Steve Martin (Charles-Haden Savage), Martin Short (Oliver Putnam), Selena Gomez (Mabel Mora), Meryl Streep (Loretta Durkin), Bobby Cannavale (Nicky Caccimelio), Beanie Feldstein (Althea), Jermaine Fowler (Randall), Russell G. Jones (Grover Stanley), Richard Kind (Vince Fish), Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Detective Donna Williams), Dianne Wiest (Lorraine Coluca), Renée Zellweger (Camila White)

While our crew is grappling with the sad news that Camila White has been buying up the Arconia to turn it into a casino, there’s some good news on the horizon. Mabel runs into Thē (one of the most annoying names to type), who invites her to an exclusive girls’ night. And while that would be a great way to lift her spirits in any case, this party is in the gaming parlor and hosted by Camila, giving Mabel another chance to investigate and potentially stop the sale before it’s too late. As Mabel is telling Oliver and Charles the good news about this exclusive invite, they share her excitement — but in a very “women be shopping” kind of way, saying that when girls get together they yap like hens, which will surely lead to some good intel. Best of all — and the part that made me laugh out loud — is when Mabel jokes that she should bring “tampons” as a party favor and Charles sternly replies, “Mabel, please don’t swear.” “If only you two were ladies,” Randall then says, but unfortunately for us, Oliver rejects the idea of them pulling a Tootsie. Instead, he calls up his favorite woman, Loretta, who abandons her trip back to New Zealand to help Mabel on this mission. After all, we’ve never known Mabel to necessarily be a “girl’s girl” — she’s more of a “theatrical old man’s girl.” Loretta arrives with Detective Williams, who’s planning on using her card-game expertise to get Camila to confess after a losing streak. But Loretta has a different idea: using her untapped talents as a medium (which everyone is hearing about for the first time), given Camila’s notorious “woo-woo” reputation and belief that she’s the reincarnated spirit of her great-grandmother.

The show does an impressive job of keeping Meryl Streep’s Loretta in the fold without feeling like it’s making a monumental change to the original formula. It’s not typical for a past season’s suspect to stick around so permanently like this, but since she’s Oliver’s love interest turned wife, it makes sense. At the same time, the conceit of her primarily living in New Zealand to shoot her television show helps to ensure that she never feels like a fourth wheel and can breeze in to do some silly voices, service the plot, hang with Marty, then leave. But speaking of fourth wheels, as this new all-female trio makes their way to this glitzy ladies’ night, they run into Rainey crying in the lobby. She’s been distraught ever since she found out that they think someone killed Lester, and when they tell her where they’re heading she demands to join in to help find his killer. There doesn’t appear to be a strict guest list at this thing, so why not! Their plan starts off strong, with Detective Williams posing as a card dealer and ensuring that Camila gets bad hand after bad hand in blackjack. But soon enough, Rainey can’t bear sitting across from the woman she believes killed her husband, so she finally snaps at her and Mabel has to escort her away. When they return to the lobby, they linger at Lester’s old doorman hat that’s on display but then realize that his most coveted possession, the elevator crank, is still missing. More on this later.

Back downstairs, Loretta continues to operate under her psychic persona but boldly rats out Detective Williams for cheating as a way to earn Camila’s trust. All the wheels are falling off this mission now, so Loretta’s the last chance for them to walk away with something. She tells Camila about her psychic abilities and that someone’s coming through, but it’s not her great grandmother, it’s someone else — which prompts Camila to have visions of the mysterious finger chop. Via these psychic flashbacks, we see that not only did Camila try to bring Nicky in on her casino plan, but she did so because she was in love with him. He turned her down, and even worse, told her that he’s not leaving his wife after all. That seems like reason enough to kill, doesn’t it? But not so fast, because we see later on that Nicky had a change of heart. In the midst of his “disappearance” he changed his mind after catching his wife sleeping with someone else — so all bets are off (pun intended). Camila told him to set up a private game night with just the billionaires, and soon enough their plan will come together. It all would have worked too, if it weren’t for that “fucking doorman,” she tells Loretta. Back upstairs, Oliver and Charles are distressed to discover just how many apartments Camila has already bought up. In fact, she’s only one unit away from having a 51 percent majority stake in the building, which would mean curtains on the Arconia. Luckily, they find the owner of that last apartment, which is hours away from going into escrow — and since he’s a therapist, they sit for a session in hopes of convincing him not to sell (and work through their own mommy and relationship issues along the way).

Things don’t really start getting productive on that front until Detective Williams shows up and proves to be a much better therapist — so much so that she turns the tables and manages to convince the real therapist to stay put. But the celebration is short-lived when they realize that it’s already midnight, which means the apartment (and building) is now Camila’s. It’s all riding on Loretta now, and luckily for them she soon arrives to share all of the fresh new intel she got from pretending to be a psychic — and delivers Camila’s “fucking doorman” line in an uncanny Renée Zellweger impression. Best of all, she also found the murder weapon: Lester’s missing elevator crank, bloodied and hidden in Nicky’s office. And speaking of guest stars doing all of the trio’s investigative work for them, Richard Kind then bounds into the room (as Richard Kinds are wont to do) with a huge development of his own. He got a notification on his bird-watching app that Lester’s favorite bird was just in the courtyard, but it was actually Rainey using Lester’s old bird whistle that activated the bird camera attached to the app. Camera, you say? That’s right, a camera that Bash Steed doesn’t have control of, which is activated by bird calls, and has footage from the night Lester died. We see that after his fall (or push) into the fountain, Lester made a point to blow his whistle to turn on the cameras — and what they show is Randall retrieving the bloodied elevator crank. When Camila said the “fucking doorman” interfered, she didn’t mean Lester. And if you recall, the “DIE LESTER DIE” carving that Randall made in the staff room wasn’t about the robot like he tried to claim (duh, the robot’s name is spelled LESTR). But why? A classic understudy killing the main star situation? Did Randall want a chance at all that casino money Lester was raking in? Or maybe Randall was the person having an affair with Nicky’s wife and this was some kind of attempt to keep him from selling away the building? In any case, we’ve got two episodes left to tie up these loose ends, and probably untie a few more in the process.