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She’s back!
Meryl Streep may not be one of the original cast members of Hulu‘s Only Murders in the Building, but after appearing in Season 3 and Season 4 as the soft-spoken and quirky Loretta Durkin — an actress who gets her big break in Oliver’s (Martin Short) play, only to fall in love with him and end up marrying him in the Season 4 finale — we were starting to miss her.
Now, six episodes into Only Murders Season 5, our girl is finally back from New Zealand, where her character is filming her hit cop drama, Law & Order: Burn Unit… god, I love this deeply silly TV show. Sadly, her reason for returning to New York — other than to see her new husband, of course — is that her apartment of nearly five decades caught on fire, destroying a lifetime of memories. The blaze comes at a pivotal and serendipitous moment in the show, however, as Oliver, Mabel (Selena Gomez), and Charles (Steve Martin) are investigating another murder at The Arconia and Oliver is contemplating an offer on his place. Will he move out and find a new forever home with his new wife?
In Episode 6, “Flatbush,” Loretta quickly jumps into action upon touching down in the U.S. to help her husband get answers on how Lester (Teddy Coluca) really died at The Arconia the night of their wedding. Knowing that the trio has burned bridges with both widows at the center of the case, Lorraine Coluca (Dianne Wiest) and Sofia Caccimelio (Téa Leoni), Loretta offers herself up to go undercover at Lorraine’s open house, scoping out the scene for a plaid bag that was handed off between the widows. Did these devious divas kill their husbands for the money that they made from their underground poker games? How could they?!
They couldn’t, actually. While it seems nice and tidy in theory that these two women may have been working together with financial motives at play, they really are no more than two widows who just happen to be friends. Well, maybe a little more, because they are also working on a children’s production of Newsies together at a local Brooklyn theater, as it’s revealed near the end of the episode.
After a heart-to-heart where Lorraine waxes poetic about missing her husband and says that she would sell everything in her house for one more day with Lester, Loretta and Oliver decide to leave her alone and take a walk in his old neighborhood. While Loretta has been down in the dumps the entire episode over losing all of her things in the fire, the chat with Lorraine helps to put things in perspective, telling Oliver that she is just glad that she at least has him to stand by her side. That’s when the two lovebirds adorably smooch on the sidewalk in Brooklyn and make us swoon with their sweet embrace.
Their moment of bliss is short-lived, though, because they quickly get distracted by Sofia and Lorraine, who they follow to a local theater and find inside, not plotting or exchanging money, but handing off rolled-up prop newspapers for Newsies. Their story is verified by a group of rowdy kids who take the papes (can you tell I’ve listened to the Broadway album a few times?!) from Wiest and Streep. Side note: Can you imagine being able to pull out that Meryl Streep once handed you a prop newspaper in a TV show when you were a child actor? Instant addition to the two truths and a lie rotation.
All of this to say that the investigation into the deaths of Lester and Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale) is still underway and has a new detective on the case. Will Loretta be sticking around for the remainder of the season, especially now that (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT) Oliver has decided to take the offer on his apartment at The Arconia? Are they going to be looking for a home or do we think this is all just an elaborate red herring and he’s not going anywhere? My guess is the latter. The show is not called “Only Murders in the Building and at Oliver’s House,” right? I guess we’ll see.
The first six episodes of Only Murders in the Building Season 5 are now streaming on Hulu. New episodes drop Tuesdays at 12 a.m. ET.
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