‘Only Murders’ showrunner hopes Billy Joel “won’t be too surprised” at his unexpected musical cameo
SPOILERS) In episode seven of Only Murders in the Building’s fourth season, one of Billy Joel‘s most beloved songs pops up unexpectedly, and the series’ showrunner hopes the Piano Man will enjoy the joke.
In the episode, Oliver, Mabel and Charles — played by Martin Short, Selena Gomez and Steve Martin, respectively — are afraid they’re being pursued by a killer, so they flee Manhattan for suburban Long Island, where Charles’ estranged sister Doreen, played by Melissa McCarthy, lives.
Arriving at the house, they ring the doorbell, only to hear the melody of Billy’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” — specifically, the part of the song that goes “a bottle of red, a bottle of white” — and it becomes a running joke in the episode.
“Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” from The Stranger, was never a single, but it’s a fan favorite that Billy frequently plays live. It was deliberately chosen by showrunner John Hoffman, who tells Vulture, “I lovingly poke at Long Island throughout the show, and I hope people enjoy the silliness of it … anyone from … Manhattan, as our trio is, feels that way about Long Island.”
“Billy Joel is universally beloved, in my experience, in Long Island, and it’s sacrilegious to think otherwise,” he adds.
Hoffman says he considered using the melody of another line from the song — “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.‘”
Hoffman tells Vulture he hopes Billy “won’t be too surprised” by the cameo and will get a kick out of it, adding, “I can only hope there is goodwill coming from the Billy Joel side of things.”
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