Sucky Funnies for December 11, 2022

Keeping it short and sweet today. Enjoy three shitty strips with barely any commentary! I’m gonna go take a nap.


Pluggers

Pluggers - December 11, 2022

Click for Larger

We can add “being obese” to the list of things rural, blue-collar middle America is proud of alongside “being uneducated” and “hating black people”. If this jolly fellow entered my house I’d call the police.

Do you have a contribution? Be sure to send your winning entry off to pluggermail@aol.com. The email address is kept alive by a lifetime supply of those free 1000+ hours of AOL 3.0 discs. Pluggers unite!


Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem - December 11, 2022

Click for Larger

A “selfie camera”. It’s not just any camera! Why are we still making selfie jokes in 2022? Are we still mad that young people like their phones? Do you know how many old ladies I see on the bus swiping through Breitbart.com, completely engrossed within the screen?

This is just a Pluggers joke too, to boot. “You’re a plugger if your selfie camera is your bathroom mirror.” How about you plug my butt.


Judge Parker

Judge Parker - December 11, 2022

Click for Larger

When we last checked in with Judge Parker, faceless characters Sam and Gloria were escaping a lakehouse post-shootout. Thank God that Gloria came out unscathed, but what became of Sam? Did he get captured by the cartel and escorted off to Mexico with a bag over his head? Here’s hoping!

Gloria smells like gun smoke because, in an unforeseen twist, Gloria pulled a gun to Sam and killed him dead. She was the shooter all along! You can expect a whole lot more plot twists like these from future editions of Judge Parker! See you next time!

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1 – “The New Revolution”

* Part 1 of 5 of the Revolution storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #1 – “The New Revolution”!

Another day, another Brian Michael Bendis run. I’ve accidentally stumbled on this guy more times so far than anyone, with Mark Waid not even being a close second. It’s funny how renowned the guy is for Ultimate Spider-Man and then maybe Alias, but everything else has been mediocre at best. BUT THAT’S ALL GONNA CHANGE WITH UNCANNY X-MEN! I have a good feeling about this one! It’s uncanny, after all!

I don’t have anything more to say. Let’s get this shit on the road or I’m turning this car back around. Back to the garage, you see. Because this shit isn’t on the road yet.


Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1 [April, 2013]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“The New Revolution”

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1

LET’S SEE. Who’s that on the cover? Cyclops Man. Cold Lady. Large Earring Woman. James Joyce Glasses. Magnet Man. Colossus Sister. Cool, cool, cool.

So, I know from All-New X-Men that Cyclops is hangin’ with Frost and Magneto (Illyana too; she hangs back though) so they can recruit new mutants. That’s Short-Hair and Mr. Goggles. Short-Hair is from Australia, I forget her name, she can stop time. Mr. Goggles can bring people back from the dead. These are both very useful skills! Better than flaming eyeballs or whatever the fuck Cyclops’ problem is.

There’s an intro page that tells you about X-Men mutants like you might not already know. I know. We’re moving on. Cyclops has emotional and mental problems AND he wants to start a revolution, which is a recipe for complete disaster but we’re all going to let that play out.

Speaking of short hair, hubba hubba and whatnot. Maria Hill, my favorite S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and/or commander and/or deputy director and/or director is with Nick Eyepatch Fury in the INTERROGATION BUNKER. And what a bunker it is! “He just showed up out of nowhere?” Hill asks a nameless agent. Who cares what his name is, he’s dressed in a suit.

“Is he in there?” she asks a security officer.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Have you taken the necessary precautions?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
All of them?”
“Ma’am.”
“I don’t like this…”

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1

Yeah, well, what you don’t know could fill a few thousand top of the line, state of the art S.H.I.E.L.D. Apple IIe computers.

Hill braces herself before entering the interrogation room. The guy was checked for weapons. She asks if this guy has ever done anything like “this” before, and the answer is no. Sounds like a rascal who was in the wrong place at the wrong time to me. Cut him loose, men.

If this guy tries any funny business while Hill is in there, the crosseyed security officer is to hit a red button that will gas the place and kill every single one of them. Sound good? Excellent! There’s no time to say goodbye to your wife and kids, son. This is the price you pay for your duty as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Security Pawn. I mean, Officer. Tee hee.

“Agent Hill,” says the man.
“You asked for me?”
“I did.”
“Specifically?”
“I did.”
“Why?”

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1

We would allow it on Armenian soil. But American soil? No way, Jose. That’s SPECIAL soil!

It’s because Maria Hill has no personal vested interest in this revolution. Neither do 6.8 billion other people, why doesn’t this guy want to talk to them? He can talk to me, I don’t give a shit about the mutant revolution!

He wants Hill to listen to him. That’s all. He produces a round, coin-like object from his mouth and places it on the table. Everyone freaks out. The security guy is going to get waterboarded just for missing this one. He’s going to get waterboarded with milkshakes.

“What is that?” Hill asks, startled and frightened.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he says, looking like he might anyway. Just a teensy bit. “I have to imagine that my reputation precedes me. I think you know me well enough to know that if I was here to hurt you there’s a lot smarter ways for me to go about doing it.

Well, nicely done. Checkmate, I guess. Good game. Time to go heh heh. Oh, you’re going to explain what the object is? Fine. She’ll stick around a little bit longer.

He claims it’s information. Information she doesn’t have. He presses a small button on the coin and the room lights up with a hologram of the world swirling around them. It sort of looks like normal Earth land masses but it’s all weird and different. I think I see Russia, though. Yep, there’s Putin.

“Each one represents a new mutant who has popped up,” the man explains the bright points of light that dot the map like stars in the sky, “They’re popping up all over the world.”

Hill is skeptical, but he knows that she knows that he has good intel, so he knows that she knows that she should trust him. Got me? She’s also quite alarmed and nervous, and after asking how many there might be, the mysterious mystery man tells her it’s not the number she needs to worry about. It’s how powerful they are. Power plus revolution. We don’t even have Cyclops on their side right now, it seems. That’s a fly in the ointment, as your 145-year-old grandmother might say.

Loved by other mutants. Hated by the normies. Scott “Cyclops Fucker” Summers is the one to watch for. He may be totally mentally unstable. In fact, he is! Have fun!

“Summers is rescuing mutants all over the world…”

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1

He’s also jacking off a lot in public, and people sort of have mixed feelings about that.

“But the reason Scott Summers is so popular is that they don’t know the real him. They don’t know what he’s capable of. They don’t know that he’s a monster,” says bottom-half-of-face man.

Maria Hill is tired of this guy taking up her time at this point. If he’s got nothing new to say about Scott Summers that S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t already know, then she’s gonna g–

“His powers don’t work anymore.”

BBBWWWWWHHHAAAAAT??! comical double-take

They’re broken, see? Yeah…yeah, broken. Screwed up. Fizzling. Off the rails, you hearing me? Broke during the *Phoenix debacle” (I still don’t really know what that is) and he’s trying to hide that fact by not blasting motherfuckers with his eyeball furnace.”

“The face of the mutant revolution is crippled,” she asks, not believing her ears.
“That seems to have gotten your attention,” he replies.

She still doesn’t believe him. It just isn’t consistent with what they’ve seen.

He asks her if she heard about what happened in San Diego the other day. Some young man on the street just started producing these large, bouncing balls out of nowhere. There was a robbery attempt and it just started to happen, pinging around the room and knocking people over. It happened again when the police attempted to take him down. The cop looks like Stan Lee, lol.

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1

Boy? Pfft. He looks big enough to be three boys!

The police and security talk amongst themselves about this new mutant piece of shit when who should arrive but SCOTT SUMMERS and his troupe of MUTANT MISFITS! “That mutant has rights,” Cyclops Summers says intimidatingly. He’s got his crew of five others with him (Editor’s Note: Check the cover! -T)

-Australian Short-Hair Girl is now named Tempus. As in, stuff with time.
-Mr. Goggles hasn’t picked out a name yet, but, as mentioned before, he heals people. I’m gonna name him right now: “Stimpack”!

Cyclops tells these human police fucks to back away now before he launches fire out of his dick at them. They don’t comply. They aim their guns at them and call for backup. Terrible idea, who taught you how to deal with unhinged mutants? Dumpster Police Academy? Magneto magnetizes their guns and pushes them away. Frost then instructs Tempus (née Eva) to create her time bubble and trap them in a time bubbly vortex, stopping them in their tracks. Not bad for only four days of mutantity!

This kid is named Fabio. Cyclops grabs his hand tenderly, ever so tenderly, and smiles at him like an unregistered sex offender. Then they go through the whole spiel. Kid doesn’t know what’s going on, Cyclops tells him he’s a dang mutant and his power appears to be ball-related. That’s a new one. This girl over here points can manipulate time, and this guy over here points can heal people, and you points make balls. Congratulations on sucking hardcore. Want to join the revolution?

Hold that thought. A 900-ft tall Sentinel comes crashing through to pound these mutants into sticky mutant paste. Oh great, they’re being hunted. Why was Cyclops yelling and hollering on TV about a revolution in the first place? Downright cockamamie! Very visible! No good!

Ok, well, fuck. Cyclops tells Magik to take the kids back to school, but she’s tied up at the moment and they need Stimpack to help heal some stuff.

Magneto tells these kids to respect their elders and listen to Scott Summers! He’s cool and a good role model and he’s NOT REGISTERED! Yet.

The Sentinel continues to hand their asses to them on a bronze platter. They don’t even deserve a silver platter. Frost comments on how old Magneto is; can’t even stop these Sentinels. Magneto gets indignant but then agrees. “Not so long ago I would have had the power to fold these nightmares into themselves… but, it seems those days are behind me.”

More Sentinels show up. These are human-sized and they don’t look as dangerous but I’m personally assured, because I have Level 1,000 clearance, that they are indeed quite dangerous.

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1

CLANG THUNK CLANG CLANG THUNK THUNK BING BANG BING BANG BADA BING BADA BOOM

Just like Cyclops, Magneto’s powers are broken. He uses whatever magnetic force he has left to fashion the cops’ guns into metal arrows (stupid) and fling them at the Sentinels. They are stopped, but Magneto grabs his head and screams in the universal expression for “my head hurts now”.

Magik leaps up with a sword and slices through the giant Sentinel’s head like butter. Stimpack heals Magneto, which the rest of the team finds touching. A new mutant and already he’s healing his buddies! Daawwwww!!

Time Girl and Healer Boy and this is just the beginning. Now we got Ball Kid. Things are really picking up.

NOW Magik can whisk everyone back to the school. Cyclops does a lucky blast that destroys the rest of the robot. He didn’t even know he was doing it until he was done. He could have easily fucked up the whole block. He could have easily killed his X-Men buddies. But he didn’t, so whew. But now he’s wobbly and woozy.

Fabio freaks out and doesn’t want to go, but Tempus Eva assures him that she felt the same way and everything is going to be ok. He’s with friends now! So forget your old friends and your family. They are dead to you now forever. Come along!

It was S.H.I.E.L.D. who sent those Sentinels to kill Scott Summers specifically, but she is told that it’s a really dumb idea? Do you want to martyr him? Do you want to kill everyone around him? Use your brain, man!

Listen, Toots. You can’t kill him. Don’t kill him. Don’t make him die, ok? You have to taps pointed finger on table to emphasize each word expose. him. for. the. monster. that. he. is. so. that. he. can. feel. bad. and. cry. while. watching. This. Is. Us. and. eating. Stouffer’s. pot. pies.

“He’s a broken man,” says Mysterious Man Who Will Soon Be Revealed, I’m Sure. “Spiritually. Physically. You need to show that to the world. What he should be doing is healing – retraining himself… he should be pulling himself back together under the public eye. He should be in jail.”

Scott Summers, however, is an arrogant piece of shit. So he’ll never do it on his own. He thinks he’s cock of the walk! He thinks he can succeed at his revolution. He doesn’t know shit!

Maria Hill finally agrees to help, but she has no idea what this guy wants her to do.

But she does know who this guy is.

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1

It’s Magneto.

He wants Hill to get Scott Summers to reveal himself. He wants her to get him to self-destruct in public. He wants this because Scott Summers fucked him over. His powers suck, and he wants to stick it to him.

And, of course, he’s willing to help.

cue Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

Final Thoughts

I should’ve been able to see this a mile away, but I’m dumb. Of course this was why Hill was terrified when Magneto pulled out that little metal disc that ended up being a map hologram. Duh.

Let’s go, Magnet Man. Let’s see what ya got. Epstein the motherfucker!

Moon (2009)

Tagline:
The last place you’d ever expect to find yourself

Wide Release Date:
June 12, 2009

Directed by:
Duncan Jones
Written by:
Nathan Parker
Produced by:
Stuart Fenegan, Trudie Styler

Starring:
Sam Rockwell
Kevin Spacey
Dominique McElligott
Kaya Scodelario
Benedict Wong
Matt Berry
Malcolm Stewart

moon

PREGAME THOUGHTS

College was full of kids with awful movie taste. Myself included. I didn’t like movies much anyway and I really didn’t know what was good, but I could tell when someone was into the bad shit. And I wouldn’t listen to them if they were like “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was the best movie of 2006″. I wouldn’t listen to them ever again about literally anything.

But then I had another friend who told me good things about Moon. This is going back 10 years. His favorite movie from the late ’00s was Children of Men, which I liked a lot, and he had good things to say about Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, neither of which I’ve seen but a fan of David Lynch is a fan of mine!

So this Moon movie has had intrigued me for years, and I like Sam Rockwell. He’s in outer space a lot. At long last, here we go.


THE 700(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

The year is I-Don’t-Know. It’s sometime in the future. The ability to mine helium-3 from the moon is necessary to provide Earth with alternative fuel. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the sole individual stationed in a facility on the far side of the moon. He is in charge of maintaining operations and launching the canisters of helium-3 to Earth. His three-year contract will be up in a two weeks.

Three years is a long-ass time to be alone with Kevin Spacey! He plays GERTY, the facility’s artificial intelligence entity who provides assistance to Sam. Other than that, he gets pre-recorded messages from his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott), who was pregnant before his three-year stint on the moon began.

Moon - GERTY

“Hello, Sam. Don’t worry, I’ll try not to make any inappropriate sexual advances toward you. I can’t make any promises, of course.”

Looking forward to getting the fuck off the moon, Sam Rockwell bides his time and patiently continues his menial work… but then he starts seeing odd hallucinations of a young girl and a beardy man in the facility. He crashes his lunar rover after a distraction out on the moon’s surface, which causes him to lose air and consciousness.

He finds himself awakening on a table in the infirmary. He is instructed by corporate management that he is to stay in the facility while a rescue team makes their way to the moon to fix the rover and the harvester he crashed into. GERTY’s acting all weird too, like something fishy is going on, so Sam sneaks out of the facility to investigate. He makes his way to the location of the incident and discovers an unconscious man inside the crashed rover. He looks just like Sam. Sam brings the unconscious guy who looks like Sam back to the facility. The unconscious guy is most certainly the Sam who crashed, so he will henceforth be referred to as Sam #1. When Sam #1 regains consciousness, Sam #1 thinks he’s losing his mind while Sam #2 is very angry and skeptical about it.

Moon - Sams Fighting

Gives “dancing by yourself” a whole new meaning! HA HA HA!

GERTY spends much time trying to distract Sam #1’s curiosity and questions, but eventually GERTY is cornered into telling Sam #1 that he is a clone. Sam #2 is a clone, too. Both Sams are clones of the original Sam, who had long ago finished his assignment. The new Sams have all of the original Sam’s memories, including those of his family, implanted. And this royally sucks. Everything Sam #1 ever knew has been a lie. Or, at least, with respect to him personally it’s a lie. An argument could be made that it’s NOT a lie!

Revelations slowly become known: all Sam clones get sick at the end of their three-year stint, there’s a secret room full of hundreds of hibernating clones, radios to Earth are deliberately jammed, and all past clones are incinerated after their time is up. This is all crazy shit, and the Sams have trouble handling it. Sam #1 rovers his way out of the jamming radius and attempts to phone home; “his” daughter is now 15, Tess is dead, and the original Sam can be heard off-screen. This fucks Sam #1 up even more, and this is about the time he starts getting sick like every other clone.

It is surmised that the rescue team is not going to take too kindly to the clones realizing they’re clones and will probably kill them, so they formulate a plan: make a Sam #3, place him back in the crashed rover, Sam #2 lives his life in the facility, and Sam #1 gets stowed away in a helium-3 container destined for Earth. Since Sam #1 is all fucked up and sick, he changes the plan: Sam #2 gets stowed away, and Sam #1 will return to the rover to die and be found by the rescue team. GERTY will wake Sam #3 to live his life in the facility. Cool? Excellent.

So they, with GERTY’s permission, do a hard reset on him. He’ll never know what happened. The Sams destroy the radio tower jamming the live feeds, then Sam #2 leaves. Sam #1 dies in the rover. Sam #3 is awakened. The rescue team is fooled. Sam #2, upon arriving on Earth, busts this whole lousy operation wide open to the press. Everyone wins. Except the corporation. And you, because you just read over 700 words.

Moon - Sam's Beard

WOO HOO! WEIRD BEARD IS GOIN’ HOME!


TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — Clones and Consciousness

I’ve written at length about my latest existential crisis, which is more on the subject of death and afterlife and less on consciousness. But consciousnesses has been a big part of it, and I’m still thinking a lot about it. Moon is a good movie that touches on the subject, and I especially find the concept of consciousness with respect to cloning a very interesting subject.

We see two clones of the original Sam, both of whom are completely unaware that they are clones. As far as they’re concerned, they have identical memories of their entire fake existence… up until the point where they’re both alive at the same time and experiencing slightly different versions of the immediate present from their own points of view. This implies two different consciousnesses at the same time, seemingly manifesting itself out of nothing, right? Weird stuff. Now, what if GERTY is sentient enough of an artificial intelligence entity to develop consciousness? That’s its own discussion for another movie.

All this stuff is armchair Reddit philosophy. You can look up any thread that hits the subject of consciousness from every angle, but it still doesn’t make me feel any better about the idea. Like death, like afterlife, you will never truly know the whole story about consciousness. That’s frustrating. I like to know things! If I want to learn something, I’m pretty capable of learning it. I hate knowing that I’ll never know something. It’s fucked up.

I try to put myself in either of Sam’s shoes, and I found it immensely disconcerting that all the memories I have might be implanted. This is where you start getting into stoner philosophy and brain-in-a-jar thought exercises, but it’s enough to go down a weird rabbit hole. You can see the pain, though, when everything he knows about his family isn’t actually real to him. It’s real to some other Sam. That sucks, man. I can’t think of anything harder to deal with. Except maybe moving. I hate moving.

Moon - Sam's Family

They’re like the family he never had!

TOPIC 2 — A Simultaneous Capitalism/Afterlife Allegory

Speaking of afterlife, there’s a theme in Moon that reminds me of the religious idea of life after death. Sam works for three years with the anticipation of going back home. Obviously, he knew what he was getting into when he left for the mission (not knowing that he’s really the fourth or fifth Sam since the whole process started), but I would imagine that it’s like prison. Solitary confinement with little contact to the outside world, a future timestamp on the sentence, and living every day knowing you’re closer to the end. Something about that sounds like moving onto a new life after finishing the old one. In the case of Moon, there is no afterlife. There is just incineration and being replaced.

In comes the capitalism theme. Work hard for years and years, and there’s no real reward. The machine doesn’t care about you as a person, they just care about you as a worker. After three years of being used, you’re dumped and replaced! Think about that the next time you’re at your cubicle plugging numbers into a spreadsheet. After three years they’ll throw you in the furnace, and your job will be given to some douchebag fresh out of college who will be all like “durrrr, I was in Kappa Alpha Theta”. Go fuck yourself, Dylan.

Moon - Sams Playing Table Tennis

Gives “playing with yourself” a whole new meaning! HA HA HA!


IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Kevin Spacey read the script and agreed to voice GERTY, but only when the film was finished and if he liked it. Having loved it, he recorded his lines in half a day.
Oh, the known sex offender was high maintenance? What a surprise. You never really hear a story like “This role was written for Jon Voight, but he hated it so much that he stood on the table and took a big shit on the copy of his script. The role instead went to Carrot Top.”

The film was written for Sam Rockwell, who Duncan Jones wanted to cast in a different film, but Jones and Rockwell could never come to an agreement on which part he should play. Because he wanted to work with Rockwell so much, he created this film for him.
See, like I said. This fucking guy wrote the whole movie with Sam Rockwell in mind. What if he didn’t want to do it? They would need to get a Sam Rockwell-type like Kevin Connolly, and nobody wants that.

The film takes place in 2035.
Wrong. Unrealistic. Global warming is going to murder us all by then.

In order to prepare for the movie, Sam Rockwell watched Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Dead Ringers (1988).
In order to prepare for this movie review, I watched Daddy Day Care (2003) and Porno Hags 2 (1999).

Before making this film, Duncan Jones was more famous for being the son of David Bowie.
Oh snap? So the son of David Bowie elevated himself above his claim-to-fame of “being David Bowie’s son” by making Moon? I highly doubt that. Nobody remembers this movie.

Appeared on Entertainment Weekly’s list of “The 50 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen,” in the July 16, 2012 issue.
Yeah, but I’ve seen it. Checkmate.

Aside from those played by Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey, there are no other major characters in the film.
That’s not trivia! They’re on the moon where there are no other people! What are we expecting, a Secret Moon Civilization? No. This movie is called “Moon”, not “Secret Moon Civilization”. Although, you gotta admit, that sounds like a good movie. I suggest a main character to be played by Carrot Top.

Moon - Moon

My God, it’s full of stars! And so forth.


IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Yes. Very thought-provoking, which is my main #1 desire from my media. It made me think thing hard enough to freak me out, so the movie did its job.

If I had watched this movie in college, I probably wouldn’t have tumbled so far into the large swamp that is now my mid-30s crisis. Maybe that’s good, maybe that’s bad, but I DO like to think and feel things! In short, thank you Moon. I look forward to watching movies named after other celestial bodies in the future.

The Eye of the World (Book 1) – Chapter 16: “The Wisdom”

The Wheel of Time - Book 1 - The Eye of the World

I can’t take it any longer. Thom the Gleeman has mustaches. As in, more than one. Every time they mention this man with his bushy hair and his amazing technicolor dreamcoat, they point out his plural mustaches. I don’t know what that could possibly look like, and it’s a gross thought besides. Shave that shit off, you smelly drifter.

The previous chapter ended with the four children making their presence known to Nynaeve the Wisdom, the angry young woman from their hometown who spent five days tracking these fuckers down. She walked for two hundred miles and swam across the river with her flippers and her snorkel, and boy, is she livid! She’s ready to tear everyone a couple of new sphincters, Aes Sedai or NO Aes Sedai.

Min appears again. She’s the young woman who can see sparks if something is important and, if you can believe it, barely sees sparks if something is less important. The sparks were strong between Moiraine and Nynaeve! Something is going on here! Nynaeve is part of the Pattern. She’s entwined in this whole stinkin’ affair, and she may not even know it yet.

There really isn’t too much more to this particular chapter. Nynaeve wants to take these kids home, but the kids can’t go home, and she’s not particularly convinced by any of them. The Aes Sedai is like “go away”, but Nynaeve has never gone away in her whole life and she’s not about to start today!

In the end, Nynaeve begrudgingly understands. It’s unclear whether or not she’s going to actually join them on their quest. Here what is clear. I’m going to get a snack.

Only Murders in the Building, Season 2 – Murders Are Back, Baby!

Through the Idiot Glass Disclaimer: There will be spoilers. If you’re even remotely interested in this show and you haven’t yet seen it, or if you’ll be mad if you accidentally read any possible spoilers about it, I’m going to chalk it up to “not my fucking problem”. You have been warned.
Discussion Subject: Only Murders in the Building, Season 2 (2022) (Hulu)
Previous Seasons
Season 1

Only Murders in the Building - Season 2
Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez are back as, respectively, the mild-mannered Charles Haden-Savage, the over-the-top-Martin-Short-style Oliver Putnam, and the exasperated millennial Mabel Mora! They’re back and more detective-y than ever before!


The Premise

We last saw these chowderheads getting arrested for the supposed murder of Bunny Folger, the Arconia’s board president! Oh me, oh my! However, due to lack of evidence, all three are released after getting questioned by a couple of cops. One of them is fuckin’ Michael Rapaport as Detective Kreps, who acts like fuckin’ Michael Rapaport. Now the trio makes a mission to solve Bunny’s murder, since it’s obviously another murder in the building! A mystery! More podcast fodder for the two old dudes and the young lady!

Only Murders in the Building - Season 2

This matchbook is the break in the case we need! The murderer is a smoker! …or an arsonist!


My Half-Baked Thoughts

Season 2 started off slow for me. After the interesting romp that was Season 1, the show immediately felt stale with this new season. That feeling eventually went away once the narrative started picking up speed and added other character relationship-driven side stories into the mix, such as Mabel’s relationship with Alice (Cara Delevigne), Oliver’s doubtful blood relationship with his son, Oliver’s tense and complicated relationship with Teddy Dimas (Nathan Lane), and Charles’ relationship with his sort-of estranged teenage daughter. I ALSO VERY MUCH ENJOYED the episode where Mabel hung out with Teddy’s son Theo (James Caverly) and presented some depth to his deaf-ass character. See, I obviously favor character relationships over plot. Every single damn time.

Only Murders in the Building - Season 2

Now with 41% more Nathan Lane than your average television show.

All that being said, I didn’t like this season quite as much as the last season. First and foremost, Sting wasn’t in any of the episodes this season, which knocks it down about 400 points automatically. Second of all, the novelty of the series has worn off and fitting all the threads of the story around a podcast seems kind of limiting? As much as it was nice to see Mabel interact with someone her own age for once, I think Cara Delevingne is a terrible actress and I think she did a terrible job! Alice was also weirdly creepy, and that wasn’t cool either, man. I’d rather see a spinoff of Mabel and Theo Dimas solving mysteries and going on adventures while she learns American Sign Language and he learns How To Hear.

I also thought Amy Schumer was going to be the new Sting! She was in, like, two scenes. It was almost as if they were setting her up to be a big deal in the building, but instead she was like “MARF SNARF” and it didn’t matter even a little bit.

Only Murders in the Building - Season 2

Amy Schumer for some reason.

The breakout character is obviously Howard (the fat guy with the sweater and the cats), who was finally funnier and more fleshed out than he was in Season 1. Although God knows why that other guy started dating Howard since he’s a fat, ugly piece of shit with a horrible voice and personality! One of the unsolved mysteries of life/this show. But he’s kind of funny unintentionally! Maybe that’s what it is.

Martin Short cracks me every time he’s on screen. He could read me the ingredients from a can of soup and I’d love every second of it. He could be swinging a golf club at my head while shouting flamboyantly and I’d be laughing all the way to the death bank! So, it goes without saying that Oliver Putnam is my favorite character and nobody is a close second.

I could’ve sworn that Selena Gomez was pregnant because of all her horrible outfits. Not only is that not the case, BUT you can find about a hundred articles about Gomez’s claim that she’ll never be pregnant due to her bipolar disorder medication! That was more than I needed to know, but I’m glad she’s looking out for her health in a very public manner.

Only Murders in the Building - Season 2

Vitamin C and potassium!! BooOOOooOOOoooooOOOo!!

Tina Fey is always perfect. It was funny enough to hear that her character was afraid of the insides of tomatoes and slow motion (which sounds like two things Liz Lemon would tell Jack Donaghy before he shoots her in the face with a loaded prop gun and kills her), but to see Steve Martin cut up tomatoes while forcing out a confession from Cinda Canning, and then the subsequent slow motion that everyone else also indulged in, that was the best part of the season.


Worth the Watch?

I don’t have much else to say. Yes, this is worth watching. For what it is — a very silly, light-hearted, cozy murder mystery TV show that doesn’t take itself seriously even a little, with an actual engaging plot, conclusions that are hard to predict, and a lot of Martin Short — it’s excellent. I’m looking forward to Season 3. At the end of Season 2, they introduced Paul Rudd as a Charles Haden-Savage villain and that had him keel over and die within two minutes. Exciting!

Only Murders in the Building - Season 2

The Three Amigos minus that Chevy Chase motherfucker.