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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

The Three Amigos minus that Chevy Chase motherfucker.