Vince Fish

Vince Fish
Character information
Status	Alive
Aliases	Stink-Eye Joe Pink-Eye Joe
Gender	Male
Relatives	Wife †
Appearances
FirstAppearance	Gates of Heaven
LastAppearance	My Best Friend's Wedding
EpisodeCount	7
Season(s)	4
Portrayed by	Richard Kind

Vince Fish is a recurring character in Season 4 of Only Murders in the Building. He is a resident of the West Tower of the Arconia.

He is portrayed by Richard Kind.

History

Vince met Milton Dudenoff when he was taking Dudenoff's class after his wife died. He argued with a classmate about being alone. After the class ended, Vince talked to Dudenoff about loneliness and Dudenoff invited Vince to join a weekly card game at his place. This then led to Dudenoff illegally subletting a rent-controlled apartment to Vince, along with Rudy Thurber, Inez, Ana, Alfonso, and Helga Heino. When he learned he had a terminal illness, he invited all of them, except Helga, to meet him in the basement. He asked them not to tell Helga, but he had taken a large number of pills in order to kill himself. He recorded a message for them to share with Helga to explain it to her if she found out. Then he asked them to burn his body in the incinerator and tell everyone he moved to Portugal. That would allow them to keep cashing his Social Security checks and continue living in the Arconia. This worked well for a few years until development started on the Only Murders in the Building movie.

Vince lives in the West Tower, near the "Sauce Family" and Rudy Thurber (known collectively as "Westies"). He often goes to the Sauce Family's apartment room to play the card game "Oh Hell." When Mabel Mora and Oliver Putnam came to the West Tower under the guise of scouting for potential filming locations for the movie, Vince welcomed them happily and let them look out his windows, but since they were painted shut, they concluded it wouldn't be a good filming location. He then took them with him to his neighbors' place to play their game. Mabel and Oliver were confused when the Westies kept leaving the room with a knife to go to the bathroom. When Oliver won a round, he learned they were just taking slices off a ham from Portugal.

Vince was at his place soon after when Charles and Eugene Levy came to his door. They were both wearing eye patches and claimed they had the same antibiotic-resistant pink eye he did and offered him some special drops to cure it. It was actually a ruse to get him to remove the eye patch because they believed he actually had a bruise on his face from shooting the gun at Sazz. When he stepped out of the room to apply the drops, they decided to change course. When he came back, they tried using a joke and a spit take to get him to remove his eye patch. It worked, but Vince also punched Eugene in the face, causing a nosebleed. This led to a conversation in which Charles and Vince revealed that they were both awkward, so they didn't hate each other as they each suspected. They hugged and then Vince hugged Eugene. Eugene didn't let go for a long time, allowing Charles to look at a photo Vince had on a table of himself with all the neighbors from his floor including one with their face scratched off.

The Westies all took notice when Mabel began squatting in the Dudenoff apartment in the hopes of forcing him to come to the Arconia to kick her out. When Howard left the apartment unattended, they entered it and started moving Mabel's things out. She returned before they could get her bed out and she asked what kind of cult they were in. They said it wasn't a cult and finally admitted that they'd been illegally subletting their apartments from Professor Dudenoff, who had rented them himself when the Arconia was affordable. They'd each met Dudenoff at some point and he realized what weirdos they were and agreed to sublet apartments to them for only $200/month. Eventually, he retired to Portugal, but still sent them a ham once a month and collected their rent. They offered to bring Mabel into the scheme if she kept it out of the podcast. They also said that the voice on the ham radio was Rudy's ex-girlfriend Helga, who was crazy.

Rudy and Vince purchased a drone at an estate sale. While they were getting ready to test it out, Charles, Mabel, and Oliver came to their place to ask them about Vince's appearance in Tawny and Trina Brothers' student film. Vince readily admitted to it and said that he did it as a favor to Dudenoff, who was their film professor as well as Tawny and Trina's. They were Dudenoff's favorites, but not the rest of the group's. They were always fawning over him. When Charles asked them to fly the drone over to the production office to spy on Trina and Tawny, they agreed. And when he suggested that Dudenoff might not be in Portugal, but in New York, they insisted it couldn't be true as he would never come to town without saying hi. They then lost control of the drone and it ended up crashing into the window when Charles pulled it down.

The Westies panicked when Vince got a call on the Dudenoff phone and relayed to them that someone knew they'd been cashing Dudenoff's checks at a bodega. When the trio invited them to a game of Oh Hell with the three actors playing them in the movie, the Westies accepted and happily came to Oliver's place for the game. However, after they arrived, they shut the door, pulled out a knife, and said they knew they knew about the checks. They demanded that everyone hand over their phones. They denied killing Dudenoff and, one at a time, explained how they had met Dudenoff and come to live in the Arconia in one of his apartments. Then Dudenoff made good on his dream to live in Portugal and left. And they hadn't heard from him since. They kept up the ruse by cashing his checks. Just as they finished, Helga came to the door and said she was there to tell the truth. She shared her own story of meeting Dudenoff and coming to live in the Arconia after her father's death. She believed the Westies had killed Dudenoff because she'd gotten a letter saying he had moved to Portugal and then they began acting strangely. This led to her eventually moving out. Helga's revelation forced the Westies to tell the truth. The night of the power surge, Dudenoff invited all of them except Helga to the basement. He had a terminal illness and had taken a large amount of pills. He asked them to burn his body in the incinerator and keep cashing his checks so they could continue to live in the Arconia together. He recorded a message for Helga in case she found out, but didn't want her to know because she had had a hard time bouncing back after her father's death. They showed her the recorded message and then held her as she cried. They asked her to move back in and she agreed to do so.

Vince hired Rudy to be his personal trainer and they were working on exercises when Oliver and Charles came to the door, asking to get to Vince's window because Mabel was being held hostage in her apartment by Marshall P. Pope, whom they had learned was Sazz's actual killer. Vince and Rudy helped by going to Mabel's door and knocking to distract Marshall, allowing Charles and Oliver to get inside without him knowing.

Relationships

Vince was married until his wife died. After her death, he struggled not to become a lonely old man. When he met Dudenoff, this led to him making a new family with Dudenoff, Inez, Ana, Alfonso, Rudy Thurber, and Helga Heino.

Notes and Trivia

• He has antibiotic-resistant Pink Eye.
• He has an enlarged heart.

Gallery

Episode Stills

Photography by Patrick Harbron

"Gates of Heaven" (S04E02)

"Two for the Road" (S04E03)

"The Stunt Man" (S04E04)

"Blow-Up" (S04E06)

"My Best Friend's Wedding" (S04E10)

Appearances

Season Four
#01	"Once Upon a Time in the West"	#05	"Adaptation"	#09	"Escape From Planet Klongo"
#02	"Gates of Heaven"	#06	"Blow-Up"	#10	"My Best Friend's Wedding"
#03	"Two for the Road"	#07	"Valley of the Dolls"
#04	"The Stunt Man"	#08	"Lifeboat"