‘Only Murders In The Building’ Season 2 Episode 7 Spoiler Recap/Review

The following Recap/Review Contains Spoilers for Episode 7 of ‘Only Murders In The Building.’ Check out our review of Episode 6 here.

Aptly titled ‘Flipping the Pieces’, Only Murders in the Building takes off and fills in some missing pieces to the overall puzzle that is Bunny’s murder. It’s done by diving more into Mabel’s (Selena Gomez) relationship with her father, and why her memory’s been fuzzy. Gomez has always led the mysterious aspect of the show, with her character being unwilling to share anything about the trauma that’s built her, and this is an episode where that all falls out.

Let’s cross out Charles (Steve Martin) and Oliver’s (Martin Short) portion of the episode first. They are primarily on their own, with Oliver having hunkered in Charles’ apartment waiting on DNA test results (that we still didn’t get this episode). Detective Williamson comes back into the mix with baby Keith, and manages to get the bloody knife from the two and takes it off for fingerprints. Genuinely frustrated with not truly knowing about Oliver and Will’s DNA relationship, because it felt like it was going to factor in, but now pushing it off makes it seem like its nothing.

Back to Mabel! Remember in the last episode, we saw the TikTok with her supposedly stabbing the glitterman. She wakes up in Theo Dimas’ apartment. He was on the same subway as her, and followed her out to get her to a safe place because she was in shock. When she wakes up, they struggle to communicate, and basically draw lines in the sand for what the other can clearly understand. When they narrow down communication methods, he tells her he saw glitterman attack her, which leaves us feeling better about Mabel not being a killer.

Theo is able to show a Coney Island badge he found chasing after glitterman and Mabel after glitterman took Mabel’s purse. Side note, I really don’t know why they took the actual matchbook clue to the stake out for the trap. This seems very dumb, and something Mabel would have typically called out and not done. Anyways, Theo and Mabel drive off to Coney Island, where they grab folders of employee data (eek, not smart). Theo has to charge his ankle monitor, and during that process they decide to play some carnival games as Theo has never been to Coney Island.

Mabel heads to the bathroom before they leave, and low and behold, there’s red glitter in the sink! She freaks out and starts looking for glitterman’s things, hoping to find a name. Except he’s still in the building! She hides in one of the lockers, and gets found out, but is able to knock him in the head, while grabbing his backpack! Mabel gets out with Theo, and he drives her back to the city while she delves into the backpack. She finds something, and ends up in the Pickle Diner with Charles and Martin to show them a photo from the glitterman’s bookbag which is of Lucy and Charles. Charles calls Lucy to find she’s in his apartment, and then, a blackout takes New York.

I’ve left out the biggest part of this episode, and one I had the most issue with until I sat with it longer. We get to dive into Mabel as a child with her father. He’s the reason she loves mysteries, and he died, when she was young, of stomach cancer. She blacked out the memory of him dying, because she didn’t want to remember it. She talks through all of this with Theo looking like he’s listening, but as he stated at the beginning of the episode, he understands 30% of lipreading, and Mabel understands no ASL.

I was really frustrated with this choice of having Theo, instead of maybe Alice who could have chased after Mabel after last episode. But looking at it hours later, Mabel needed to confess it to herself first. Some people do better in therapy. Some people need a push to figure it out themselves. She needed to feel like she had a sounding board. I hate that the creators reduced a deaf person to this, because there’s so much they can contribute to a conversation. But it makes sense for how withdrawn Mabel has been from sharing her past. Hopefully, she can continue to open up.

Overall, it’s another good episode for Only Murders in the Building. Some creative choices were frustrating, especially when it didn’t complete feel like they stuck to them at points. But it was great to dive into Mabel, and it looks like we’re in for a thrilling ending to the season! – Katie Rentschler

Rating: 7.7/10

Episode Clues:

• Matchbook with bloody fingerprint is gone
• Glitterman had a photo of Charles and Lucy
• Glitterman works for Coney Island

Current Suspects:

• Cinda (Christian‘s guess)
• Teddy & Theo
• Lucy?!
• Alice?!?!
• Nina
• Charles
• A Podcast Fan (My guess still!)

Only Murders in the Building premieres Tuesdays on Hulu.

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