Flipping the Pieces

"Flipping the Pieces"
"Flipping the Pieces" title-card
Season	2
Episode	7
Director	Chris Teague
Writer	Stephen Markley Ben Philippe
Editor	David L. Bertman
Production code	2DWB07
Original air date	August 2, 2022
Episode chronology
← Previous	"Performance Review"
Next →	"Hello, Darkness"

"Flipping the Pieces" is the seventh episode of the second season of Only Murders in the Building, starring Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short. It originally aired on August 2, 2022.

Short Summary

Mabel's incident on the subway leads her to gain help from an unlikely ally. Their journey takes them to a legendary amusement park which turns out to be full of terror — while amusements and evidence reside back in the Arconia with Charles and Oliver.

Full Summary

Mabel sits on the floor and starts doing a puzzle.

Young Mabel chooses between two puzzles and takes one to her dad so they can put it together. He asks how long she thinks it'll take and she says a thousand years. He says her mom comes to get her at 3, but she was kidding anyway. The puzzle she picked it easy. He suggests doing it without the box, but that's still easy. So he asks if she thinks she could do it upside down, with just the shapes. Mabel nods.

Mabel looks at the puzzle and picks up a piece that has Bunny's face. She starts flipping the pieces over.

Mabel wakes up in a strange place. She sees her coat with blood on it on the bed next to her. She hears someone coming in, so she gets up.

Theo enters the apartment and finds Mabel gone. She comes up behind him and hits him with a lamp, knocking him to the ground. He gets up and signs that he's trying to help her, but she doesn't understand, so he pulls out his phone and shows her the video of her on the subway. She asks him if she stabbed someone again.

Charles takes a sip from a can of Gut Buzz Zero. Oliver comes in and says he looked all over and couldn't find Mabel. Charles called all the hospitals. There's a knock at the door and Charles jumps up, hoping it's Mabel. Instead of Mabel, he finds a baby in a stroller. Williams then steps into their view and tells them the baby's her trainee, Keith. She says she has questions for them and walks in.

Mabel sees the tracking bracelet on Theo's ankle and comments on him stealing jewelry from people and getting an ankle bracelet in exchange. She asks if she really stabbed one and he mimes stabbing. He signs, asking if she remembers. She says she doesn't know ASL, so he writes his question on a pad and passes it to her. She says she doesn't remember anything. It's just gone. He pulls out his wallet and hands her a card which had his name and says he can only understand about ⅓ of what people say through lip-reading. Mabel gets up to leave, asking where her bag is, with the matchbook. She starts to panic when he doesn't have it. He tries to offer his help, but she doesn't understand his signing. He writes that they were on the same train and he saw a man attack her, so he stepped out onto the platform, where the man passed him, carrying Mabel's bag. Then he watched Mabel run away in shock. She asks if the man was glitter guy. Theo says yes and teaches her the sign for glitter. He shows her the Coney Island security badge that the man dropped. He offers to take her, but she refuses his help because of what he did. He says that's not who he is. He asks her to let him drive her.

Williams asks what really happened when Mabel went to get champagne that night and if they're aware of her violent path. Oliver and Charles asks why she's not in Denver like they were told. She was on a trip, but she cut it short because something's been keeping her up at night. It was them and the case and how they know things they're not sharing. Oliver and Charles stay silent. She says if it's like that, she'll have no choice but to agree with Kreps, who things Mabel did it. Charles says those incidents are unrelated and Bunny was actually killed with a knife, not a knitting needle. He says there's no knife at any of their places and Mabel didn't do it. Oliver excuses himself to go to the bathroom. Charles and Williams hear him telling at something to open. Charles awkwardly goes to check on him.

Oliver struggles to get the passageway open. Charles comes in and stops him from going to his apartment to get rid of the bloody knife. He forgot to get rid of it before. He took it with him to Jersey, but then he got distracted by The Wizard of Oz. But he saved the show. He's reminded that the DNA tests still aren't in.

Williams listens from the other side of the door as they talk about the knife, which Mabel initially wanted to hand over to the police.

When Williams knocks and checks on them, Charles says it'll just be a moment and it turned out to be a two-man job. When they open the door, she confronts them about the knife.

Mabel and Theo sneak into Coney Island. Mabel wants something to jog her memory. She asks if Theo's ever been to Coney Island. He says no, he was busy robbing graves.

Theo breaks into the security office, where they go through employee records. Theo tries to get Mabel to calm down, but she says either the killer is in the files or she's a psycho who goes into fugue states and stabs people. She steps outside to take a minute. Theo bags the records and takes them with him. Outside, he shows the bag to Mabel, who thanks him. His ankle bracelet beeps and he says he needs an hour to charge. He pulls out the charge and Mabel finds a plug for him. She also plugs in an arcade machine and asks if he's ever played Whack-a-Mole.

Theo finishes a game. Mabel understands how he's feeling when he finishes. He starts another game.

Mabel and her father watch The X-Files together. He tries to turn it off, saying she shouldn't be watching it, but she stops him. He apologizes for not taking her to the zoo. His new schedule has been hard on him. She says they can go to the zoo a different day.

Theo plays a claw machine. His sixth attempt is not successful. He says he needs a strategy, then opens the front of the game and reaches inside to grab a prize. She tells him that's cheating. He opens his prize to find a ring similar to the one Zoe had. Theo signs that every night before he goes to sleep, he replays the moment in his head and asks himself if she slipped or if he pushed her. He still doesn't know. Mabel can't walk past the front gate or Tim's door without seeing their bodies. Now he's the kind of person who can stab someone and not even remember it. She could also be the kind of person to put a needle in the chest of a defenseless old woman.

Mabel comes home to find Bunny. She takes a knitting needle and stabs her in the chest.

Mabel says that's what scares her. It's something she would do, but she doesn't know if she actually did. Theo didn't understand any of what she said, but that might be better. Theo's ankle bracelet beeps. Mabel goes to go to the bathroom before they go back to the city.

Charles asks Williams what she means by knife. She tells him to stop being stupid. Keith starts crying and she tries a few things to get him to stop. Oliver offers to help, drawing from his experience with Will. He takes Keith and sings as he manipulates Keith's legs, getting Keith to pass gas and stop crying. Oliver hands him back to Williams, who says she won't be doing that. Oliver says she will. She'll do anything to help her kid. Charles agrees, though his experience is limited. William says she isn't trying to put Mabel away. She just wants to solve the case. Charles and Oliver confer for a moment and say they need to go to the bathroom.

Mabel washes her hands and looks at herself in the mirror.

Mabel goes to see her dad. She's not supposed to be there, but she got them Mulder and Scully badges to take trick or treating, even though he told her they weren't going. He offers to do a puzzle with her, but she doesn't want to do a puzzle. She's upset with him for breaking his promise to her, as that's all he does anymore. He knows he does and he wishes he could keep them for her.

Oliver and Charles give Williams the knife. Which they hope won't have Mabel's prints. Oliver's prints will be on it, but that's because it belongs to him. It was stolen from him to kill Bunny. Charles says Lucy's prints are also on it, but she's not involved either. Williams thanks them and says she'll let them know what she finds. She walks out, singing A Chorus Line.

Mabel sees glitter in the sink drain and a bloody tissue in a locker room trash can.

Outside, Theo waits for Mabel.

Mabel watches a man covered in glitter come in with a first aid kit. She makes an accidental noise, drawing attention to herself. The man opens some nearby lockers, getting closer to Mabel. When he opens the one she's hiding in, she pushes the door into him, grabs her bag, and runs. She calls for Theo as she runs. The two of them hide as the man runs past and then she says they need to get to the car.

Mabel searches her bag, but the matchbook is gone. She sees multiple messages from Charles and Oliver on her phone. She tells Theo they're at the diner. She sees something on a piece of paper and tells Theo they need to get back right away. Teddy tries to FaceTime with Theo, but Theo ignores it. Mabel says her dad died when she was seven and they didn't tell her what was really happening to protect her.

Mabel visits her father in the hospital.

Mabel's parents told her her dad had to move out for work and six months later, he was dead from stomach cancer. She knew something wasn't right, but she played along. She didn't know how to cope with him dying, so she didn't.

Mabel's dad offers his hand to her. She closes her eyes.

Mabel says she flipped the pieces over in her mind the way he'd shown her and that was how she lost her first memory. It's happened a few times since, if something was too much or too hard, when she was afraid to see what had really happened. Now she has to flip the pieces back or she'll never see the full picture.

Mabel reaches and puts her hand in her father's, then climbs into his bed.

Mabel remembers seeing someone run out of her apartment before seeing Bunny dying. She realizes it wasn't her fault. She didn't stab Bunny.

Theo pulls up outside the diner and Mabel signs thank you to him, but mixes up the other signs. He pretends she didn't though. She tells him she was wrong about him and advises him not to push things away. Theo watches as she goes inside, then looks at the many missed calls from his dad and calls him back and says hello.

Mabel tells Charles what she's about to say isn't good. She shows him the picture Glitter Guy had. It's Charles and Lucy. Charles takes his phone and calls Lucy. She tells him she's at his place, but before he can tell her what to do, the lights go out as a blackout engulfs the city.

Cast

Starring

• Steve Martin as Charles-Haden Savage
• Martin Short as Oliver Putnam
• Selena Gomez as Mabel Mora
• Cara Delevingne as Alice Banks (credit only)

Guest Starring

• James Caverly as Theo Dimas
• Zoe Colletti as Lucy
• Mark Consuelos as Mabel's Father
• Jayne Houdyshell as Bunny Folger
• Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Detective Donna Williams

Co-Starring

• Tieisha Thomas as Subway Rider
• Caroline Valencia as Young Mabel

Notes and Trivia

General

• The Easter egg in the title sequence are the puzzle pieces painted over the side of the building during the main trio's credits.

Cultural references

• During Mabel's flashback, she and her father watch the episode "The Host", from the TV series The X Files.
• Oliver and Det. Donna Williams sing a part of the song "One", from the musical A Chorus Line.

Soundtrack

• "Song", performed by Artist
  Written by Composer

Media

Episode Stills

Photography by Craig Blankenhorn and Patrick Harbron for Hulu.

See Also

A complete overview of this episode's crew can be found here.