Plot: Chronically underemployed couple Jann and Cricket Melfi who are self-proclaimed home renovation "experts," are more than confident they are television's next great home design celebrity duo.
Review: Home renovation shows have been a staple of cable networks for decades now. Recently, the biggest hit series was Fixer Upper starring Chip and Joanna Gaines. That series, with it's formula for showcasing homes in desperate need of repair, was the primary inspiration for Flipped. While Will Forte and Kaitlin Olson are far from the experts that the Gaines' are, the fumbling and bumbling lead characters of this series try their hardest but eventually find themselves embroiled in a truly crazy series of events. It is the high concept twist at the heart of Flipped that makes it worth a watch, especially in Quibi-sized episodes.
Writte by Steve Mallory (THE BOSS) and Damon Jones, Flipped follows Jann (Will Forte) and Cricket (Kaitlin Olson), a married couple both recently fired from theirs jobs. Jann, a former drama teacher and wannabe make-up artist, and Cricket, a wannabe home designer who worked at a hardware store, both have dreams of hosting their own home renovation reality show. When the opportunity arises thanks to a contest on their favorite series (hosted by Jerry O'Connell and Rebecca Romjin as Chip and Joanna Gaines surrogates), the couple buy a rundown house in the middle of the desert only to find thousands of dollars hidden in the decrepit walls. Rather than use the money to better their lives, they sink it all in to making their home renovation series as high budget as possible.
As the trailer shows, the true owners of the hidden money are drug dealers who want the cash back. What follows is a comedy of errors that plays like a humorous take on the Netflix crime series Ozark mixed with the tone and feel of Will Forte's brilliant and cancelled too soon FOX series The Last Man on Earth. There is a decent amount of dramatics mixed in with the comedy here, but this is first and foremost a sitcom. Produced by Funny or Die, Flipped takes the glut of home renovation shows and puts them on display for how unrealistic they really are. Watching this show did make me wonder how many times these designers and carpenters have found something hidden in the walls of these condemned homes aside from dead rats and antique wallpaper.
Directed by TV helmer Ryan Case (Modern Family, You're the Worst), Flipped makes great use of the comedic talents of Forte and Olson while the supporting cast do a great job of balancing dramatics and comedy. Andy Garcia, Eva Longoria, and Arturo Castro bring some gravitas to the proceedings which helps Flipped feel like a crime thriller set in a funny, off-kilter world. The laughs come frequently and in the four episodes made available for review, I found myself smiling and chuckling through each chapter. The editing on the series tries to make use of Quibi's turnstyle viewing system but the scenes that are shown as part of Cricket and Jann's reality show use the type of blurred cropping you often see when iPhone footage is shown on a television screen.
Flipped is a funny series that makes every minute of the Quibi-length episodes count. While the chapters all clock in at ten minutes or less, I sometimes found myself surprised at how much fits into each segment. There are few if any moments of recap in each episode and the chapters all exist as individually constructed episodes rather than segments of a single movie. Forte and Olson deliver here, but if you are not a fan of their style of comedy than you may want to skip this one. Otherwise, Flipped is a very funny project that could have worked as a traditional TV show or feature film and could easily continue for multiple seasons as long as the writing remains as solid as it does here.
Flipped premieres daily episodes starting April 6th on Quibi.