Elsbeth season 4 premiere pits guest star Nicole Scherzinger's marriage counselor against Elsbeth

Elsbeth season 4 premiered October 8 on CBS with "Crazy in Love," and the killer of the week is Nicole Scherzinger as Serena Collyer, a famous and expensively priced marriage counselor whose composure hides, per CBS's own logline, a murderous and messy passion. Scherzinger arrives one year after winning the Tony for playing Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard — a poised diva whose love affair ends with a body. CBS essentially hired her to run it back in 42 minutes, with Carrie Preston's Elsbeth hopping over the throw pillows of her "sanctuary" to catch her.

(Spoilers for the premiere from here.) Serena's problem is Casey, the secret toxic lover on the side of her picture-perfect marriage to the Brit who runs her empire. When Casey threatens to disrupt the arrangement, she kills him and frames one of her own clients — a man she's been treating for anger issues, which is a spectacular violation of therapeutic ethics even before the murder charge.

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The episode order tell

Here's the production detail that says the most. Showrunner Jonathan Tolins told TV Insider that "Crazy in Love" wasn't written as the premiere — it was slotted second, behind a theater-centric episode he considers more of a connoisseur's hour. The network watched Scherzinger's performance and the order flipped.

"It felt appropriate to be the premiere of the season."

— Jonathan Tolins, showrunner, to TV Insider

For a show whose entire format is a rotating guest star committing the murder — season 3 got Stephen Colbert and Patti LuPone — this is the business model saying the quiet part: the killer is the marketing, so the biggest killer goes first.

What the premiere set up for the season

• The spark: the episode ends with a flicker of romance between Elsbeth and Detective Smullen (Danny Mastrogiorgio), which surprised the characters roughly as much as the audience.
• The wedding: Elsbeth's son Teddy (Ben Levi Ross) sets a date with Roy.
• The mom: Teddy mentions that Elsbeth's mother keeps calling, and Elsbeth keeps not calling back — Tolins has teased family drama ahead.
• The season: 20 episodes, Thursdays at 9 p.m., with Nicholas Braun, Jemima Kirke, Lea Michele, Nat Faxon and Knicks star OG Anunoby already announced in the killer-slash-guest pipeline, and Gloria Reuben back as Claudia.

Sarah Beckett wrote the premiere, Nancy Hower directed, and the Robert and Michelle King machine rolls on into its fourth year of New York's most entitled murderers.

Previously we wrote: Who killed Boozer in The Terminal List? The 9mm he supposedly shot himself with was a gun he hated