What I’m Watching: Only Murders in the Building

Only Murders in the Building: Season 2, Episode 6 “Performance Review” (B+)

I do like when an episode starts with a new narrator and introduces us to a character we haven’t really met before, and who could be more interesting than the dependable assistant Poppy, who has to endure constant abuse from the world’s worst boss, Cinda Canning? Poppy obviously sees herself as similar to Cinda in terms of her podcasting ability, and her efforts to get a performance review so that she might get a promotion were met with what seemed like validation from Cinda around a colleague before she revealed a much crueler determination to never let her rise above her current station. That was a productive impetus for her to call Mabel to undercut Cinda, but it was the worst time given that Mabel saw the guy who had taken the bag and then apparently stabbed him as captured on a number of cell phone videos before she fled the train. Coming after Jimmy’s contributions to the podcast and everything else, that’s not going to look good, and she was also not in a good place after she saw what Alice had been setting up all along with her as an unknowing art subject. After Oliver and Mabel reacted equally poorly to the news that Charles had started up a relationship with Jan again, I love that he decided to send Sazz to break up with her, which resulted in an unexpectedly passionate interaction. The three podcasters talking and not paying attention to when their glitter bait exploded was the epitome of their incompetence, all about the wild ideas and not so great with the follow-through.