As the first episode of Murderville begins, we’re introduced to Detective Terry Seattle (Will Arnett). For Terry, every day includes a new celebrity guest and a new murder case. Conan O’Brien will be the first guest and will not be given a script. Although Terry and Conan will work the case, it’ll be up to O’Brien to determine who the killer is on his own. Before long, Terry shows up at the station where he is confronted by Chief Rhonda Jenkins-Seattle (Haneefah Wood). She tells him to come by the house to pick up the rest of his crap although Terry calls it 17 years of marriage instead of crap. Rhonda warns him to come get his stuff or she is going to throw it out. Conan is brought in and introduced to Terry Seattle who doesn’t like the idea of babysitting a trainee.
Seattle looks him over before asking him to put his fingers in his ears. Then, he begins ridiculing Rhonda’s decision while calling Conan a clown. She complains that he can’t keep a partner. He blames that on his partners because they’re all idiots. Conan tells them he can still hear them since the finger thing doesn’t work. Rhonda tells Terry to make it work before leaving. As she leaves, Terry claims this ginger monstrosity is the biggest mistake in the history of city homicide. Conan admits he is nervous because it is his first day on the job and Terry is a bit of a legend. They go to Terry’s office which Conan describes as great. Terry says he has never been to Seattle while Conan was married there. Terry seems perplexed by the idea that someone would marry Conan. Terry isn’t looking for a new partner because he already had the best. He reveals her name was Lori Griffin and she was murdered 15 years ago.
Out of respect for Griffin, Terry has made sure her desk hasn’t been touched since her passing. They talk about her rabbit and Conan’s career before he decided to become a detective although Terry says he doesn’t care. Terry doesn’t think Conan has what it takes and won’t get his lips dirty to do the job, but Conan says he’ll get them as dirty as necessary. Conan goes on to say he wants to solve whatever case comes their way. As Rhonda enters, Terry says he has what it takes. She reveals that a magician performing at the opening of the city library sawed his assistant in half. He couldn’t put her back together again. Terry and Conan agree to rush to the scene. They took Terry’s ’82 Dodge Rampage to the crime scene so Conan can take off his training diaper. Once they enter the library, Conan is introduced to Detective Darren ‘Daz’ Phillips (Philip Smithey). Terry instructs Conan to tell Daz it is their crime scene so he should get out of there.
Daz explains that Captivating Keith (DeMorge Brown) was there when his assistant was sawed in half. Keith cries as he says he doesn’t know what happened. He and Sarah did the same routine as always so he suspects someone swapped the trick saw with a real saw. Conan asks if he thought he should stop sawing when he started seeing all that blood. Terry questions whether they had a safe word. Keith said the safe word was stop, but he only heard Sarah screaming that he was sawing her in half. Then, they walk over to Amber Kang (Lilan Bowden) who is with forensics. After an awkward moment for Conan, he asks about the state of the body. Amber starts by showing them the murder weapon which is a handsaw. Although it had no fingerprints, hot sauce was found on the handle.
Terry finds that funny so Conan tells him to quit being a clown since the body is right there. Amber reveals they also found trace amounts of pet hair that most likely belonged to a small animal. She tells them about the suitcase and the fact that only Keith had a key to it. Someone must’ve picked the lock to switch the saw. A little girl interrupts to ask when the magician is going to finish the trick. Terry motions Conan over to make him deal with it. Once Terry runs off, Conan tells the little girl that the woman can’t be put back together. He carefully explains how the woman died and admits she is gone forever. She wants to know whether magic is real or not although Conan says it isn’t magic. She asks whether she’ll go to heaven and if she’ll be in two pieces when she gets there. Once Terry returns, he tells Conan it is time to go.
After they leave, they travel to Quirky Jack’s. Terry explains their first suspect is Keith’s former assistant Deb Melton (Alison Becker). She was recently fired and replaced by the murdered younger assistant named Sarah. She comes over to their table and offers them deep-fried chowder. Terry says they’re hungry for answers. Deb makes them order something because her boss will get angry otherwise. Terry orders two of the sloppy jalapen-joe. Deb convinces them to add two sloparitas for five bucks more. It doesn’t take long for Deb to return with their meals. Terry begins dumping hot sauce on Conan’s food while Deb warns him it is extremely hot. Conan tries it and you can tell he doesn’t like the sauce, Regardless, Terry keeps adding more. Then, he begins questioning Deb. He starts by asking whether Captivating Keith replaced her with Sara because he thought she had gotten too old. The question causes her to cry. She admits she spent the best years of her life getting shoved into boxed and attacked.
She did all that only to be replaced by some 19-year-old with fake boobs who doesn’t know how to pick a closed-shackle padlock. When he asks if she held a grudge against Sarah, she admits she did and argues anyone would’ve. Conan also asks if there was anyone else who might’ve wanted to hurt her. Deb reveals she used to be another magician’s assistant before telling them about Magic Melvin. They supposedly separated on bad terms. Deb goes on to say nobody wants to hire a 40-year-old magician’s assistant. She tells them about her boyfriend buying her a puppy although she has allergies and her boyfriend actually having a life and kids. Thanks to Deb’s tip, they decided to bring Magic Melvin (David Wain) down to the station for an interview. Before the interview begins, they agree to both play the bad cop role. The police officer who brings him in asks if he wants anything.
Melvin tells the officer that he wants a breakfast burrito with all kinds of stuff including Tabasco, salt, and pepper. Terry says there will be no food for a murder suspect before sending Hughes away. As the interview begins, they quickly learn that Melvin has a lot of jokes. They ask him to tell them a joke but stop him when he begins talking about Jews. The conversation turns to what happened to Sarah. Although Melvin knows and says it is a magician’s worst nightmare, he doesn’t seem too broken up about it. Terry threatens to peel off his skin, eat it, poop it out, and use it as fertilizer to grow a tree to hang him from one day. Conan says he is going to die and they’re going to watch him unless he tells them what happened. They scream at him repeatedly. Melvin defends himself by saying he is as law-abiding as they come. If he finds something that isn’t his, he’ll always return it. He uses his magic to pull quarters from behind Terry’s ears.
Melvin does a few more magic tricks and that convinces Terry that they should let him go. Conan asks what happened between him and his old assistant and whether there was a falling out. Melvin offers to tell them the whole story, but he wants to do a magic card trick first. While Melvin mixes up the cards, he admits Sarah was his assistant for a few months and everything was going great until she just didn’t show up to work one day. The next week, he found out that she was working for Captivating Keith who was performing all of Melvin’s tricks. Melvin claims it was a good thing because it forced him to come out of his comfort zone and take his act to the next level. He finishes the magic trick successfully. Terry puts handcuffs on him and he quickly gets out of them too. He leaves using a magic trick too, but has to come back to confirm which way to go. After that, they have one more suspect Kathy Johanson (Mary Hollis Inboden).
Conan learns she is the leader of the local chapter of Mothers Against Magic Association so he’ll need to sneak into their meeting. He is going to wear an earpiece and do everything Terry tells him to do. If anything goes wrong, Conan will need to use the safe word tittynope to get help. While following Terry’s instructions, Conan approaches the door and knocks. After he is let inside, he says he just moved to town and really hates magic. He asks if he can get a day pass to join them. Terry makes up a long name for him so Conan begins calling himself Todd. Once he says he is from Idaho, Terry leaves him on his own because he has something important to do. Kathy begins telling him about her son Jimothy who was doing coin tricks in front of the mirror before moving to street magic and going God knows where.
Although they’d think the magicians would take responsibility for their actions, Kathy says they don’t care. She has been begging Keith to think about the children for a long time. If the murdered assistant stops one child from doing magic, Kathy believes it’ll be worth it. She makes him a bowl of chili and puts sauce on it. Kathy explains that new members always give a testimonial so she wants Todd to tell this group of God-fearing women about the moment he realized magic was the devil’s tool. He pretends he wanted to be a magician as a child so he practiced constantly. When he tried to show the kids at school, they beat him for forty minutes before they stopped to get ice cream and came back to beat him again. All the kids became senators with the leader of the group being Dianne Feinstein. Kathy believes he is lying. She confirms it when he can’t tell her the state fish of Idaho which is where he pretended he was from.
When they come after him, Conan uses the safe word to call for backup, but Terry is too busy watching Melvin’s videos to notice. Once he puts his earpiece back in, Terry tells Conan to lock himself in and he’ll come save him. Conan runs and locks himself in. Terry rushes in and tells the women that there is a guy on the street telling a kid to pick a card, any card. The women run out to confront him. With Conan saved, they decide to steal the group’s snacks before leaving. Then, it is time for Conan to reveal who killed the magician’s assistant. They lure the three suspects by claiming they’re going to have another magic show. Conan says the murderer is Magic Melvin. Rhonda enters and learns they’ve found out who the murderer is. Conan says Melvin told them he had to Scotchgard his rabbit. He speculates he did that to keep hot sauce off of the rabbit. He also says a magician would be the one to leave hot sauce on the saw but not fingerprints.
Conan alleges that Kathy is Melvin’s mother, he hates her, and he wanted to frame her. Melvin says that is pretty farfetched considering their age. Rhonda admits he is 100% correct. She says he likely noticed that Melvin put hot sauce on his burrito every morning and owned a rabbit for his act. Deb was allergic to pets so it couldn’t have been her. Although Kathy had more motive than anyone, she didn’t know how to pick a lock. Melvin knew how to do that though. He admits he only killed her because he wanted her dead. They try handcuffing him although he quickly gets out of the handcuffs. Terry tells Conan he’d make a fantastic cop before he shows him the magic trick he learned.
Murderville Review
Murderville is an interesting idea that proved to be successful once before. Conan O’Brien did pretty well with the role since he genuinely seemed to have fun with it. The supporting cast was decent as well considering everything in the show is very over-the-top. I’d say the success of Murderville depends on several factors. First, the celebrity guest needs to really get into the role. It helps if these guests are stars people already know and like.
Second, it depends on the viewer’s humor preferences. Personally, I grinned a few times but never found anything funnier than that. Then again, I am not a big fan of shows that showcase celebrities in unique ways like this, Masked Singer, and even Dancing with the Stars, but Murderville was the best of the bunch.
The first episode isn’t bad although I could see this becoming pretty bad if the guest doesn’t play well with others. The opening episode was okay so I’ll give it a 6.5 out of 10. Recaps of Murderville will be available on Reel Mockery here. Learn how to support Reel Mockery by following this link.
