Only Murders’ Billy Joel Gag Was a Love Song to Long Islanders
Just when you thought Only Murders in the Building exhausted every cameo opportunity over its four seasons, episode seven gave us yet another surprise in a wig: Melissa McCarthy playing Charles’s estranged younger sister, Doreen, whose house in Suffolk County the trio flees to in fear of being hunted by the unknown killer. Doreen is, to put it in Italian terms, a manciata. Her husband sleeps in a houseboat in their driveway. Her signature cocktail is vodka and Crystal Light. And her doorbell taunts visitors with the opening chords of Billy Joel’s “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” taking on the eternally thirsty spirit of a bottle of red and a bottle of white. “Someone should get that,” Oliver sneers at one point, “before we have to hear it again.” Welcome to Strong Island, baby.
John Hoffman, Only Murders’ showrunner, insists the inclusion of Joel’s 1977 hit comes from a place of regional love. “It’s very tongue-in-cheek winking for me,” he explains. “I lovingly poke at Long Island throughout the show, and I hope people enjoy the silliness of it and the jokes that come with it. Anyone from the city and anyone especially from Manhattan, as our trio is, feels that way about Long Island.” Hoffman says he was inspired by his aunt and uncle who lived in Suffolk County in a “very similar-looking house” to McCarthy’s character. “Billy Joel is universally beloved, in my experience, in Long Island, and it’s sacrilegious to think otherwise,” he adds. “Doreen and her husband, Big Mike, have that in their house because they think it’s the coolest thing ever. I would think they knew all of the lyrics and sang it the first day they met.”
Hoffman and the show’s production team explored several options from the song, as Joel’s outing from The Stranger clocks in at well over seven minutes and features several melodic peaks. “At one point we tried a much more active lyric: ‘Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies and the king and the queen of the prom.’ But then I realized, Oh no, this is too much. It’s a hat on a hat.” Whatever they chose, Hoffman stresses, had to evoke repeated disdain from the core trio. “There are all of these reactions to it, like, Oh, for God’s sake, can we please stop hearing that doorbell? If it was a variation, maybe someone might not get as crazy about it,” he notes. “Having ‘a bottle of red, a bottle of white’ over and over again really made me laugh.”
No other songs from Joel’s catalogue were seriously considered due both to the ubiquitous nature of “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” and how its melody foretells the growing chaos inside the home. By the episode’s end, Eugene Levy, Meryl Streep, Eva Longoria, Molly Shannon, and Zach Galifianakis all make appearances to provide their theories about who the killer might be. “Everything in this house — the dolls, Doreen, her husband living out of the boat — feels like a lot,” Hoffman explains. “There’s a lot to manage, and one thing on top of another seems to be the state of things out there.” Hoffman is optimistic that Joel, whose “appropriate channels” cleared the song’s usage, will get a kick out of the joke. “I hope Billy won’t be too surprised,” he adds with a laugh. “With the craziest and greatest cast of any half-hour comedy show I’ve seen, I can only hope there is goodwill coming from the Billy Joel side of things.”
Related