1-1-1: Poker Face Season 2

created by Rian Johnson

The What 100: Charlie is still on the run from mafia bounty hunters after the events of last season and bounces around from place to place, solving mysteries along the way. Beatrix Hasp (the woman who put the bounty on her head) does catch up with her but instead of killing her, she has need of her special talent as a human lie detector. Her help cuts her free of running from the mob. Even still she bounces from place to place, crime and death finding her wherever she goes. Eventually she winds up in New York with her '69 Barracuda on its last legs, but she has a place to sleep and maybe makes a new best friend to aide her in her accidental crime solving ways....

(1 Great) The mid-season episode, "Sloppy Joseph" was the standout episode for me. In a private grade school the quiet but, Elijah, the intelligent child of the institute's janitor is giving ace student Stephanie a run for her money in the gold star department. Stephanie has, to put it bluntly, psychopathic tendencies and cannot abide losing her top status in the class. So when it's time for the school talent show, she messes with Elijah's magic trick through elaborate means and he accidentally murders the class gerbil. Turns out Charlie has taken a temp job and starts to unravel Stephanie's scheming, which it turns out is much bigger than just what she's done to Elijah.

What makes this episode so great is that it's a very, very different type of crime. I guess there's still a murder (poor Joseph) but Charlie facing off against, well, a demon child is something quite different, and it touches on class/status issues that show how rich psychos kind of always get away with it even when they don't. It's like Columbo meets American Pycho except Patrick Bateman is an adorably unsettling 10 year old girl. 

(1 Good) Poker Face by its nature doesn't have a lot of stability in terms of cast and setting. By it's nature it's an "...of the week" type show, which finds Charlie in a different environment with different people every episode. Season one set up the premise that Charlie was on the run from the mob, so it made sense that she was constantly on the move and where she wound up was off the grid. This season however, after resolving the Beatrix Hasp issue, they eventually settle her down in New York City. Shenanigans happen again but she makes a friend in Alex (Kent household favourite Patti Harrison) who appears in the final four episodes. It seems like she's being set up to be Charlie's crime solving partner, which, when you love Patti Harrison like I do, delighted me to no end. What they do with Alex, however, is the show's mandate, which is disrupt any sense of status quo, and so the show's two-part finale kind of ties a bow on the season, bringing things ...if not full circle then into an outward spiral.

So yeah, Patti Harrison. Awesome. 

Also what Poker Face lacks in recurring cast and setting it makes up for in formulae. I still love that the first 10 - 20 minutes of each episode establishes the characters of the week, the environment they're in and the murder that takes place. Part of the fun is guessing how Charlie fits into the picture, which is always revealed after the first commercial break.

(1 Bad) Too much focus on guest stars, maybe? A victim of their own success, stars want to be in the Poker Face business, and boy are they ever. This season opened with Wicked's Cynthia Erivo playing quintuplets, and doing a great job, but it all felt a little too dazzling, especially when the next episode throws Giancarlo Esposito and Katie Holmes into the mix, followed by John Mulaney and Richard Kind, and then Kumail Nanjiani and Gaby Hoffman, and then and then and then...

Actually, looking at this list and more (Carol Cane, Simon Rex, David Krumholtz, Margo Martindale, Sam Richardson, Melanie Lynsky, John Cho, Awkwafina, Alia Shawkat, Method Man, Jason Ritter, Justin Theroux, Haley Joel Osment) I mean, yeah, these are all recognizable faces, but they're all character actors and really not Big Name Stars. These are the type of actors who should be guest starring in a well-made, popular, prestige murder mystery/comedy show. Much like last season's only slightly more modest guest cast.

I guess by the nature of the formulae, they wind up pulling focus away from Charlie, but Charlie kind of is the crime-solving vessel and will pull focus back on herself when she needs to. Is it a problem? Is it really bad? Probably not.

META: This season of Poker Face didn't seem to announce itself as loudly as season 1, which somehow neither Toasty nor I managed to write about on this blog. That seems impossible given that we both really seemed to dig it, but there you go. Time gets away from us all. Toasty had a brief mid-season 2 write-up where he seemed hesitant about this season, and we talked in person about how season 2 wasn't capturing the same vibe as season 1 (Toasty points out there's a new showrunner which probably explains it). It comes down to tone, I think. This season is lighter and more lighthearted than last season. There was an undercurrent of darkness and foreboding to season one that is missing here so it feels like its lost its grit a little bit. Above I called it a murder mystery/comedy. I wouldn't call season 1 a comedy, but season 2 sure is. At the very least, it seems a show that, foremost, wants to be fun. And it is. It really really is. 

I just miss that bit of grit.

[SPOILER]

RIP '69 Barracuda .