A twice-repeated “joke” in the formulaic (for the series) season finale of Only Murders in the Building, “Opening Night,” has two of its main characters telling their current significant others, “I like LA…in small doses.” The “I like LA” said in a manner in which a person might note that they don’t mind something, but of course it wouldn’t be their first choice. As it isn’t for Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez), the former being the one to utter this “quip” first while grossly kissing his leading lady, Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep), at the after-party for Death Rattle Dazzle!’s opening night.
The subject comes up because Loretta is being approached with other offers after her performance in the musical is well-received. Offers that would inevitably take her to the place where successful actors go: Hollywood. This adding another cliffhanger-y effect (along with the predictable murder of yet another person who orbits the Oliver/Mabel/Charles-Haden trio) to the finale that will allow a dragging out of events for season four.
In another scene from the party, Mabel then repeats that exact sentiment to her cameraman boyfriend, Tobert (Jesse Williams), who is about to go to said town to work on an “indie film.” Not sure why he couldn’t just say “movie”—oh wait, it’s because he’s become a faux pretentious New York asshole who needs to make LA sound more “legit” than someone like him thinks it is. Including Mabel, who declines the offer to accompany him to said city so that they might continue their budding romance.
Instead, she would prefer to float around in misery in New York solving crimes. Even though, as Tobert points out, “You’re always talking about feeling stuck and lost. This could be different.” What he doesn’t take into account is that most people who live in New York get off on that feeling. Wouldn’t honestly know what to do without it. Until some fed-up residents finally reach their threshold and actually do move to LA, often the “only” other option for Americans who see themselves as “creative” and “liberal” (a.k.a. they can fit right in working for ad agencies and support the LGBTQIA+ community, but don’t really want the capitalistic status quo to alter). This despite how climate change is literally eroding away both options.
That aside, what is most bothersome about the dig at LA isn’t just that it’s a tired trope favored by the likes of “staunch” New Yorkers. No, what’s most bothersome is the continued commitment New Yorkers have to their delusions about the city being “everything.” This still extends to one such exemplar of rigid New Yorkerism: Woody Allen (and yes, other New Yorkers should take pause to think about how the disgraced writer-director remains one of the ultimate mascots of the city). A man who (as Alvy Singer in Annie Hall) once announced, “I don’t wanna live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.” This said after his friend, Rob (Tony Roberts)—though both call each other Max—insists, “California, Max. Get the hell out of this crazy city. Forget it. We move to sunny LA. All of show business is there.”
Such “enticements” are no match for what Carrie Bradshaw would call “Manhattan Guy” (or, in the wake of the 90s and early 00s, “Brooklyn Guy”), the mutant strain of human who refuses to ever leave the city, not even for a vacation. Convinced that “everything you need is right here.” Rats, bed bugs, self-superior cunts, the normalization of alcoholism, trust fund babies who will always succeed at “art,” shitty apartments for the price of a limb and the constant promise that it’s all worth it for the “culture.” This increasingly consisting of nothing more than the same corporate outposts one finds in any part of America. But the delusion must persist for people like Oliver and Mabel (though it’s easier for Oliver to sustain because of his Broadway “career”) as they’ve put so many years into the endeavor.
The only one with blatant torn loyalties is Steve Martin. Whose character, Charles-Haden Savage, pronounces of the seeming exodus, “Los Angeles. A city so nice, they named it Los Angeles.” Because yes, Steve Martin is far more LA than he has ever been New York. Ergo his 1991 love letter to the city, L.A. Story. Which, funnily enough, also stars the New York icon that is Sarah Jessica Parker. With Martin himself being raised in Inglewood and Garden Grove, then attending college in the LA area, it was no wonder he brought into existence something like L.A. Story, or the far more serious Shopgirl in 2005 (an adaptation of his own 2000 novella of the same name). Both works see the good and bad in L.A., while eventually playing up the overriding positive aspects of living there.
In contrast, New Yorkers are far more adept at side-stepping (read: blinding themselves to) the manifold drawbacks to their prom king city. But, like the prom king, it’s well-known he’s a douchebag who ought to be dethroned by someone more complex and multi-dimensional. Despite this, LA is ironically the place that remains, even now, viewed as lacking in complexity. A “pretty face,” so to speak, with nothing to offer but metal (the cars) and plasticity (the reconstructive surgeries). It’s the city that serves everyone’s purpose in being easy to take a pot-shot at. This even occurred in the most-seen movie of the summer, Barbie, when our narrator, Helen Mirren, says, “Barbie left behind the pastels and plastics of Barbie Land for the pastels and plastics of Los Angeles.” Cue the audience laughter. Because, ha ha, “LA sucks and is so vapid” is ostensibly evergreen comedy gold.
But, for those willing to look beyond the stereotype and deprogram from the far shittier lifestyle available in New York, turn to the revamping of a famous quote about England in Richard II. The one that Steve Martin as Harris K. Telemacher opens L.A. Story with: “I have a favorite quote about L.A. by Shakespeare: ‘This other Eden, demi-paradise, this precious stone set in the silver sea of this earth, this ground…this Los Angeles.’” A milieu that is far more than just “likable in small doses.”
