What I Watched: Only Murders in the Building, Season Five. I liked it, The Guardian did not.

Here is their review: Now, with season five, the centre is failing to hold. We ended the previous season in the traditional manner, with our heroes finding another murder in the building (or at least its grounds): this time of Lester the doorman (Teddy Coluca). Then we have another. Then the clues (including a missing finger, a mafia connection and an elevator crank) and suspects (including Téa Leoni as an Italian widow and potential love interest for Charles, who is taking testosterone supplements for his health; three billionaires; and Lester’s wife, Lorraine – Dianne Wiest, her brilliance eternal) begin to arrive. But they feel randomly scattered rather than meaningfully laid. The podcast element falls by the wayside, the proportion of red herrings to genuine progress is off, the action is too often located outside the Arconia, and the core team are too often split up – not least by the return of Streep as Oliver’s now-wife, Loretta. I know that I am probably in a minority in feeling that: a) a little of Streep goes a long way; and b) she should, wherever possible, be kept away from comedy.

Too many moments feel laboured where once they would have been nimble and fleet. Howard’s (Michael Cyril Creighton) relationship with the new robot-doorman is absurd in the wrong way, Renée Zellweger as one of the billionaires is just a collection of mannerisms (though Christoph Waltz as another is just what classic OMITB would have ordered and a joy to watch). And Oliver’s snort, which had fallen into welcome abeyance when it became clear that the show was working brilliantly without such gimmicks, is back.

It is still charming, still fun. It still has enough flashes of the old dynamic to keep us hooked and hopeful. Martin, Short and Gomez have not lost sight of their characters, and a course correction could easily be made for season six. To end it here would be a disservice to all.

Link to the Trailer

What I Read: Yasmine Galenorn’s thirteen book Moonshadow Bay series.

Here’s the blurb for book one, Starlight Web: From Book 1: Moonshadow Bay…where magic lurks in the moonlight, and danger hides in the shadows. One month before January Jaxson turns 41, her husband ditches her for a trophy wife. Adding insult to injury, he steals the business she helped build, and kicks her out during the holidays.So when her best friend Ari suggests she move back to Moonshadow Bay—a quirky, magical town near Bellingham WA—January decides to take the plunge.

Born into a family of witches, January accepts a job at Conjure Ink, a paranormal investigations website. The job’s right up her alley but she doubts that everything reported to Conjure Ink really exists. That is, until she’s sent out on her first case. An abandoned asylum once housed a murderer, who killed an entire family one Yuletide Eve. It’s rumored that every December he returns to haunt the woodland around the asylum, seeking to add new members to his supernatural family.

January’s sure it’s an urban legend, but when new victims show up with no logical explanation for their deaths, Conjure Ink sends her in to investigate. Now, January must not only navigate the new life she’s trying to build, but the paranormal beasties she’s sent out to explore, as well as a hot new neighbor, who seems to be hiding a shadowed past of his own.

What I Listened To: Acopia – Real Life; Sharp Pins – (I Wanna) Be Your Girl; and The Growlers – Feel My Funk:

Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, dearest ones? Darling DeadSplinterites, what’s going on? Please do share with us!