Category Archives: peacock

Poker Face S2 E12

Posted on by

Spoilers

“The End of the Road”

Last week, after watching Poker Face S2 E11, things just did not make sense. The whole storyline with the Iguana setting up Charlie to lead him to Beatrix Hasp in witness protection seemed so full of coincidences and impossibilities that it was tarring what I had been enjoying. I had hoped, I even think I wrote it in the post, that the writers would have something in the finale to make it all work.

Boy howdy, did they.

They then tossed in the twist of all twists for this show. A twist that they had been setting up for several episodes now. See, last episode when we saw the Iguana killing that guy to go to the wedding and making his prosthetics, it wasn’t the Iguana. This was another hitman….

The Iguana was Charlie’s friend, Alex.

Patti Harrison played Alex, and we thought she had been set up by the real Iguana as a patsy in the murder of Beatrix Hasp’s adopted son in episode 11, but, in truth, this was the Iguana. The Iguana had grown tired of the assassin game, because it lacked any sort of challenge. Then, when someone was trying to hire her to kill Beatrix, the name of Charlie Cale was brought up. A woman who was like a human lie detector and who was infallible presented the challenge for the Iguana. Could she lie to the lie detector?

When she was explaining everything to Charlie, we got flashbacks to the last few episodes, placing everything into context, showing that it all would fit. There are some awesome details that were dropped and we see Alex and her ability to lie to Charlie. Alex told her that every time she had to focus on every little thing to prevent Charlie from discovering the truth. She said it was thrilling.

Poor Rhea Perlman. She had to come back for this episode just to play a dead body with a bullet in her skull. Charlie was able to figure out things, but just too late. I wondered why the show chose to focus on the “Big Red” gum Alex had given to Charlie. It was weird product placement, I thought. But it triggered a memory of a lie Alex had told Charlie a few episodes ago and it put Charlie on to the truth.

The chase scene was fun but let’s talk about the “To Be Continued” that flashed up on the screen as Alex seemingly drove Charlie’s car off a cliff into the Grand Canyon Canyon in Indiana, Thelma and Louise style. The screen froze with the car in the air, about to fall to their doom. I literally screamed out in shock. I wonder if anyone immediately shut off their TV in frustration at that point? I had just stared in shock at the unbelievable cliffhanger when everything started to rewind. The car went backwards and we see the POV of Charlie, as she jumped from the car and held on to a branch, dangling over the cliff as the car flew into the canyon and crashed in a fiery explosion.

What a moment that “To Be Continued” was. It felt both awesome and cruel at the same time. Somehow, Alex’s body was not in the car afterwards. Not sure how she escaped but the show is setting Alex up as Moriarty to Charlie’s Sherlock Holmes. The show gave Charlie an arch nemesis and I liked that, even if I had to suspend disbelief that Alex was not dead. However, after questioning the story last episode, I have learned that Rian Johnson has planned things out so when Alex inevitably returns, it will make sense then.

Sadly, Charlie is on the run once again, now from the FBI. Simon Helberg’s Agent Luca Clark giving Charlie a head start, telling her that the next time they met, he’d have to arrest her. I waited for Charlie to say “bullshit” but she did not, so I guess he is telling the truth. I like how this relationship with Charlie and Luca is progressing. Luca clearly is amazed with her and her intelligence and I hope there will be more with these two moving forward.

I know Poker Face has not yet been renewed, but this show has set up plenty of story for a third season so I hope Peacock knows what they have in this show or if they let it go, maybe another streamer like Netflix or Amazon would give it a go.

Natasha Lyonne directed this episode and she did a great job with several creative and original shots and images. Lyonne is also one of the most interesting characters on TV right now and I really want more of her.

Season two was very strong and ended with a big time splash.

Poker Face S2 E11

Posted on by

Spoilers

“Night of the Iguana”

The penultimate episode of season two is the first part of a two part episode bringing a hitman to a wedding to murder the groom.

The episode brought several characters back to the canvas including Beatrix Hasp, the former crime lord who is in protective custody. She is played by Rhea Perlman. Another return character was Luca Clark of the FBI, who is a recurring character on the show played by Simon Helberg.

The Iguana is the hitman. He is shown murdering a man and taking his place at the wedding, literally with his mask he made out of the dead man. It was creepy. The Iguana is a ghost. Nobody knows who he is or what he looked like. I liked the Iguana. He was a scary individual.

Haley Joel Osment was our victim this week. He also turned out to be the son of Beatrix Hasp.

Now, here was the twist that made things not work for me. It turned out that everything the Iguana was doing was trying to find his way to Beatrix. He set up Charlie so she would go see Beatrix. The whole thing at the end kind of wasted what the concept was.

Next week, the episode continues. Maybe they will do something to make it make more sense.

Poker Face S2 E10

Posted on by

Spoilers

“The Big Pump”

Episode 10 of the second season of Poker Face was probably my least favorite of the season so far.

It featured the story of a man Rodney (Jason Ritter) who wanted to get “pumped up” for a class reunion and tried to get the owner of a local gym, Brick (Method Man) to get him some of the “good stuff” that he was selling to the other gym members who were making more progress than he was.

When the man, who worked as a health inspector, discovered that the “good stuff” was mother’s breast milk, he was angry and ready to report him. Rodney and Brick fought and Brick accidentally hit him in the throat with a weight. He set it up to look like Rodney had been lifting weights without a spotter and had a terrible gym accident.

Here comes Charlie.

Charlie and her new friend Alex (Patti Harrison) began to have doubts about the story being told by Brick and, even though Charlie wanted to turn over a new leaf and start to mind her own business, she couldn’t help herself.

I just did not find this episode very engaging. I did laugh as Charlie had been locked in the sauna by Brick because she was trying to get a message to Alex via smartwatch by doing a sequence of exercises that included heel raises, arm circles, lunges and push-ups. This was meant to spell HALP.

I found this to be a bit of a step back for Poker Face, although a crime solving partner was new for Charlie. There are two more episodes of season 2.

Poker Face S2 E9

Posted on by

Spoilers

“A New Lease on Death”

Awkwafina gets killed this week in Poker Face and Charlie has got to figure out what happened.

With Charlie’s truth detector, she is quite the handful for the criminals or con people of the world. In this case, we have Alia Shawkat, playing con woman Kate, who is trying to get married to Awkwafina’s grandma to get her hands on a rent controlled apartment in New York. Kate was definitely sinister, but even her slimy tactics were no match for Charlie.

Charlie setting up a trap for Kate to capture her on film being the heartless monster that she was. I love when Charlie out smarts the villain. This was a perfect example of her being ahead of everybody.

Charlie is also very kind and is a people person. She makes friends very easily, even if it does seem that death will follow her around.

Poker Face S2 E8

Posted on by

Spoilers

“The Sleazy Georgian”

I loved this episode. I loved it because it was different than any other Poker Face episode. It started out as always, showing the crime before Charlie gets involved. This crime is a money drop gone wrong, with Shauna from Yellowjackets involved with John Cho. It seemed as if the whole thing was going down in a bad way with a couple of dead bodies.

It was pretty clear that there was some con going on, but I thought that it might have been a con gone wrong and that John Cho, who was playing a man named Guy, had actually bit the big one.

However, we go to Charlie meeting Guy in a hotel bar at breakfast time, just like Shauna did. In every other Poker Face episodes ever, this would be before the crime we see in the cold open, but this time, it was after. Guy was trying to set up Charlie for the con, and, of course, failing miserably because of her lie detector skill.

Guy introduced Charlie to his crew and they all kind of bonded… to a point where they wanted to have Charlie join them in a con. She wanted to think about it.

When she came back the next day, she had discovered that Shauna (Ok, not Shauna… Melanie Lynskey, who plays Shauna is playing Regina in this episode) had killed herself after the con.

In an attempt to get the money Regina had lost (which came from an orphan fund) back, Charlie agreed to join the con.

At this point, the show flipped things around again and I really liked the results. I have to say, I really thought this was Guy trying to prove that he could get away with lying to Charlie. That was not it.

I love the fact that Charlie is shown to be smarter than anyone else, even if she does not seem to be. She has so much common sense and does not just rely on her ability to tell when someone is lying. She set up a con to con the con, and got him in the end. The character of Charlie is also so original and unlikely looking of a protagonist who gets by with her smarts. I love how she is really not your typical hero.

This was a lot of fun and I thought the fact that they broke the format even more than ever before was an awesome thing.

Poker Face S2 E7

Posted on by

Spoilers

“One Last Job”

I felt bad for Charlie here. She met a man who was the manager of a  SuperSave big-box store (played by Corey Hawkins), but he ends up being the dead body.

This episode took a bunch of film genres and crammed them together. It was a rom-com, a heist movie, an action/adventure and maybe some thriller.

There were also a bunch of allusions from movies in this episode. They referred to the “Die Hard is a Christmas movie” argument, a couple different things from Mission: Impossible, Weekend at Bernie’s, and even It’s a Wonderful Life.

This episode felt a tad rushed, as Charlie gets our bad guy (though not a real bad guy… more of a guy who got in over his head) quickly. Everything was just so fun, and helped us understand that, no matter how much we would like it to be, real life is not like the movies.

Even though it felt rushed, I enjoyed this episode very much. It once again played with the format. Last week and this week’s both were directed by Alan Arkin and he seems to have a cool idea for this show.

Poker Face S2 E6

Posted on by

Spoilers

“Sloppy Joseph”

It was last week that I wondered about the format of this show, worried that if it just stays the same that it could become too repetitive and dull. I commented that the show switched things up last year near the end of the season, all for the better.

Damned if they didn’t do it again.

Charlie got a job as a lunch lady at a private school and got involved with the drama of a nine-year old. The structure of the episode flipped around too. No murder… unless you count the gerbil, Joseph, the victim of a talent show magic trick gone awry.

This was a wonderfully twisted episode where Charlie comes in conflict with the gold-star earning, sociopathic child named Stephanie. Stephanie is willing to do whatever it takes to remain at the top of the class, leading in the gold star competition, but Elijah was catching up to her, and defeated her in a spelling bee (sort of rigged by the teacher, admittedly).

With 20 gold stars on the line, everything would come down to the talent show and Elijah had a banger of a magic act. Stephanie messed with the magic box Joseph was going to be in during the magic trick and led directly to the splattering of gerbil blood across the front row of the kids at the talent show, a scene that would have made Sam Raimi proud.

There were so many things in this episode that were fun, from Charlie amending her typical “bullshit” response to “bullshoot” to Stephanie’s outright blackmail of the principal, Dr. Hamm, played by the always marvelous Margo Martindale, to Charlie’s quoting of Jaws. The whole situation was surreal, but, as a teacher myself, I bought every second of the episode.

Poker Face S2 E5

Posted on by

Spoilers

“Hometown Hero”

Take me out to the ballgame… where Charlie will solve a murder case with the greatest of ease.

The latest Poker Face episode was set in a small time minor league park with a washed up pitcher named “Rocket” and a team on the verge of setting an all time record for losing.

A group of the players got together to bet on the team losing and it was going to be a huge pay off, especially as they were throwing the games.

However, a new, hotshot pitcher threatened to upend their plan, so they spiked the kid’s gum with drugs. Unfortunately, the drugs only served to make him unhittable.

After some shenanigans, the team still was able to lose and set the record. However, the young kid discovered the truth and was going to blackmail Rocket with the evidence. Rocket threw a ball at the kid’s head, killing him accidentally.

Thankfully, the newly hired ball-girl Charlie was able to uncover the, admittedly, stupid ballplayers’ scam for throwing games and she was able to put together the truth from Rocket.

This was a pretty dumb episode, but it was still fairly entertaining. A big charm of this series is Natasha Lyonne and her performance as the living lie detector. I do hope there are some switch ups coming because I am afraid that the repetitive format might get dull. Last time I mentioned that in reference to this series, the show did change up and gave some creative episodes so I hope the same thing will happen in the second part of this season.

Poker Face S2 E4

Posted on by

Spoilers

“The Taste of Human Blood”

Killer alligator!!!

I am not a fan. So this week’s Poker Face hit me in a different manner.

The best line of the episode was “This is Florida.” 100% accurate.

Charlie finds herself at a cop convention where a jealous officer, Fran (Gaby Hoffmann), who was tired of losing the cop of the year award to Gator Joe (Kumail Nanjiani), wanted to embarrass him at the awards. Unfortunately, her attempt led to his death.

So to cover up the inadvertent murder, Fran gave Daisy, Gator Joe’s pet alligator, meth and had her eat her owner up.

Like I said… killer alligator.

Of course, Charlie was able to help the, technically, innocent gator from the trigger happy cops at the convention who kept claiming that Daisy had to die because she had the taste of human blood.

Weird episode. Fit right in with Florida.

Poker Face S2 E2, E3

Posted on by

Spoilers

“Last Looks”

“Whack-A-Mole”

I finished the next two episodes of Poker Face that were available on Peacock tonight. The next episode is released on Thursday.

I commented in the last write-up that I was hoping the running gag of the mafia hitmen chasing after Charlie was not going to be a long time storyline because it felt as if it was going to get old very quickly. Thankfully, that situation came true.

In the second of the two episodes, the whole mafia angle got wrapped up and resolved via a bit of a messy story featuring Rhea Perlman as one of the mafia heads who had placed the contract on Charlie’s head.

This episode also featured a list of guest stars, including Simon Helberg, John Mulaney, Chris Bauer, and Richard Kind.

Then, episode two featured Katie Holmes and the one and only Giancarlo Esposito. Esposito played a funeral parlor owner who had let a film crew film in his parlor. He wound up killing Katie Holmes (who played his disgruntled wife) and cremated her.

Charlie was able figure things out, but wound up being prepped for the crematorium herself.

That episode ended in a very tragic manner for Giancarlo Esposito.

I love the fact that Charlie is no longer on the run from the mob because it did not feel like something that I was going to enjoy. Now with that out of the way, I feel as if Poker Face can really take off this season.

Poker Face S2 E1

Posted on by

Spoilers

“The Game is a Foot”

Peacock’s hit comedy/mystery show Poker Face starring Natasha Lyonne returned to the streamer recently with all new episodes. The first episode had guest star Cynthia Erivo appearing in five, count them, five different roles as she played quintuplets.

The whole story actually confused me for quite a while. I must have not paid enough attention at the very beginning when the crime was being set up because I struggled to understand what was happening. I got it eventually, and that helped the story.

It was a real convoluted tryst as one of the quintuplets killed and tried to replace the one of the quintuplets that had been long lost. The long lost quintuplet was getting the full inheritance and it was a big scam.

Charlie Cale (Lyonne) met up with one and stuck her lie-detecting nose into the situation, confused by what was going on. She did not understand why the lies were coming.

Natasha Lyonne is excellent in this role and she makes the show a lot of fun.

Of course, Charlie is on the run from the mob from the end of the first season and she apparently is being pursued by a pair of hitmen who are worse shots than the Stormtroopers in Star Wars. The running joke of these buffoons shooting at Charlie as she runs away happened several times at the beginning and the end of the episode. It was funny at first, but I hope that is not a continual joke over the season.

There are two more episodes available currently and then regular episodes drop on Thursdays.