“You Ever Gamble? ‘Cause You Can Make a Killing.”
Being the mystery fan I am, naturally I heard about Poker Face when it first premiered on Peacock. And many people seemed to love it. Not being that impressed with Rian Johnson, the creator of the show, I was skeptical, but I decided to give it a chance when I got a subscription to Peacock.
When we first meet Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne), she is working as a cocktail waitress at a casino. Then a friend dies, and Carlie’s super power comes into play. She can instantly tell if someone is lying or not. As a result, she unravels the truth of what happened to her friend.
And she finds herself on the run. She takes whatever odd job she can working for cash so she is harder to track down. She takes a job at a BBQ joint. She becomes the merch seller for a band trying to make a comeback. She takes a job as an assistant to a movie maker. And she becomes a waitress at a dinner theater company. However, at each job, she finds herself involved in a murder. Can she bring justice while also not drawing publicity to herself so those chasing her can’t find her?
Each episode of the show starts out by introducing us to the new characters and showing us the death and who was responsible. That’s not anything new. Most people compared it to Columbo, which I haven’t watched (I know, I know), but I’m familiar with this type of mystery telling from Diagnosis: Murder, and Monk. My issue with it here is that it takes a long time to introduce Charlie into things. It’s usually after the first act before we see her, sometimes even longer. And, when we do, we flashback to what we’ve already seen and watch how Charlie interacted with the characters we’ve just met. In other words, we watch the same thing twice. There wasn’t enough new insight to make it worth it for me.
Once the story really gets going, it is interesting. I liked seeing how Charlie pieced things together and brought her own version of justice to things. No, she’s not acting as a vigilante, but she’s often being creative in how she makes sure the guilty are punished. I appreciated that.
Keep in mind that the content on this is not safe for broadcast TV. It is on a streaming service, after all. Each episode is roughly an hour in length – some shorter, some longer. There are ten episodes in the season.
Natasha Lyonne is the only person to appear in every episode. She is great as Charlie, and I found myself really caring about her by the time the season was over. The rest of the cast is fun as well, but she really carries the show. Quite a few famous names popped in over the course of the season.
Which brings us to the season finale. It fell completely flat for me. There was a big twist that didn’t make any sense given what had come before. And I get why they gave the season the ending they did, but it infuriated me since it meant nothing had changed for Charlie. It really felt uncreative.
As with most Rian Johnson products, Poker Face had promise, but the execution left something to be desired. The second season is dropping soon, but I doubt I’ll go out of my way to watch it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for stopping by. In order to combat spam, I moderate most comments. I'll get to your comment as soon as I can.