Directed by: Jamie Babbit  |  Written by: John Hoffman, Ben Smith

Official synopsis: The trio plan on getting a confession from Donna, but need evidence. Fortunately, Loretta received the missing hankie from Dickie. Lured into the theater’s office, Donna admits that she poisoned Ben’s cookie. After they show her the hankie with Donna’s own lipstick, she says she also pushed Ben. Donna asks that she be allowed to see the play before getting arrested. Before the play starts, Howard tells Oliver that Jonathon cannot perform, so Oliver takes the stage as the lead role. During the play, Loretta tells Dickie she is his his mother. Mabel sees Donna talk to Cliff, who then goes in Jerry’s room. As Mabel goes after him, she realizes that Cliff, not Donna, pushed Ben. Not wanting to go to prison, Cliff nearly jumps from above the stage, but is stopped by Donna. At the play’s after-party, Oliver reads Maxine’s review, which is a rave. Dickie, Loretta, and Tobert all have upcoming gigs in Los Angeles, but the trio decide to stay in New York, promising to visit. Sazz comes to celebrate and tells Charles they need to talk. As the party continues, Sazz enters Charles’ apartment and is shot by an unknown assailant.

Donna Demeo appears to be our killer, and typically whenever we have a new suspect, they get voice-over privileges. This finale is no exception, and we hear Donna’s voice-over about being a producer as we see a flashback of her giving birth to Cliff between phone calls about Andrew Lloyd Weber. “I’ve won nine Tonys, I’ve given birth to 34 Broadway shows, but if someone asks me what my favorite thing I’ve ever made is,” she says, looking down at her newborn, “Mamma Mia, hands down,” she jokes. But Meryl could say the same! Thanks to the break in the case last week, Loretta is out of her orange jumpsuit and joins the trio at the murder board, where they explain why they’ve fingered Donna as the killer. Sure, she’d do anything to protect her son, Cliff, but even so, full-on murder is a drastic move. Unless she’s sick, Loretta suggests — thinking back to when she caught Donna throwing up in the bathroom — which would leave her with very little to lose. But they still need more, which is when Loretta presents the bloody handkerchief from the crime scene, courtesy of Dickie. But based on the trio’s reaction, there’s something useful on this hanky that helps their case. More on that later.

It’s opening night of Death Rattle Dazzle and all that’s missing is Tyler Joseph Ellis interviewing Kimber on the red carpet. Before the show begins, Mabel hands Donna a note telling her that there’s a review waiting for her in KT’s office. But instead of a rave or pan, she finds Oliver, Charles, and Mabel waiting there to confront her. As they begin their rehearsed, dramatic reveal, Donna cuts them off to get right to the point, immediately admitting to poisoning Ben. She’s eager to get on with opening night, so she finds where Tobert is lurking with the mic and grabs it to quickly confess to poisoning his cookie in the hopes of buying the production some time after reading Maxine’s review. But she denies having pushed him down the elevator shaft or even wanting him dead in the first place. The poisoning was intended to simply knock him on his ass, but rat poison dosage is so tricky: “How many rats is one Ben Glenroy?” Luckily, the trio still has their final piece of evidence, and they present Donna with the handkerchief found with Ben’s body that’s stained with the exact same shade of lipstick that Donna wears. A look of recognition flashes across her face, and suddenly her story changes starkly and she quickly confesses to it all. Her one request is that they allow opening night to continue on before they turn her in, for Cliff.

But just then, another issue emerges, as Howard rushes in with news that their lead, Jonathan, took too many of Dr. C’s pills and can’t go on. They need somebody who knows the show inside and out to fill in, and while Howard is subtly campaigning for the spot, Oliver has another idea. Much like director Casey Nicholaw stepping in during Some Like It Hot’s cast shortage, Oliver takes it upon himself to fill the role. He delivers a booming rendition of “Creature of the Night” as Howard does the choreo in the wings like Mrs. George, and as Matthew Broderick and Uma gripe in the audience like Statler and Waldorf. Revisiting all of these phenomenal songs makes me wonder if Death Rattle Dazzle will follow Smash’s lead and actually come to Broadway in 12 years. Until then, we get more of “Look for the Light” from Loretta, who concludes the song to rapturous applause before finding Dickie waiting in the wings. Mabel watches on as she begins to tell him that she’s his mother. “I knew it,” he interrupts, saying it was something he felt from the minute they met at the read through. “There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you,” she tells him, and as she does, Mabel looks into the audience and sees a tense, emotional conversation happening between Donna and Cliff.

When she goes to investigate, she finds Cliff in the theater’s attic, which is where he says he used to watch his mom’s shows as a kid. But now, she’s just told him that she confessed to Ben’s murder. “But it wasn’t her,” Mabel chimes in, having had a realization. Earlier that night she saw Donna take her son’s handkerchief, kissing it and then him, before putting it back in his breast pocket and saying, “One on your lips and one on your heart.” She had done the same thing the night Ben died, didn’t she? Meaning that the handkerchief found with Ben’s body wasn’t Donna’s — it was Cliff’s. We flash back to that night, and see that Cliff ran into Ben at the end of his phone call. Things seem normal, until Ben confides that his doctor told him his labs came back positive for rat poison. It’s a perplexing discovery, especially because he was fasting, until he remembers that he indulged in that Schmackary’s cookie that Donna bought. As Ben slowly puts two and two together, Cliff does as well, and both of them realize that Donna was behind the poisoning. “I’m telling the cops,” Ben says, pulling out his phone. But before he can figure out how to get in contact with the police, Cliff begins a supervillain-like monologue about how he’s more than just Donna’s boy and she should have listened to him when he said Ben was just a hack that had no business on Broadway, and the two get into a shoving match.

With Mabel now onto him, Cliff reveals a trap door in the attic, and threatens to jump to his death onto the stage below. Spotting the action happening above, Charles and Oliver run up to assist Mabel as she tries to talk Cliff off the ledge. Nonetheless, he ends up dangling from the ceiling, and the only person who can stop him is his mother, who grabs his hand and pulls him back up to safety. Just in time for curtain call, too. After they all take their bows, the mother-son producing team is escorted out in handcuffs, which is surely a shock to anybody waiting at the stage door for Kimber to sign their Playbill. But the sight of them in cuffs should give hope to Broadway casts everywhere that their producers might too be arrested one day! With the case officially closed, the cast and crew gather at the after-party to finally hear what Maxine had to say in her review. “This dusty old chestnut has been Botoxed, bedazzled, and brought back to life,” it reads, making it a victorious night for Oliver. He celebrates with Loretta, who hears from Dickie that Grey’s New Orleans Family Burn Unit still wants her, but she’s not sure if she’s interested if it means leaving Oliver. But this time around, he encourages her to go follow her dreams (sounds like Meryl’s not signed on for season four).

She’s not the only one off to L.A., though, as Tobert was offered an indie film there and asked Mabel to come with him. But Mabel says she still has business in New York, so she passes. Maybe Loretta and Tobert can get an apartment together instead. As if there weren’t enough familiar faces this episode, Sazz shows up ready to party, and mentions that she wants to talk to Charles later about something “a little sensitive.” He’s about to get some wine from his apartment, when he gets a text from Joy that says, “Scott Bakula says hi.” We then cut to Charles’s dark apartment, where we see a figure presumed to be Charles enter. A shot rings out and a bullet flies through his window, hitting him in the chest and sending him crumpling to the ground. But as the camera pans, we see that it wasn’t Charles at all but his body double, Sazz, who was sent to fetch the wine. And with that, it looks like we have our latest murder in the building. But clearly the shooter must have been targeting Charles, which means he’s not safe until they catch whoever’s after him. Good thing Mabel isn’t going to L.A.

Meryl Streep made a surprise appearance at yesterday’s Albie Awards in New York City. The awards, run by The Clooney Foundation for Justice, exist “to shine a protective spotlight on courageous justice defenders who are at risk,” according to an official online statement. The Albies are named after anti-apartheid hero Justice Albie Sachs, who received a lifetime achievement award at the inaugural event. This year, Dr Denis Mukwege from the Republic of Congo received this prestigious award for his life-changing work as gynecologist, treating survivors of wartime sexual violence. Viola Davis presented Dr Mukwege with the award. “I thank you for radicalising love, for making these women feel whole, and thank you for not leaving them behind,” the actor said to the awardee. Meryl Streep also addressed the room. “Throughout history, there have been tyrants. And regardless of how long it takes, they always fall,” she said. Pictures from the event have been added to the photo gallery.

Screencaptures from the ninth episode of “Only Murders in the Building” have been added to the photo gallery – an episode action packed with twists, turns and revelations. Again, please be aware that the screencaptures might contain spoilers – as does the recap page for the episode. As always, many thanks to M as well for providing the screencaptures. Enjoy.

Directed by: Cherien Dabis  |  Written by: Elaine Ko

Official synopsis: Following Oliver’s recovery, the trio learns that Dickie has an alibi for the time of Ben’s murder. Using their knowledge and the clues they obtained, they recreate the 30 minutes before Ben first died: Ben arrived late to the theater after being with his seamstress friends, who helped him make the handkerchiefs he presented to the cast and crew. Later, he overheard Loretta encouraging Dickie to quit as his manager, resulting in a fallout between the brothers and the fight between Ben, Charles, and Loretta. An upset Ben then fired Tobert and retreated to his dressing room, where he ate a cookie and wrote “Fucking Pig” on his mirror out of guilt for ruining his diet. Howard gives the trio the reassembled document, which turns out to be an early negative review of Ben’s performance. The trio reaches the conclusion that Donna is the murderer, her motive being fear that Ben would ruin the show and tank Cliff’s career. They run into the court to stop Loretta from pleading guilty, only to learn that Donna is among the witnesses.

In a dream sequence much more unsettling than any of the gruesome murders this show has depicted thus far, Mabel dreams that she’s giving birth to triplets: one being a microphone, and the other two being Charles and Oliver’s heads on baby’s bodies. “Congratulations, it’s a podcast,” the doctor tells her right before she wakes up. Fresh off of another cardiac event, Oliver’s already being discharged, which means it’s time to return to the murder board. Because what better way to celebrate avoiding death than by diving right into it? The trio’s mission at hand is to clear Loretta’s name by finding the actual murderer before she pleads guilty at her arraignment that night. If she’s really taking the fall for Dickie, they need to prove his guilt to free her. As the three leave to interrogate him, they’re met with deliveries waiting at the door: Joy’s no-longer-needed wedding dress and a case of Schmackary’s cookies from Donna, wishing Oliver well. We just can’t escape these cookies … In their conversation with Dickie, he admits to covering up Ben’s bloodwork — but to hide the drugs he was taking, not the poison. Plus, it turns out that Dickie has a solid alibi for that night. “I got wasted, put on Ben’s CoBro suit, and went looking for drugs and whores,” he says, an activity that was apparently routine for his brother. He explains that Ben would often disappear to somewhere on 35th and Broadway every Thursday night to “do sex with his five whores.” Dickie even gives us their names, which could pass for a Drag Race casting announcement: “Trixie, Marigold, Emerald, Dot, and MaeMae.”

And with that, the trio knows where their next stop is. But how do you get into a brothel without an appointment? Oliver’s convinced that if you’re carrying a ladder, you can get anywhere you’re trying to go, while Charles’s Plan B is crying on command. Neither works, but nonetheless, they make it to the back of the “brothel” and find out that it isn’t a brothel at all. It’s just a regular fabric store, and the “five whores” are five old-lady seamstresses. But the good news is they know Ben Glenroy, explaining that Ben was a part of their Thursday-night sewing circle. They explain that they had helped him sew all those handkerchiefs leading up to his opening night and then got a distressed voice-mail from Ben right before curtain about needing them, feeling alone, and being surrounded by people he can’t trust. So what happened in those 30 minutes between him excitedly arriving at the theater and him leaving that upsetting voice-mail? To try and fill that gap, the trio finally watches the footage from Detective Williams’s interrogations, and piece by piece, they assemble the events of that night. Ben arrived late and was met by a cranky KT. Cliff then tried to deliver the Schmackary’s that his mom ordered, but Ben resisted, telling Cliff he was fasting until after the show. In Dickie’s interrogation, he told Detective Williams that Loretta was encouraging him to quit his position with Ben, who interrupted them and discovered his brother’s plan to leave. That resulted in a blowup fight between the pair with Ben blaming Loretta. So when it was time to rehearse his fight with the nanny, things escalated, with Ben grabbing Loretta and yelling at her to stay away from him and his brother. This is where Charles stepped in and punched Ben in the face.

After Joy touches Ben’s now bruised face, the next person to see him is Donna, who encourages him to collect himself in his dressing room and do whatever it takes to get himself ready to go onstage. Tobert arrives to film the documentary, but Ben grabs his camera and tells him to fuck off. It’s that camera that captures Ben’s conversation with someone in his dressing room. But with everybody accounted for, the trio still doesn’t know who he could have been speaking to, and they hit a dead end. With dwindling hope of freeing Loretta, Oliver is down in the dumps, and Charles can commiserate after being confronted with Joy’s wedding dress. But Mabel insists she has both of them beat, with the case unsolved, her life a mess, and no place to live. This is exactly the kind of life crisis the Friends theme song was written about. She’s not where she thought she’d be in life at all and casually mentions that today is her 30th birthday. The one positive is that there’s nothing she’d rather be doing on her birthday than solving a murder with her guys. And what better birthday present than a new lead rushing into the room to save them from their dead end? It’s Howard, who bursts in having finally pieced together the shredded evidence and hands the taped-together paper to Oliver, who immediately recognizes it after reading just two words: “didn’t sing.” It’s Maxine’s unpublished, negative review of the show. It says that Ben is the weak link of the play, calling him as wooden as the lighthouse onstage. Hmm, doesn’t that last line sound familiar? With new evidence to ponder, Oliver breaks out one of his beloved dips to celebrate Mabel’s birthday (if someone ever tried to replace my birthday cake with hummus I’d be the murderer in that building), and begins talking to it about how much he’s missed it while on his heart-healthy diet. Seeing Oliver speak to his food like a person makes something click in Mabel’s head, and it suddenly occurs to her who Ben was talking to in his dressing room. It was, as some bright minds have suspected, a Schmackary’s cookie. We see it play out: Ben houses the cookie, and faced with his own reflection in the mirror, grabs the lipstick, and writes “Fucking pig” over his own reflection.

When their attention turns to the cookie, Oliver remembers that they were ordered by Donna. He also recalls that at sitzprobe, Donna had said the same line from the review about being “as wooden as the lighthouse,” suggesting that she had read it ahead of time thanks to her press connections. But would a producer sabotage her own play? Would she really kill the lead just because of Maxine’s bad review? If a producer killed their lead every time their show flopped, the Tonys “In Memoriam” would be three hours long. But Mabel points out something very important: This wasn’t technically Donna’s play that she was trying to derail; it was her son Cliff’s. And if it were brutally panned, his big debut could have also been his last. So our trio sets the scene: Donna reads the review calling Ben the weak link and shreds it in KT’s office as Howard tries to retrieve the ritual broom. She spots the rat poison and a Schmackary’s cookie and gets an idea — as you can imagine, a Broadway producer with a bright idea is a dangerous thing. She leaves the poisoned cookie in his dressing room and encourages him to “be nice” to himself ahead of curtain. And when the cookie didn’t work, she slipped out of the cast party to push him down the elevator shaft. The weak link is taken care of, and the bad reviews are never to be published. The last few episodes have been carefully laying the groundwork for the killer to be a mother doing whatever it takes to protect her child; it just wasn’t the mother we’ve been focusing on. Loretta proved to be an excellent avatar for the show to explore this theme of motherhood, which is also ingrained in their fictional musical via the nanny, and now, with this reveal, those seasonlong themes can seamlessly be applied to our killer. So they’ve solved the case, but Loretta’s arraignment is in 20 minutes. How will they ever get there in time? Oliver and Charles are fresh out of ladders and tears, respectively, but Mabel spots Joy’s wedding dress. “Nobody stops a bride,” she says and dons the gown as her ticket to wherever she needs to go. Let’s suspend our disbelief and just accept that our gang can make it from the Upper West Side all the way downtown in 20 minutes by cab, which they do without incident. At the courthouse, a bailiff almost stops them, questioning their getups, but Charles tells her, “We’re the fathers of the bride,” prompting an “Oh, that’s fun!” from Oliver — our George Banks and Franck, respectively. (Speaking of, isn’t it about time Diane Keaton made a cameo? Season four, maybe …)

They burst into the courtroom hoping they aren’t too late, and with Mabel in a wedding dress, it reads like a reverse “Speak now or forever hold your peace” moment. Luckily, they’re right on time, and Oliver can tell Loretta that they cracked the case and she doesn’t need to go down for it. “Who do you think did it?” she asks, and right as she does, Donna stands up in the courtroom. With a whole episode left, I don’t know if Donna plans on going gently into that good night.

Screencaptures from yesterday’s eighth episode of “Only Murders in the Building” have been added to the photo gallery. As we’re only two episodes away from the season finale, more and more secrets are being revealed about who’s behind Ben’s killing. There have been plenty of revelations – and more singing by Streep’s Loretta. Be aware that the screencaptures might contain spoilers – as does the recap page for the episode. As always, many thanks to M as well for providing the screencaptures. Additionally, production stills from the episode have been added as well. Enjoy.

Directed by: Cherien Dabis  |  Written by: Peter Swanson, Siena Streiber

Official synopsis: Flashbacks reveal that Dickie is Loretta’s biological son, whom she gave up for adoption to pursue her acting career but had always followed his life path and auditioned for Oliver’s play to be reunited with him. On the musical’s sitzprobe, she decides to tell him the truth in a letter, but the police arrives and locks down the theater, stating that the killer is someone from the cast or crew. The trio make amends with each other and decide to work together again to find the killer and save the show. While Charles and Oliver secretly record Detective Williams’ interrogations of the cast, Mabel helps Howard restore a shredded document that might be a clue. Loretta learns that the police and the trio suspect Dickie as the killer, which she refuses to believe. Charles and Mabel find Loretta’s letter, while Oliver returns the scrapbook to her and confesses his love for her. While preparing to perform her song, Loretta sees the police approaching Dickie, so she takes Ben’s murder on herself to save him. As she is led out of the theater in handcuffs, Oliver suffers another heart attack and collapses.

One of this season’s biggest mysteries is the details of Meryl Streep’s contract to guest star. Were there a certain number of episodes she committed to? Were all of her scenes for the whole season shot back to back? Who’s idea were the Willie Nelson braids? Since she’s obviously not going to play background actor for group scenes that don’t involve her, Meryl has breezed in and out of the show every couple of weeks for Loretta’s big moments, and luckily for us, this is yet another one of her episodes. In fact, it’s such a Loretta episode that she kicks things off with a voiceover that once again digs into her past. Some of what we learn isn’t new, like how she fell in love with theater after seeing No Strings and moved to New York to pursue it. But we find out that in between those life events she had become pregnant and put the baby up for adoption to follow her dream. As some have suspected, that baby was in fact Dickie, and thanks to his connection to his famous brother, Loretta has been able to follow her son’s life from afar. That explains her book of newspaper clippings, all of which feature Dickie in the background of Ben’s success — which Loretta discovers has been taken from her apartment. She explains that when she saw Ben Glenroy was doing a Broadway show, she knew it was her chance to finally meet Dickie. So she weaseled her way into an audition and ultimately booked the role. She writes this all in an explanatory letter to Dickie, which she plans to give him after the show’s sitzprobe. A sitzprobe is the first rehearsal where the actors perform with the orchestra, and, as Loretta’s voiceover says, it’s where actors have opportunities to change their choices for the better. These voiceovers love a good double meaning. Just as the sitz are getting ready to probe, Mabel shows up. Our estranged trio is finally reunited. She tells them that her gut is telling her that Dickie is the murderer, and Oliver is thrilled to get on board with any suspect that isn’t a part of his cast.

As the cast performs a booming rendition of “Creature of the Night,” (a title I can’t hear without thinking about the end of “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me” from Rocky Horror), they all get news alerts on their phones that Greg’s name has been cleared of Ben’s murder — and he’s been released. Now, that’s great news since we know he didn’t kill Ben, but he did kidnap Charles and Mabel and tried to kill them with a crème brûlée torch, right? So maybe they could have kept him in custody for that? Anyway, just as Loretta says her line, “Who goes there?” the doors burst open and Detective Williams answers, “NYPD, motherfuckers.” “The killer is someone in this room,” she announces like she’s an Agatha Christie protagonist before getting momentarily distracted when she recognizes Kimber, who she saw play Roxie in Chicago. A key part of any theater-going experience (even if you’re going there for a murder investigation) is trying to place what else you saw an actor in. Oliver is able to convince Detective Williams to conduct her interrogations in the theater, so as not to further disrupt their sitzprobe (and to keep the show from having to pay for a second shooting location). But the police being present for the sitzprobe, though not ideal, isn’t nearly as bad as another attendee that producers Donna and Cliff spot in the audience. They’re horrified to learn that Oliver has invited Maxine, the theater critic that told him the opening night performance didn’t “sing.” Sitzprobes are not a place for critics, but that’s just how desperate Oliver is for her approval. While Charles awkwardly tries to spy on Williams’s investigation, Mabel gets pulled away by Howard, who says he’s made a huge break in the case. He takes her to KT’s office and explains that when the cops arrived he rushed there to shred his “Papa Smurf Skeletor slash fic,” if I heard him correctly (I hope I didn’t). It was then that he discovered that the shredder was the mysterious noise he heard from the locked room on opening night. Someone was in there shredding something, and Howard is convinced that he can reassemble the shredded papers to crack the case.

Speaking of incriminating papers, Oliver admits to Loretta that he swiped her book full of newspaper clippings from her apartment. He says that she doesn’t owe him any explanation … but he would still like an explanation. He assures her that he doesn’t think she’s the killer, and that, in fact, Mabel thinks it’s Dickie. This isn’t the relief to Loretta that he thinks it’ll be — now she’s worried about her son being the target of the investigation. While Mabel’s on the hunt for scotch tape for Howard’s crime-stopping crafting, Loretta approaches her and awkwardly tries to pry for investigation details. Mabel doesn’t budge, noting that the killer often tries to insert themselves like this, but Loretta says that her interest is because she’s worried about losing her long-awaited big break. Being a late bloomer herself, Mabel throws Loretta a bone, admitting that Dickie is her prime suspect. Eager to get the attention off of her son, Loretta throws out some other possibilities like Bob and KT, but Mabel doesn’t bite. It’s finally time for Charles to perform his patter song — “all two minutes and 46 seconds” of it, as Oliver says, like it’s Ariana Grande’s longest track. Though at severe risk of being a trainwreck, Charles avoids the white room and knocks the song out of the park like a regular Matthew Broderick. As he patters away, Oliver sets out on some mission of his own, Loretta spots the cops talking to Dickie, and Mabel and Howard try (and fail) to piece together the shreds of paper. Just as they’re about to give up, Mabel sees a box of rat poison near the shredder and is reinvested in this theory. Howard has a small lead after taping together a few scraps that spell out the date of opening night, so Mabel encourages him to keep going.

Meanwhile, Mabel rejoins Oliver and Charles to see if they’ve had better luck spying on Detective Williams (based on what we’ve seen, I’d say probably not). But all is not what it seems because it turns out that their failed attempts to eavesdrop were really all part of a carefully orchestrated plot. Knowing that she’s a theater fan, Charles muttered the patter song in front of her to pique her interest, and then Oliver told her that Charles’s performance was sure to be a trainwreck, knowing that she’d want to see for herself. She took the bait, leaving the interrogation room to watch Charles, thus giving Oliver an opportunity to bug the room with Tobert’s GoPro, which was able to capture the rest of her interrogations in full. “That sounds so unnecessarily complicated,” an impressed Mabel says before we have time to question why they couldn’t have just left the GoPro in there from the get-go. In any case, the gang’s back together. Loretta, meanwhile, finds Dickie, and the pair talk about opening night. “He said I was dead to him,” Dickie says about his fight with Ben, but he’s not upset about how things left off between them. Instead, he explains, those few moments after the initial poisoning, when he thought his brother was dead, he finally felt free. And then when he came back to life, he was “trapped” again. “I couldn’t take it anymore … you understand,” he says, flirting with a confession. A guilt-ridden Loretta tells him that he doesn’t deserve any of this, feeling responsible for putting him in this position. It’s almost time for her to perform her number, but just before that, Oliver talks to Maxine, who is impressed at what she’s seeing. She calls it “pure Oliver Putnam.” He’ll have to wait for an official review though before finding out if it “sings.” Riding high off of that good news, he pulls Loretta aside to tell her he trusts her, doesn’t care about the book, and tells her that he loves her. She then takes the stage.

As Loretta sings her song, Mabel and Charles peruse her purse, finding the book of clippings and the letter she had meant to give to Dickie explaining everything. Then, just as she sings, “If you want those kids, you gotta go through me,” the cops begin to take Dickie away. Loretta, panicked, stops the song and yells out, “I did it! I killed Ben!” Loretta is presumably taking the fall for her son, but that seems too neat and tidy given that we still have two episodes left. We don’t technically know for certain if Dickie is actually guilty and needs her to fall on her sword like this. Based on their earlier conversation, it sounds possible that someone else poisoned Ben, and Dickie liked him being dead so much that he finished the job in the elevator. In any case, if Loretta’s confession is a lie, it’ll be easy to debunk. And I think that could very well be the case because I still think those Schmackary’s cookies had something to do with this. As his star and love interest is taken away in handcuffs, Oliver has another heart attack. Not since Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has a show been so cursed.

It’s been 15 years since the theatrical release of “Mamma Mia!” in 2008 – and Vogue has consulted everyone – literally everyone involved with the film except for Julie Walters – to reflect on its filming, its release and the chances for a third film to fulfill Judy Cramer’s dream of a “Mamma Mia” trilogy. The oral history is a long read with countless new information from behind the scenes and who was considered for which parts, so head over to Vogue to read the entire article. A couple of new production stills and on-set pictures from the article have been added to the photo gallery as well.

I’m up for anything. I’ll have to schedule a knee scoping before we film, but if there’s an idea that excites me, I’m totally there. I told Judy if she could figure out a way to reincarnate Donna, I’m into that. Or it could be like in one of those soap operas where Donna comes back and reveals it was really her twin sister that died. (Meryl Streep, Vogue, September 12, 2023)

As Meryl didn’t appear in the last two episodes of “Only Murders in the Building”, we’re only three episodes away from the season finale – fingers crossed she’ll be seen in more than one of the remaining episodes. In the meantime, here’s an article on her turn as Loretta Durkin by The Atlantic, with many thanks to Glenn for the heads-up: Meryl Streep, who joined the show’s starry ensemble this season, just might be the most eccentric guest star yet. Her character, Loretta Durkin, is, unlike Streep, a struggling actress who has lived in the same shabby apartment for decades and finally gets a break by being cast in Death Rattle, a new show by Oliver, who is a theater director staging his Broadway comeback. In almost every scene in which she appears, Loretta is the picture of warmth: her hair in braids, a shawl or cardigan draped around her shoulders, looking the way she did as a little girl (as we see in flashbacks). The show has, in its latest episode, positioned her as its newest primary suspect in the murder of her castmate Ben (Paul Rudd). But Loretta is more than another potentially guilty party being played by a notable name. In Streep’s hands, she helps make Only Murders a show worth watching more closely, and not just for the slow drip of clues or the charm of its lead cast. The complete article can be read over at The Atlantic. A couple of new production stills from the previous episodes have been added as well.