The New Season of ‘Poker Face’ Considers A Natasha Lyonne Who’s More Than A Bullshit Detector
The history of comedy on TV is littered with characters who have extraordinary gifts. There are the ones who can do literal magic, like Samantha on Bewitched, Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie, or, well, all the witches of Agatha All Along (and WandaVision, which spun it off). There are space aliens, like Uncle Martin in My Favorite Martian or The Great Gazoo on The Flintstones or Mork on Mork & Mindy. There are straight-up mutant superheroes, like in She-Hulk or Doom Patrol or The Boys. Poker Face’s Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) has the preternatural ability to tell, from merely hearing someone make a statement, if it’s a lie; thus, she is part of a long TV tradition, even if her power is a bit less dramatic than if she could change the nature of matter, stop time or fly around shooting lasers from her hands. And while watching her use this gift to solve mysteries is extremely satisfying, the second season of Poker Face also gives us a peek at what Charlie could become, beyond her superpower.
The show’s first season, which premiered on Peacock in early 2023, put Charlie on the defensive in the pilot. Before the events of the series, Charlie had been using her gift to win poker games at low-visibility casinos around the country; getting too bold and trying it in Reno’s Frost Hotel & Casino brought her to the attention of namesake Sterling Frost Sr. (Ron Perlman), who has had her blackballed nationwide, and hired her as a cocktail server. Though the job is intended to be punitive, the Charlie we meet seems content: She’s got a cool vintage car, a cozy trailer, pleasant neighbors and a good friend in Nat (Dascha Polanco), a housekeeper at the hotel.
When Nat finds something she shouldn’t on a guest’s computer, she ends up dead — an event that coincides with Sterling Jr. (Adrien Brody) drafting Charlie into a scheme against the very same guest whose room Nat was cleaning, and who has been just as careless with his off-books games as he was with his laptop screen. Charlie’s bullshit detector helps her link Sterling Jr. — via his henchman, Cliff (Benjamin Bratt) — to Nat’s murder. Sterling Jr. takes a header off a balcony rather than face prosecution for his crimes, which puts Charlie in Sterling Sr.’s crosshairs again. Charlie goes on the run, meeting various kinds of shady people, often in the course of the kinds of short-term, off-the-table jobs she can take.
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Wherever she goes around the country — a Tennessee race track, a Texas barbecue joint — Cliff is never far behind. The Season One finale complicates the story with several major shifts of motive and loyalty (and multiple lucrative job offers for Charlie), but the upshot is that the final moments bring Charlie a new antagonist in Mobster casino operator Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman), putting Charlie back on the road.
There are different versions of Poker Face creator Rian Johnson’s Columbo origin story depending on where you look — this New York Times piece suggests that it was part of his TV viewing diet as a kid, but he told Deadline he didn’t really get into it until COVID lockdown. Regardless of the specifics, the debt Poker Face owes it isn’t in question. For one, the show kicks off with a bright yellow Folio Bold Extended title treatment, including copyright info in fine print below; for another, each episode more or less follows Columbo’s signature “howcatchem” format, as the audience sees the perp committing the crime, with the crime solver getting folded into the action later on.
One major difference between the shows: Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) virtually never departed the greater Los Angeles area, whereas Charlie’s nomadic circumstances have been a signal feature of the Poker Face story. This continues in the second season, as Charlie’s new gigs — picking apples; renting out her car to appear in a period movie; volunteering at an animal sanctuary — land her in the middle of extraordinary events that seem like suicides, marital abandonment or terrible accidents. Only Charlie can determine if these are actually manslaughters, murders, and in one of my favorites of the season, aggravated gerbilcide.
Charlie is definitely not a cop, and her status as an unaffiliated citizen investigator is behind the two biggest structural knocks on the show. First, there’s the fact that, as someone who’s essentially a drifter, and whose sudden disappearance (or worse) would go unnoticed by a community she doesn’t belong to, Charlie puts herself in potentially mortal danger every time she confronts someone she suspects has already committed murder. Second, there’s the show’s habit of defaulting to carceral institutions when it comes to delivering justice against perpetrators (or for victims) of crime. Occasionally, we get dialogue that places Charlie in an anti-cop posture her actions generally belie; as Roxana Hadadi wrote at the end of the first season, Charlie can say she’s not about “helping the man” and turn down a job offer from a friendly FBI agent, but when so many episodes end with cop cars rolling onto the scene of a crime Charlie’s solved as she blows town herself, the show’s take can’t help feeling pro-police.
Based on the first 10 second-season episodes provided to critics (the last two were held back), the show’s producers have heard this critique. After a series premiere in which local cops are established to be on the Frost payroll, Season Two’s third episode, “Whack-a-Mole,” returns to the idea that law enforcement officers can be corrupt. That said (and without spoiling it), the pains the script takes to make sure the viewer knows the dirty agent in question is outside the norm, and such a stain on the organization that letting a major criminal go free is of less importance than apprehending him, verge on the farcical.
Edgier is the fourth episode, “The Taste of Human Blood.” Gaby Hoffmann — one of many former Lyonne co-stars (in this case, from Everyone Says I Love You) who appears this season — plays Fran LaMont, a uniformed cop in the Florida Panhandle; we watch her become morbidly obsessed with winning a local police award over “Gator Joe” (Kumail Nanjiani), who’s raised his rescue alligator Daisy from a hatchling to a cow who fills the whole back seat of his police cruiser, and who’s become a social media star documenting their antics. The cynicism of this episode’s dénouement brings an acidic flavor the show would benefit from adding more often. Fortunately, the pitch-black ending of Episode 6, “Sloppy Joseph,” was right around the corner, but I’m even more loath to spoil that one.
As for threats to Charlie’s health: One of the very first things we see is her getting shot at in a quick succession of locations, but that is most certainly not the end of the peril she faces. This may inform her stated attempts, later in the season, not to get involved in other people’s affairs, but don’t worry — it’s not a pledge she can stick to.
At a certain point, key aspects of Charlie’s nomadic life change, making it possible for her to put some thought into how she actually wants to live, separate from the whims of fate. What we don’t see is any evidence of Charlie trying to pursue a career in any kind of formal way. If Charlie’s co-operation with law enforcement can give her a neoliberal veneer, aimlessness as determined as hers feels almost radical at this point in late-stage capitalism; her cheerful acceptance of whatever life brings her, without desiring more, is practically Buddhist. I have to think one of the great pleasures of writing on the show lies in coming up with one-off settings for Charlie to bring her gravelly vibe to: a minor-league baseball stadium, a middle school cafeteria line, an Indian restaurant. (One of the jobs she tries on in mid-season is in an office, and it’s far less incongruous seeing her evade her would-be murderers than when she has to wrangle a malfunctioning Xerox machine.)
Anyway: this is a season of firsts for Charlie. It’s the first time we see her in one location for multiple episodes. It’s also the first time we see her make a friend who isn’t involved in one of her mysteries — “Good Buddy,” a trucker she connects with via CB radio, and when I say he’s voiced by Steve Buscemi, you may be as shocked as I was to realize he hadn’t already been on the show. Who can Charlie become when she’s not looking over her shoulder? Does she want a permanent address? If she can choose a kind of family instead of just Velcro-ing on to random co-workers until circumstances rip her off to hit the next town, how might that look? The evolution of Charlie’s story permits producers, and Lyonne, to add dimensionality to her, and consider what to do with her if she’s not such a lone wolf.
One of the greatest joys in a show like this is in its guest casting, and this season doesn’t disappoint. In addition to the aforementioned Hoffmann, other past Lyonne collaborators include Melanie Lynskey (who co-starred with her in But I’m A Cheerleader), Kevin Corrigan and David Krumholtz (in two separate episodes, but both from Slums of Beverly Hills), John Mulaney (who wrote on the season of Documentary Now! in which Lyonne appeared). We also see (among many others) Awkwafina, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Holmes, Patti Harrison, Natasha Leggero, Margo Martindale, Method Man, Simon Rex, Sam Richardson, Jason Ritter and Geraldine Viswanathan.
Arguably the most Columbonian touch is having Rian Johnson touchstone Noah Segan — who played a sheriff in the series premiere — return in an entirely unrelated role. Without knowing where the end of Season Two will leave Charlie, the possibilities feel endless. Even if she stays put, it’s going to be a ride.
