A mystery lives and dies by its reveals. Broadly speaking, yes, it’s the journey and not the destination — Charlie Cale could tell you that — but when there’s a crime to be solved, it’s hard not to put extra emphasis on the resolution. Is it satisfying? Does it feel surprising but still well-earned? Were you able to figure it out before the detective did? Poker Face, of course, presents a different kind of mystery. In a howcatchem, there’s no suspense over who did it and why; we just want to know how Charlie is going to put the pieces together. That doesn’t mean endings aren’t just as important, however, and “Sloppy Joseph” is an unfortunate reminder of how much a weak conclusion can undermine an otherwise strong episode. After last week’s perfect final scene, I found myself extra let down by the show’s inability to stick the landing here.

There’s a lot to appreciate before we get there, though. In a twist on Poker Face’s usual format, there’s no big-name guest star marked for death. Instead, the murder victim here is a class pet called Joseph Gerbils (a name only Charlie seems to register as deeply troubling). The killer? An overachieving little girl named Stephanie Pearce (Eva Jade Halford). When we meet Stephanie, we learn that she’s far-and-away the top of her class at Good Hope Academy, collecting a staggering number of gold stars from her teacher, Ms. Dee (Adrienne C. Moore), for her daily accomplishments. But at the class spelling bee, Stephanie is thrown by getting asked to spell “abracadabra,” a word she rebukes as not real. “What is this, anarchy?” she demands. “Are we beasts?” She misspells it, earning her rival, a magic-obsessed boy named Elijah (Callum Vinson), the win. And that makes Stephanie hungry for revenge.

Director Adam Arkin smartly shoots these early scenes from a child’s eye view — we don’t see Ms. Dee’s face until Charlie shows up; it’s very Nanny on Muppet Babies — and that makes it easier for the stakes to feel as high for us as they do for Stephanie. Knowing that the two things Elijah loves most are magic and his gerbil best friend, she resolves to take both away from him at the upcoming talent show. First, she steals an embarrassing baby photo from Elijah’s dad, school custodian J.B. (David Krumholtz), and puts it into the slide show that plays while students share their talents. She tips Elijah off backstage, knowing that he’ll be compelled to delete it before it’s projected onto the big screen overhead — which gives Stephanie the opportunity she needs to sabotage his magic act. Elijah’s trick involves putting Joseph the gerbil in a fabric lantern and discreetly dropping him into a cushioned box below. To prove Joseph has disappeared, Elijah then hits the lantern with a mallet (begging the question of what school administrator okayed this in the first place). Alas, Stephanie has capitalized on Elijah’s baby photo distraction by flipping the box upside-down so that when he brings the mallet down for the big finish, he crushes poor Joseph and splatters the audience with blood.

Poor Joseph. And also, poor Charlie! Our wandering hero has taken a job at Good Hope Academy out of her naive belief that she’ll be able to connect with the childlike wonder and innocence of youth, proof that she has not actually spent much time around kids. That’s to say nothing of the adults she has to deal with, namely Dr. Hamm (Margo Martindale), the school’s no-nonsense principal. At least Charlie can connect with J.B., who is willing to put up with Dr. Hamm’s rigidity and condescension because Good Hope is the best private school in the tri-county area, and he’s able to get free tuition for Elijah. Since Elijah lost his mom, he’s been withdrawn and doing magic alone in his room. His only real friend is Joseph Gerbils. J.B. is looking forward to the talent show because it’s a chance for Elijah to do something scary and finally get a win. All of this context makes Stephanie’s plot that much more evil — as does seeing the immediate aftermath. Post-talent show, Ms. Dee tells Charlie the kids are traumatized (I don’t blame them), and Elijah is obviously pretty messed-up himself. “I’m a monster!” he tells his dad as J.B. leads him away from the school.

Charlie has too good a heart to not intervene, showing up at J.B.’s apartment to check on him and Elijah. Needless to say, neither is doing well. Elijah won’t eat or leave his room, and he’s asked his dad to burn all his magic supplies. Video of the talent show is online, and there are parents in the comments suggesting that Elijah be expelled. To make matters worse, J.B. is certain that the Joseph incident was deliberate sabotage — Elijah would have triple-checked that the trick was safe before risking the life of his best friend, meaning someone else must have turned the box upside-down. Charlie isn’t convinced, but she wants to help however she can. In the meantime, she (again naively) insists that Elijah’s classmates will come around. “Kids live in a different world than we do,” J.B. counters. “It’s a lot bigger, and it’s a lot louder, and it’s a lot meaner.” Charlie sees that firsthand when she visits Ms. Dee’s classroom the next day and spots the “I’m so sorry Elijah murdered you” card that Stephanie leaves for Joseph. Lowering herself down to the child’s eye view Arkin opened the episode with, Charlie sees just how savage these kids are. J.B. was right: “It’s a jungle down there.”

Charlie also has a suspect, and she happens to be right on the money. She notices that Stephanie is missing a button on her uniform, and it’s a match for the button Charlie found on the floor of J.B.’s office before the talent show. She decides to confront Stephanie, which goes about as well as you’d expect. Charlie knows Stephanie is lying when she says she didn’t care about Elijah winning the spelling bee, so she goes ahead and directly accuses Stephanie of sabotaging the magic trick that killed Joseph. Stephanie’s denial merits an instant “bullsh—oot” from Charlie (kudos to her on the hasty self-censorship), but she has no real proof. All she can do is appeal to Stephanie’s better nature, and good luck with that. After Charlie reveals that she has the button that could connect Stephanie to the crime, the “pig-tailed demon child” grabs and swallows it. Charlie is letting herself be outsmarted by a kid. She does, at least, bribe a computer whiz with a cupcake to figure out how Stephanie used the embarrassing baby photo to distract Elijah, which gave her the perfect opportunity to doom Joseph Gerbils to his fate.

Before Charlie can put this case to bed, she gets called to the principal’s office. Dr. Hamm is firing her for harassing students — it’s a bit of an overreaction, yes, but Charlie should know better than to try to interrogate children! Charlie doesn’t want to leave the school without clearing Elijah’s name, so she lays out the evidence against Stephanie. (It probably doesn’t help that her appeal to Dr. Hamm includes, “I did have proof, but that little demon-haired bitch ate it.”) Just as it looks like all hope is lost, Dr. Hamm tells Charlie to meet her in the bathroom downstairs. There, the principal reveals the truth: Stephanie snapped a photo of Dr. Hamm stealing from the school cash box to cover her gambling debts, and that evil child has been blackmailing her ever since. “Changing schools might be the best thing for Elijah, better than being in Stephanie’s crosshairs,” Dr. Hamm says. Stephanie is untouchable, and that becomes even clearer when she reveals herself to have been listening in on Charlie’s conversation with the principal. It’s legitimately unsettling — again, kudos to Arkin’s direction here — and it did make me wonder how this story was going to wrap up.

The answer: not all that well. Charlie comes up with a plan to help Elijah, and it makes very little sense to me. When Elijah arrives back at school, all of his classmates (minus Stephanie) have dressed as gerbils and welcome him back with open arms. Ms. Dee produces a miraculously healed Joseph, and only Stephanie seems to realize there’s been a gerbil swap. The scene is so bizarre and frankly inexplicable — these kids go from groaning at the mention of Elijah’s name to showering him with love — that I honestly thought it was a dream sequence. They love Elijah so much, in fact, that they’re going to give him all of their gold stars. “That’s socialism!” Stephanie yells, which is very funny but doesn’t make any of this easier to swallow. She refuses to be bested, stealing the rest of the money from the cash box and putting it in J.B.’s pocket to try to frame him as the petty cash thief. Charlie is waiting with a camera, and she gets a pic of Stephanie in the act. If Stephanie doesn’t end her reign of terror, Charlie will send the photo to Stephanie’s parents and every elite boarding school in the area. The demon child has been beat.

But has she? I realize I might be overthinking this, but the resolution to “Sloppy Joseph” is, well, sloppy. What does that photo of Stephanie really prove? Why is it enough to convince Stephanie to delete the much more incriminating pic of Dr. Hamm stealing? And does Elijah, who seems like a bright kid, really believe Joseph survived being flattened by a mallet? While I’ve come to embrace the heightened reality of Poker Face, the plotting is usually much sharper than this. At least the episode ends with some uncertainty. Just as Charlie determines “a bunch of 8-year-olds didn’t have all the answers,” she discovers a note from Stephanie that reads, “When I grow up I will find you.” Charlie doesn’t need to use her special talent to know Stephanie is telling the truth — the stone-faced look she leaves Charlie with says it all.

Just One More Thing

• I’m loving the ongoing presence of Good Buddy as a way to give this season a bit of structure. Steve Buscemi’s vocal performance is strong enough that you forget we haven’t seen him in the flesh.

• That having been said, I wouldn’t have minded a throwaway comment explaining why Charlie left Montgomery since she seemed to find the community she was looking for there in the last episode.

• David Krumholtz makes this the second Slums of Beverly Hills reunion of the season. (Kevin Corrigan, who appeared in “Last Looks,” also starred alongside Natasha Lyonne in the 1998 film.) As a bonus, this episode was directed by Adam Arkin, son of Slums star Alan Arkin.

• While she’s mysteriously uncredited, Adrienne C. Moore makes this an Orange Is the New Black reunion, too.

• As much as I wanted Charlie to be a little less naive about children, I appreciate the reminders that she’s often a bit of a kid herself. Reflecting on Dr. Hamm, she tells J.B., “I think I like that name because it reminds me of a cartoon doctor pig wearing a stethoscope.”

• Again, heightened reality, but I have to ask — how much blood is there really in one tiny gerbil?

 The lack of a big-name guest star and a weak ending make for a middling episode.