Liz Feldman Takes on Real Estate

I’m going to assume that most people have found their way to No Good Deed for one of two reasons: (1) because of the absolutely stacked cast or (2) because you were a fan of Liz Feldman’s other Netflix dark comedy, Dead to Me. The former is quite a draw — Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano playing a married couple who may or may not be covering up a murder feels like a fever dream I once had in the ’90s — but, admittedly, it’s the latter that had me most excited to take a little sojourn in Los Feliz. Feldman’s last show had a perfect mix of characters with gray moral centers, enough twists and turns to keep you invested, and enough edge and humor that the heartfelt moments never felt overly saccharine. What can I say? I laughed, I cried, I gasped; it is my way.

One episode in and you can see all of those elements at work here in No Good Deed. Will they work as well as they did in Dead to Me? Ehhh, the jury’s still very much out. “Open House” has a tough job: It has to both introduce us to its quite large and varied ensemble and start planting seeds for this little mystery we’ve got going on. Technically, it succeeds in those endeavors, but I can’t say I walked away super-invested in any of it. There’s no Jen and Judy just yet — you know what I’m saying? Thankfully, I have enough faith in Queen of the Cliffhanger Liz Feldman to trust the process. Also, it is my job, so there’s that. And you know what? There are worse things to do than watch Luke Wilson and Linda Cardellini be terrible to each other. So, onward!

Welcome to 500 Derby Drive in Los Feliz, everybody! Here, we meet homeowners Lydia and Paul Morgan, who seem pretty eager to get their gorgeously restored — Paul is a contractor — family home off their hands. Well, Paul seems eager. Lydia is having a tough time with such a big change. So tough that she and Paul are hiding out in their son Jacob’s room, watching their open house on their security camera in order to judge all the applicants. So tough that she compares it to “lopping an appendage off.” All of which is to say pretty tough. But while Lydia did raise her family here, Paul has lived in this house since he was a kid, and yet, for him, it seems almost urgent that they unload this place. Could it simply be the fact that they’re broke? Lydia, an iconic pianist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic — she played for Gustavo Dudamel! — apparently she hasn’t touched a piano in years, afflicted with something that causes her hands to shake uncontrollably. So all of their income has fallen to Paul. So, sure, all the anxiety Paul clearly has about making a fast sale rather than a great one could be related to the Morgans’ money issues.

But even if you buy that initially, and even if the Morgans are in need of money, the arrival of Denis Leary’s Mikey — he’s in all black, so you know he’s Not a Good Guy — will immediately make you realize that’s not the full story. After making his presence known at the open house, Mikey later finds Paul working in the garage. He has recently been released after a three-year stint in prison for a drug charge, and not only is he pissed that Paul never once came to visit him, but he is demanding he hand over $80,000 by tomorrow or he’ll tell the cops “everything” he knows about what actually happened in Paul’s house. Mikey reminds Paul that he “helped you when you needed it most” and then “paid the fucking price.” Given the way Mikey seems so angry that Paul never showed up for him while on the inside, it’s doubtful he’s just some guy with incriminating evidence ready to collect on a few debts. However, the speed and ease with which he shoves Paul’s finger into the very much turned-on buzz saw in order to show Paul he’s serious with his threats certainly points to a, let’s call it, complicated relationship.

Mikey’s not the only person who shows up at the open house. We meet our whole cast of characters there, each with their own set of secrets. There’s J.D. (Wilson) and Margo (Cardellini), who live a few houses down, and both have separate reasons for wanting to check out the Morgans’ house — which is probably why they attend the open house separately and don’t tell each other they’ve been there. J.D. is a very much out-of-work soap-opera actor who has his own money problems. He has spent all of his money on keeping his wife happy (“Gifts are her love language”), which he seems intent on doing, even if he does look wildly unhappy about it. (Let’s not overlook that quick line about him going off his meds, by the way.) Unfortunately, he has no idea that Margo is cheating on him with some woman she’s trying to partner with to buy and flip the Morgan house. Margo seems like an absolute monster — when Lydia sees her roll into the open house in her layers of makeup and full designer getup, she declares that she “will burn this place to the ground if we sell to someone like her” — admittedly, I am obsessed with her. This show so clearly needs an agent of chaos to spice this up down the road, and agent of chaos, thy name is Margo.

We also meet newlyweds and very pregnant Carla (Teyonah Parris) and Dennis (O-T Fagbenle) … and Dennis’s mother, Denise (Anna Maria Horsford). If you couldn’t tell from their names alone, Dennis and Denise have a very special relationship — one that Carla is just discovering right at this very moment, which is super-fun for her. (Apparently, Carla and Dennis’s wedding was done in such haste that there wasn’t even a real wedding, Denise will have you know!) Carla and Dennis love this house, but it’s out of their price range. Well, it’s out of their price range until Denise comes up with a great plan: She’ll give them the money, and she’ll move in with them to help raise the baby. Isn’t that so fun and cool and generous? Dennis asks his wife. Carla looks as if her head might explode.

The third couple making a play for the house in Los Feliz is Leslie (Abbi Jacobson) and Sarah (Poppy Liu). They’ve been obsessed with this house, and now, since they’ve given up on IVF, they have some extra money to put toward buying this place. They seem great! I’m very into Sarah’s immediate reaction that there are “dark vibes” in this house, because follow your instincts, girl! But like all characters in a Liz Feldman production, these two are kinda fucked up too. We later discover that Sarah is secretly still taking injections for IVF. We also discover that Leslie is maybe an insane person. Or, at the very least, Leslie makes terrible choices.

After promising Sarah that she’d do some “night loops” around the Morgan house to see what the neighborhood is like after dark, even though it’s clear this neighborhood looks about as idyllic as it can get, Leslie simply cannot get it out of her head that something weird is going on in the upstairs bedroom, where earlier they saw the door handle jiggle. (We know it was Lydia and Paul on their open-house stakeout.) And so she decides to do some light trespassing to … I guess figure out who or what is in that room, even though any normal adult human could probably guess it’s just someone who, like, lives in that house? Also, how was she planning on getting up to the second-story window? This plan is bad and dumb.

Leslie never makes it far enough to even need to come up with more of a plan, since the moment she sneaks through the back gate, the floodlight goes on and the neighbor’s dog starts barking, waking up Paul and Lydia. Already on edge from the emotional open house, Mikey’s blackmail threats, and that whole thing when Paul’s finger got sent through a buzz saw, Paul heads downstairs to take care of who or what is outside. But first he makes a pit stop: He runs down to the basement, where he promptly pulls a handgun out of a pipe, a gun that looks as though it’s been safely hidden away on purpose … you know, as if it might be incriminating evidence.

And suddenly we get a few bits of very pertinent information: First, we learn that Jacob, Paul and Lydia’s son, whom Lydia has been leaving voice-mails for throughout the episode, was killed inside the Morgans’ house. As Margo points out, it makes perfect sense that they’d put the house up for sale now — you don’t have to disclose that there was a death in the house after three years. We also get a quick flash from Paul when he sees that gun again — a flash to a body in a hoodie on their kitchen floor and a whole lot of blood. It looks like Mikey, the hidden gun, Jacob’s death, and Paul and Lydia’s desperate need to leave this house behind are all related. Maybe the Morgans will end up being their own agents of chaos.

At the very least, they might have some explaining to do: Leslie — who we know cannot let things go — watches as Paul dumps the handgun in Lydia’s piano.

• At least now we know why Lydia doesn’t want to leave this house: She doesn’t want to let go of her son. And I am referring to both all the memories she has of him growing up here and the fact that she sees her son — or, at least, believes he’s talking to her through the flickering lights in his bedroom. Not for nothing, but her little “hi” to the light fixture broke my heart.

• Paul and Lydia have a daughter, too, but apparently Emily hasn’t set foot back inside the house since Jacob died. What does she know?!

• Here’s hoping they let Matt Rogers’s Greg the Realtor do more than trade quips at an open house. His quick, contentious interaction with Margo was perfect, and I want more of it.

• Vanessa Bayer in a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it cameo during the open house, but for why?