, I can't say with 100% certainty about that right now.
[3] I've been calling her Bonnie instead of Bunny.
