Category: Directed by David de Lautour

My Life Is Murder (2019) s03e06 – Bride to Bee

Last episode, we found out Lucy Lawless’s fashionable curmudgeon (her costumes are phenomenal this season) hated Christmas. This episode, we open with her hating on summer. To cheer her up—after a muted flirtation about being on an ice cream date—copper Rawiri Jobe gives her a case: a bride dying at her own wedding, allergic to bees, and stung.

Rich kid groom Reef Ireland is convinced his dad, Stephen Lovatt, killed his fiancée. She’s the only one who made it to the aisle; all his other girlfriends took a payoff. In addition to Lovatt, who screams guilty, there’s Shavaughn Ruakere as the suspicious wedding planner and Jaime McDermott as one of Ireland’s exes, who appears to still be in the picture. Olivia Tennet plays the victim’s business partner, who’s tried to save her but someone tampered with the EpiPen. It’s a tight mystery—script by Jodie Malloy and Paul Jenner—with some amusing investigation scenes, particularly for Ebony Vagulans and Tatum Warren-Ngata.

Warren-Ngata still isn’t much of a character with Vagulans around, but—once again—no one’s much of a character this season, no one except Lawless. The two sidekicks go off and have an adventure, leaving Lawless to interview Lovatt and Ruakere multiple times, and it works out… it’s just different. It’s not really an ensemble, but since Lawless doesn’t hang out with the sidekicks outside the occasional coffee or apartment-based scene, it feels a lot more like one.

We also get a lot more character development for Lawless, who bonds with groom Ireland, talking about her own wedding and giving some long-delayed backstory. But to an absolute stranger and non-recurring guest star; in other words, while the audience is getting to know Lawless’s character better, the other characters are not. It’s a shift.

So while everyone does get good material, they rarely get it in the same scene as one another. It almost feels more like a Covid season than the previous one. This season’s only got four more episodes, and even though there’s been Vagulans’s mystery trip and some other threads, it doesn’t seem like there’s going to be a season arc. With more character moments for Lawless than usual.

We’ll see.

My Life Is Murder (2019) s03e05 – Silent Lights

It’s a Christmas episode—or the closest (I think)—“Murder” has ever gotten. From the first scene, we find out Lucy Lawless is a Grinch, which comes as no surprise. She has a series of rambling complaints about Hallmark holidays, but basically, everyone forgot about her. Except for Ebony Vagulans and Lawless didn’t appreciate it (plus, it all happened off-screen). Vagulans is back in the apartment with no information about the Paris trip. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be a subplot, but I didn’t realize they were going to forget it. Not to mention since returning, Vagulans doesn’t have any character development going on. She’s just comic relief.

Ditto Tatum Warren-Ngata, as Lawless’s temporary replacement operative who’s back for a scene again. She’s gone from being part of the team to being a convenient foil; the suspect, an absolutely phenomenally bro-y Ido Drent, has never seen Warren-Ngata while Lawless and Vagulans have been around already. Rawiri Jobe’s barely around either, having Christmas-ed away. Martin Henderson, as Lawless’s brother, shows up in the epilogue, and again the emphasis is on Lawless being abandoned for Christmas. Scrooge bah humbugged one too many times.

Oddly, the lack of material for the supporting cast is because Lawless gets some more character development. The show’s first season had her constantly coming across fellow widows, but it hasn’t been a theme lately. And it’s still sort of not because even though Lawless is interested in supporting recent widow Ginette McDonald, Lawless doesn’t share her own story, just her sympathy. Great subplot, especially since McDonald’s fantastic.

She and her dead husband went overboard with Christmas decorations, pissing off the hipster bros and broettes who’ve moved into the neighborhood. They’re vegan, they’re influencers, they’ve got Ring cameras; it’s a hilariously itemized list of twenty-first century annoying. I don’t think Drent ever says “blockchain,” but only because no one wants to talk to him very long.

McDonald’s husband fell off their roof while adjusting the Christmas lights; she’s convinced Drent or his wife, played Michelle Langstone, had something to do with it. Lawless finds enough oddness—and rudeness from Drent and Langstone—to investigate.

Robbie Magasiva and Tai Berdinner-Blades play the other, sweeter but still hipster neighbors.

Drent’s a great heel, Magasiva’s good, Langstone and Berdinner-Blades are on the negative side of flat. It doesn’t matter—they’re playing caricatures—but still.

It’s another good episode for Lawless, and there’s plenty of excellent material for some of the guest stars, but the supporting cast is on the bench here.