Ah, Love!

"**Ah, Love!**" is the fifth episode of the third season of *Only Murders in the Building*, starring Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short. It originally aired on August 29, 2023.

## Short Summary

Date night! New York proves itself both a jewel box and a fish tank of romance as Charles, Mabel & Oliver take their relationship to the next stage. And dating can reveal many hidden secrets, too...

## Full Summary

Oliver and Mabel wait outside Charles's door. On the other side, they hear breaking glass. Charles opens the door and assures them everything's fine as the glass noise continues, which he says is Joy shattering sea glass for her aquarium. Mabel asks if he's asked Joy about the lipstick yet. He says no, but he will. It's been two days, so Mabel wants to talk to Joy herself. Charles maintains that he's handling the situation in his own time. Oliver is fine with that and pivots to asking Mabel's opinion on his scarf. She doesn't like it, so he brings out his backup. Mabel tells Charles she can talk to Joy calmly, but Charles doesn't want Joy treated like a suspect. He says he can handle it himself. Oliver asks Mabel's opinion on his hair. Then he realizes what she's wearing and asks if she's going on a date. She says no. She's just meeting Tobert for a stakeout because he has a lead. The place where they're meeting has a dress code. She then tells Charles she'll be waiting in the wings in case anything goes haywire for him and he slinks back inside his place. Oliver and Mabel get on the elevator and he asks if there's anything he should know as it's been a while since he was last with a woman. Mabel doesn't want to answer.

Charles pulls the lipstick out of Joy's box and rolls it up. He summons Joy, who is excited to go cake tasting. He tells her they found the lipstick backstage in Ben's dressing room. He asks if she knows how it might have gotten there. She tells him to hang up his badge because they're on hiatus. Joy goes into the next room and yells at President McKinley. She gets a net and fishes him out of the aquarium, telling him he's in solitary.

She puts President McKinley in a glass full of water. Charles says someone wrote a threatening message on Ben's mirror with her lipstick and asks if she knows anything about it. She's shocked that he would think she had something to do with Ben's death. They're interrupted by a knock at the door. It's Sazz, who congratulates them on their engagement. She has a large present, which she says is an 18-piece fondue set. Joy and Sazz are happy to see each other again, but Joy is still upset with Charles and excuses herself to go to the cake tasting on her own.

Oliver goes to Loretta's. She's frazzled because her microwave is broken, so she's having to use her broiler to make pork chops. Oliver pretends to love solid food. She tells him to sit down. He sees a knob on the wall and turns it before she can stop him, dropping her Murphy bed onto her couch. He apologizes for jumping the gun.

Mabel meets Tobert at a piano bar. When she picks up the menu, he says he already ordered some food, but he didn't know what her drink was. She asks where his lead is just as Jonathan takes the stage to perform. Mabel is shocked that Jonathan is Tobert's suspect. Tobert corrects that he *was* the suspect, but Tobert followed him for a while and only found out a few benign things about him. Mabel is upset that Tobert told her he had a lead when he actually didn't. He defends himself, saying it got him a date with the cute girl from the armoire. He asks if that's okay and she orders a Mezcal old fashioned, telling Tobert that's her drink.

Sazz wants to talk to Charles about what just happened. But first, she asks if he's sure the killer wasn't after him instead of Ben. She's heard a lot of people wishing it were him instead of Ben. But she wants to get back to him and Joy. She asks if he's talked to his therapist about her. He doesn't have a therapist, but that was her way of telling him to get one. She admits that she's still seeing Jan. As a stuntwoman, she is attracted to danger, but it's hard with the plexiglass. Charles admits that he's worried that Joy's another killer. Sazz doesn't believe that could be true. She thinks he just needs to prove Joy's not a murderer in order to go forward with the wedding. Charles says no, he needs to prove that so he can break up with Joy and not fear for his life like he did with Jan. Sazz says she knows how to fix them and declares that they're going to play a game.

Oliver and Loretta toast and start in on their meals, but neither of them can cut through the pork chops, as they're overdone. Oliver resorts to stabbing his with a fork and biting off it directly. He loses a tooth in it, which mortifies Loretta. She offers him ice, but he says he's fine. He snorts, which she says she likes. It reminds her of a pig. She's played several pigs in her career. She starts laughing about the pigs and says Ben was a real fucking pig. She notices Oliver's reaction and asks him about it. He asks if she ever told Ben that was how she felt about him. She doesn't want to talk about Ben on their date. She's worried she made things weird between them. She asks him if he trusts her. He says he does, so she says she knows just the place for his tooth.

Tobert is frustrated with how little he's gotten out of Mabel. She reminds him that he lied to get her there, so she's going to make him work for it. He asks her about Oliver and Charles. She says they're her guys, her best buds. They mostly talk about murder and how to connect to bluetooth. They order another round of drinks and Mabel asks Tobert who's in his circle. He says it's tough to stay in contact with people when you're constantly moving, especially without a partner to help you put down roots. She asks if that's something he wants and he says he thinks about it.

Sazz welcomes Charles to Commit or Be Committed. She's playing the role of Joy, opposite Charles. The first category is sexual relations. She, as Joy, says she needs to have sex two times a day, three on weekends. He says Be Committed to that, so she flashes the red light on the aquarium and tells him there's nothing wrong with a healthy sex drive. Next, she says that Charles is her future and she'll never, ever leave him. He says Commit, which is correct. Charles admits that he's surprised that Joy still wants to jump his bones after seeing every flaw in his face for 30 years. He thinks she must be a psychopath because of that, but Sazz that's the behavior of someone who loves you for you. Sazz diagnosis that Charles is afraid of being happy. She asks if he still thinks Joy is the murderer. He says no.

Loretta and Oliver step onto the deck of a ferry. Loretta offers Oliver a flask or a joint. The joint has purple wrapping and Loretta says it came from a roommate, Babette, in 1978. Oliver recognizes the name as a chorus girl who got struck by lightning while skinny dipping in Central Park. He rolled ten joints for Babette using a purple streamer from Studio 54, at a birthday party. Loretta was also at that party. Oliver thinks he rolled the joint Loretta has and tells her to light it. They've been running in the same circles for a long time. He thinks it's a shame their orbits never crossed. She says that something always seemed to keep her from auditioning for Oliver's shows. It's been infuriatingly banal. As a kid, she was considered lucky, but she's had no luck since then. She might be cursed. Or it's what she deserves. Oliver asks what she could have done to deserve being cursed. She has him open his mouth and she exhales into his mouth. She finds the gap in his teeth handsome.

Mabel is shocked that Tobert could have ever believed that Jonathan was a murderer. Tobert reminds her that she didn't solve either of her murders on the first try. Mabel spots Jonathan nearby hugging someone. She watches as he sits down and gives the man an envelope. Tobert gets up to move to the other side so he can see, but runs into a server, causing a commotion. They both drop to hide behind the table. After a moment, Mabel peeks out and sees both Jonathan and the man staring at her. Jonathan gets up and leaves, followed by the man. Tobert thinks he knows the man.

Loretta tells Oliver she's having a good time on the ferry. She apologizes to him for getting weird about Ben. She just didn't want talking about a dead person to bring down the mood. Oliver says it's okay to talk about him. What they went through was weird. He asks her about the specific phrasing she used when talking about Ben. She says she called him that during the fight they had that night. He accused her of being obsessed with him and worming her way into the show to get to him. She snapped at him, calling him a fucking pig, which ended up being the last thing she ever said to him before he collapsed. But she wasn't the only person in the theater to feel that way about him. Even his brother hated him. Loretta's still sorry that Oliver didn't get his opening night. Oliver is sorry that Ben was unkind to her. He adores her. Loretta says they've arrived at the reason she brought him out there. As a child, when she lost a tooth, her mother would take her to the Mississippi River on a ferry and they'd throw the tooth in underneath a bridge and make a wish. Oliver loves the tooth ferry pun. He takes the tooth and throws it in. She asks him what he wished for and he leans in and kisses her.

Tobert tells Mabel that the man was Ben's private doctor, Dr. C. He came to see Ben a few times over the last year. All Tobert knows is what they call him. Mabel wonders what Jonathan was talking to him about and what Jonathan was paying him for. Tobert finds her theorizing cute. She leaves and Tobert follows.

Joy returns with some cake boxes and Charles asks her how it went. She brought 20 samples back with her for him to taste. Charles apologizes about the lipstick. Joy tells him she was backstage on opening night. Howard summoned her because Ben had a red mark on his face after getting into a fight. She covered the mark and she guesses her lipstick fell out when she was there. But she didn't write on his mirror or kill him. Charles admits that he was the one who hit Ben.

*Charles finds Loretta fighting with Ben. She tells Charles that Ben attacked her. Charles punches Ben.*

Joy is shocked that Charles could think she was the killer when he punched Ben that night. He says he tried to defend her, but Charles and Mabel thought it was her. She asks why he proposed if that was happening. He admits that the proposal was an accident. She asks if he wants to marry her now. He says he does and Sazz helped him realize that. Joy is upset that after all the years he sat in her make-up chair, he couldn't realize that on his own. She's been trying to have an open dialogue about what they both want, but he's not ready to be with a woman as open as she is. She tried to say he would change, but she thinks it's too late for him. Charles says it's not too late. He wants to change for her. She takes a tray of samples and smashes it into his chest, saying the engagement is off.

Mabel shows Tobert the evidence board. He's surprised that he's on it, but she says they have to do their due diligence. He takes a card and writes Dr. C on it before putting it on the board by Jonathan. Mabel leans into him and kisses him.

Loretta says she's not good at dinner, but Oliver thinks she excels at dessert. She gets up to draw them a bath. Oliver goes to Loretta's bookshelf and finds a newspaper clipping about Ben, then a whole book of similar clippings. Loretta calls out to Oliver, telling him she's waiting.

## Cast

### Starring

* Steve Martin as Charles-Haden Savage
* Martin Short as Oliver Putnam
* Selena Gomez as Mabel Mora
* Michael Cyril Creighton as Howard Morris (credit only)

### Special Guest Stars

* Meryl Streep as Loretta Durkin
* Paul Rudd as Ben Glenroy

### Guest starring

* Jane Lynch as Sazz Pataki
* Andrea Martin as Joy Payne
* Jeremy Shamos as Dickie Glenroy (images only)
* Jason Veasey as Jonathan Bridgecroft
* Jesse Williams as Tobert

### Co-starring

* Willa Dunn as Little Loretta (image only)
* Ian Lowe as Piano Bar Accompanist

## Notes and Trivia

### Soundtrack

* "Song", performed by Artist
*Written by Composer*

## Navigation

 **Season 3** | "The Show Must..." · "The Beat Goes On" · "Grab Your Hankies" · "The White Room" · "**Ah, Love!**" · "Ghost Light" · "CoBro" · "Sitzprobe" · "Thirty" · "Opening Night"