General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Flipped

Flipped is an American comedy television series that premiered on April 6, 2020 on the mobile streaming service Quibi, starring Will Forte and Kaitlin Olson as Jann and Cricket Melfi, a chronically underemployed married couple who dream of becoming television's next great home renovation stars and stumble into criminal trouble when they find drug cartel money hidden in the walls of a house they are flipping.¹^•² Produced by Funny or Die, the series ran one season of 11 episodes, each about 10 minutes or less, and was later released for free as a Roku Original on The Roku Channel after Quibi shut down.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	April 6, 2020, on Quibi; daily episode releases through April 16, 2020¹
Format	11 episodes of roughly 10 minutes or less, released as daily "chapters"¹^•⁴
Leads	Will Forte as Jann Melfi, Kaitlin Olson as Cricket Melfi¹
Supporting cast	Arturo Castro (Diego), Eva Longoria (Fidelia), Andy Garcia (Rumualdo), Jerry O'Connell (Chazz Connelly)¹
Production	Funny or Die; directed by Ryan Case; written by Steve Mallory and Damon James¹
Reception	68% Tomatometer from 25 reviews; 55% Popcornmeter from fewer than 50 ratings¹
Emmy nomination	Kaitlin Olson, Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series, 2020⁵

Spoilers

Premise and plot

Jann Melfi, a former drama teacher and wannabe makeup artist, and Cricket Melfi, a wannabe home designer who worked at a hardware store, are both fired from their jobs in the first episode and decide to launch careers as home renovation television personalities.²^•⁶ When a contest on their favorite renovation series, hosted by Jerry O'Connell and Rebecca Romijn as Chip and Joanna Gaines surrogates, opens a path to an "HRTV" audition, the couple buys a rundown desert house and finds thousands of dollars hidden in its walls.²

Rather than turn the money over to authorities, Jann and Cricket spend it on their renovation and audition video, and the cash turns out to belong to a drug cartel.⁷ Cartel member Diego (Arturo Castro) arrives looking for his missing money, and the Melfis are put to work renovating cartel mansions, passing from Diego to his boss Rumualdo (Andy Garcia) and his wife Fidelia (Eva Longoria) as the season builds toward their attempt to escape across the border to an audition in Los Angeles.¹ The season's 11 episode titles trace that arc, from "An Artistic Vision" and "Demo Day" through "Sizzle Reel," "Putting Clients First," and the finale "The Work Is Never Quite Done."¹

Production and format

Flipped was one of the scripted comedies on Quibi's launch slate in April 2020. Quibi, a subscription mobile video service founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, commissioned short-form content designed for phone viewing, with every video at 10 minutes or less and a "Turnstyle" feature that let viewers switch between vertical and horizontal framing.⁸^•⁹ Quibi branded such titles "Movies in Chapters," and reviewers noted that Flipped played more like a limited series than a single film: the chapters exist as individually constructed episodes with little recap, rather than segments of one movie.⁷^•²

The series was directed by television director Ryan Case and written by Steve Mallory and Damon James.¹ Its primary inspiration, according to JoBlo's review, was the home renovation hit Fixer Upper starring Chip and Joanna Gaines, whose formula the show parodies through the Melfis' delusional self-confidence.² Common Sense Media describes the tone as light, with cartoonish violence played for laughs, and recommends it for viewers aged 12 and up.¹⁰

Reception

Season 1 holds a 68% Tomatometer based on 25 reviews and a 55% Popcornmeter score from fewer than 50 audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.¹ The site's critics consensus states that "Flipped's formatting doesn't do it many favors, but Kaitlin Olson and Will Forte dig into their characters with such skill and delight that it's hard not to have a good time anyway."¹

Reviews divided over the leads and the platform. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote that "all the bones are there, good stars, solid production company, cute concept, but the laughs never arrive," while Rob Hunter of Film School Rejects credited "the comedic genius of those two leads" for the show's humor.¹ Willa Paskin of Slate argued that the big swerves ending each episode fit what Forte and Olson do best, taking their characters way too far.¹ Tom Reimann of Collider gave it 3 out of 5, calling it an easy comedy to recommend but describing the experience of watching a show on Quibi as unpleasant.¹ Time's reviewer found the first episode grating but judged that Arturo Castro's introduction as an "organic-apple-eating overlord" might elevate the series from grating to promising.⁶

Kaitlin Olson received the series' one Emmy nomination, for Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series at the 2020 ceremony, for her role as Cricket Melfi.⁵

Quibi's collapse and the Roku revival

Quibi announced its shutdown in October 2020, about six months after launch, having struggled to hit subscriber growth targets during the pandemic.¹¹ In January 2021, Roku announced it was acquiring the rights to stream Quibi's library of 75 original shows to its more than 50 million users.¹² Flipped was among the 30 Roku Originals available free at launch on The Roku Channel, where content formerly on Quibi streams exclusively without subscriptions or logins.³ No second season was produced; the series remains a single-season, one-platform casualty of Quibi's business model, though audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes as late as 2023 still called for a season 2.¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series › Premiered 2017 to 2021

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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