‘Only Murders in the Building’ is a Love Letter to the Upper West Side

Only Murders in the Building Season 2 Episode 3 “The Last Day of Bunny Folger” flips the script on what we know about Bunny (Jayne Houdyshell) and the events leading up to her murder. While Season 1 of the Hulu show painted her as a cruel, spiteful bitch, the truth is far more complicated and tragic. Bunny was brittle, to be sure, but she was also generous with servers, friendly with locals, and devoted to the Arconia. She was the epitome of an Upper West Sider and Only Murders in the Building celebrates the UWS like no other show before it.

The Upper West Side is one of the most iconic and idiosyncratic neighborhoods in New York City. It’s the home of Zabar’s, Lincoln Center, Café Lalo, the American Museum of Natural History, Only Murders in the Building, and me. (Well, I’m a long-time fan, fairly recent resident.) The Upper West Side has a vibe that has hitherto best been captured by the likes of Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail, New Yorker cartoons, and John Mulaney and Nick Kroll’s Oh, Hello! It is a land of nerdy intellectuals, crotchety senior citizens, and bars constantly hogged by the regulars. And I love it so very much.

That’s why my favorite thing about Only Murders in the Building isn’t the mystery or the jokes, but the loving way the show celebrates and satires life on the Upper West Side. So much so, I sometimes worry that half the UWS references fly straight over outsiders’ heads. Nevertheless I think Only Murders‘ hyper-specificity about the world of the Upper West Side is precisely what makes the show feel so cozy.

Only Murders in the Building Season 1 followed three residents of the Arconia, an upscale UWS building, as they created a true crime podcast about a murder in their building. The three mismatched sleuths — neurotic retired TV actor Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), mercurial Broadway director Oliver Putnam (Martin Short), and smart-ass millennial artist Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) — soon build a tight friendship through the various scrapes and scraps they encounter on their investigation.

As an Upper West Side millennial, I can’t stress enough how much fun it is to see someone like me — a smart-ass who likes cozy sweaters and hanging out with boomers — in Mabel Mora. And as an Upper West Sider, I adore how this show sprinkles in specific neighborhood references all over the place. (In fact, the only thing that rankles me about the show’s depiction of my neighborhood is when they get it a tiny bit wrong. In this week’s episode, there’s mention of a Key Food on 81st street and the Key Food is actually between 85th and 86th! Grr!) One of the best moments later in the season is when someone describes a crush as the “guy with the Barney Greengrass tote.” It’s not just a shoutout to the neighborhood, but a vivid portrait of specific type of person.

They say that specificity in writing makes a story universal. In the case of Only Murders, though, the Upper West Side references make the show feel cozy. That’s because the Upper West Side is a cozy as heck place, overrun with dogs in strollers, parents seated on sidewalks to watch kids in tae kwon do classes, and neighbors who really do look out for each other. It’s a place where bagels are our daily bread and love is a walk in Central Park. The Upper West Side is cozy, but it’s not soft. Like Bunny Folger and the biting one-liners scattered throughout Only Murders‘ scripts, the Upper West Side is sharp. We do not suffer fools or tolerate BS.

This balance, between warmth and wit, is what makes Only Murders in the Building so appealing. And it’s what makes the Upper West Side both a magical place to live in and escape to.