Recap of Only Murders in the Building Season 4 Episode 9

Photo: Patrick Harbron/Disney

Dead men don't tell stories, but men who are in comas don't tell stories either. Although their new prime suspect is known to be unconscious, Charles, Oliver and Mabel head to the hospital to examine Glen Stubbins – hoping to wake up the Irish stunt double with beer and corned beef. Until the hospital nurse (also Irish) puts an end to this near-hate crime and refuses to let her into his room. But just when they think they're at a dead end, the bartender from Concussions shows up and – since he's conscious – can answer their questions much better than Glen could have.

As it turned out, Glen was not Sazz's suspected protégé, who continued to work Project Ronkonkoma – rather, Glen was the replacement for this stunt person. “The guy screwed up so much that Sazz had to oust him,” the bartender tells them. Sazz retired, then Glen replaced him – and both were shot. But the only one who can really talk about what happened was the director of this film. Who is…pause for dramatic effect…Ron Howard. “Finally a celebrity this season,” says Oliver. “A Ron Howard movie that goes wrong? Who could ever imagine that?” I say to myself as I turn off CNN.

How do you track down Ron Howard? Sure, you could check every baseball cap store in the country, but there has to be a more efficient way. Oliver thinks he has a trick, referencing a wild night in 1988 when the two met at a Chinese restaurant… supposedly. Instead of policing the restaurant, Mabel thinks she'll have better luck finding out if Bev Melon has any leads (after all, Molly Shannon worked with him). How the Grinch Stole Christmasand that has to count for something). “Of course I know where that bastard is… you're nobody in this town if you don't keep an eye on Ron Howard,” Bev tells Mabel as he makes a Red Bull and Slim Jim smoothie. He's filming a movie in New York, and Bev brokers a deal with Mabel – giving her Ron Howard's address if she promises to work on her movie's shaky script to make it sound more authentic.

So they head to Ron Howard's film set, where he is making a film called Escape from the planet Klongo. I would like to suspend my disbelief at this point because everyone knows that the only projects still filming in New York are Elsbeth, law and orderand Sabrina Brier's TikToks. Oh, and I think so Just murders in the building …but let's not get too meta. They sneak in by posing as background actors, but their mission to contact Ron Howard fails. After seeing Oliver change his emergency contact with his future wife, Loretta, Charles becomes a little confused and is faced with the question of how this new chapter for Oliver might affect their friendship. This is exacerbated by the fact that his ideas for Oliver's bachelor party continued to be rejected for not being extravagant enough – but kudos to the series for not forcing Zach Galifianakis into that storyline for a while Hangover Reference. This all comes to a head during their scene when Charles has a temper tantrum in which he calls Oliver insufferable – and the two are promptly thrown off the set.

Mabel isn't there to witness or try to resolve this argument because she abandoned the set when she learned from the hospital that Glen Stubbins had woken up from his coma. Unfortunately, before Mabel gets there, someone else comes and smothers Glen with a pillow – because this is essentially a TV show about killing Paul Rudd. As the nurse breaks this news to Mabel, the camera in the background also shows us a close-up of a news report about the disappearance of Nicky “The Neck” Caccimelio, the Brooklyn cleaning king who has ties to the Caputo crime family. This is clearly relevant…but nothing about it rings a bell. Did my brain just finally reach its maximum capacity? Just murders Characters, or is this the first we're hearing about them? In any case, I would like to save this very conscious recording for later. In the middle of this news report, the Irish nurse (who I assume is called Shannon) tells Mabel that the only other person who called her was Glen's emergency contact, Sazz. But as we know, the killer has Sazz's phone.

Back on set and unaware that the killer has struck again, Charles and Oliver reconcile, and Charles explains that he's worried about becoming an awkward third wheel. To combat this fear and celebrate their friendship, the two decide to grab a bite to eat at Oliver's favorite Chinese restaurant. The lunch turns out to be his ideal bachelorette party, except for his request for an A-list star. Until we hear a voice from across the restaurant that makes me think I accidentally switched Captured development. It's Ron Howard, back at the same spot where Oliver claimed they met, but not only that – the director recognizes him immediately. The warm welcome is an incredible reward, and after four seasons of Oliver's over-the-top celebrity rants, it turns out that one of them is actually true. “I love that in Mayberry when you walk past the fishing hole,” an excited Charles blurts out – a beautiful line of poetry when you think about it. And even though Ron says that, he still joins them at their table for lunch.

And when Project Ronkonkoma shows up, he tells them the whole story – much of which we've seen in flashbacks from Sazz's perspective throughout the episode. Luckily, like all good witnesses in crime shows, Ron Howard remembers every detail. Everything seemed to be going smoothly during the big fire stunt, but after our mysterious stuntman was wiped out, he didn't wait long enough and re-ignited in front of Howard, causing him to lose his eyebrows. He also says that the stuntman stole his shoes, and we can see from Ron Howard's spare pair that they match the footprint left at the crime scene. This detail is a little exaggerated, pun intended, but it's a quick way for the show to clear up this loose end, pun intended. We find out that the stuntman's name is Rex Bailey, which we don't know, but when Ron shows a photo everything falls into place. Although it's hard to tell given his newer disguise, our culprit is actually the film's screenwriter, Marshall. My instinctive distrust of people with perfect vision paid off.

The problem now is that at this moment Mabel is alone with Marshall, the murderer. But she thinks she's only with Marshall the screenwriter, which is probably just as scary. She found him panicking outside her apartment and desperately sought her help to improve the script so he wouldn't lose his job. But when Mabel grabs a beer from the case Sazz brought with her the night of her murder, she discovers a new piece of evidence that has been under their noses all along. A script for her Just murders Movie, but written by Sazz. Just as she confronts him, he sees a text message on Mabel's phone that reveals him to be the murderer. Worst of all, he's sitting on the bed and we just saw him kill someone with a pillow. Run, Mabel, run!

Apparently everything worked out, but there's one more episode and now Mabel is alone in an apartment with the murderer. They have identified the perpetrator, but may still need to catch him and possibly save Mabel. And with a whole episode left, there's still time for new revelations about the details of Marshall's crimes. Was he really working alone? How did he get into the Dudenoff apartment? As an aspiring filmmaker, he might well have known Professor Dudenoff. So what's the deal with Brooklyn's dry cleaning king? And those invisible rats that Glen keeps seeing? In any case, I hope Marshall pays for his crimes – the worst of which was cutting off his long blonde hair to disguise himself with that bowl cut.