Poker Face review: A breezy finale promises more adventures — and hints at Charlie's secret tragedy
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Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season 1 finale of Poker Face.
Poker Face risks everything in its exceptional season finale. After a long year lie-detecting episodic murders across America, Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) gets trapped by continuity. Cliff (Benjamin Bratt) brings her to Atlantic City for two reunions. Casino boss Sterling Frost Sr. (Ron Perlman) hasn't forgotten what happened to Junior (Adrien Brody), a rare direct plot continuation on this case-of-the-week show. There is the threat of an origin story when Charlie reconnects with the family she left behind. A premiere-bookending climax, Backstory That Explains Everything: Obvious finale stuff, and Peacock's greatest series is never obvious. Instead, a stunning guest performance by Clea DuVall embeds sly tragedy, while the twisty plot suggests Charlie's cross-country adventures will never end. That's good news for season 2 — and, maybe, the doom Charlie chooses for herself.
Peacock Natasha Lyonne on 'Poker Face'
The finale, which I will now spoil, pushes chronological playfulness to new heights. The first scene finds Senior in the premiere timeline sending Cliff after Charlie. A rapid-fire montage follows the gunman through the season. The very cool Bratt is very funny drinking bad coffee through bad motels, Burn Notice his only joy. He catches his prey in Colorado after Charlie recovers from getting buried alive twice. You expect the worst because Senior wears a black hat and a bolo tie, and because New Jersey.
Twist One: Senior doesn't want vengeance. "I'm not gonna hurt you," he promises. They're in the Hasp Casino, the mood so public and non-torture-y Senior gets Charlie a floral dress. Her Barracuda's in valet. She can leave. "But," the man teases, "I think you're curious why I got you here." Twist Two: She is curious. Charlie storms away — and comes back. (That gives her agency in the ensuing trap). Frost's about to meet Beatrix Hasp, "the head of the Five Families," who was plotting with Junior. He wants Charlie to polygraph the crime lord sit down. He offers half a million, and more to keep working for him.
Charlie's in. He hands her a present — and looks shocked when she finds a gun inside. The bullets surprise him, too. It's a frame: Cliff betrayed his boss for a yacht. Now Charlie's fingerprints are on the gun. The Southwest Syndicate and the Five Families want her dead. Trusty FBI Agent Luca Clark (Simon Helberg) warns her off corrupt law enforcement. "Your only one goal," he says, "Is to get off this island alive."
Escape from Atlantic City: Great premise, we've all been there, and director Janicza Bravo brings playfulness to the tension. Charlie slips out with bachelorettes. One of them, a Staggeringly Drunk Woman (Alexi Wasser), offers Charlie a "talisman." It's a penis ring that will reveal Cliff's betrayal and stab his eye out, so the boozehound may be an angel. ("What have I done to the garden that was entrusted to me?" she cries, a poem or a prayer.)
Peacock Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall on 'Poker Face'
Between the party bus and the showdown yacht, the script by creator Rian Johnson manages its best trick. Charlie seeks help from her sister Emily (Clea DuVall). Heavy history in that casting, since DuVall romanced Lyonne in But I'm a Cheerleader! and The Intervention. I picture young Emily and Charlie as the performers' characters from The Faculty and American Pie, two world-weary indie types among teenyboppers. I was worried, though. Poker Face has managed to avoid the overexplain-y instinct that dogs most dramas lately. This isn't a show where people keep bringing up Joel's dead daughter or that time Black Widow died in space. In individual episodes, the past matters not as motivation box-checking but as vibrant action: ancient killings spiraling new bloodshed, a decades-old betrayal forcing a gladiator duel with Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson.
I didn't need the show to reveal Charlie's hidden psychic wound. That can be so reductive — and Emily, in refusing to really talk to her sister, speaks volumes. She acknowledges a possible world where they "hash out the past, talk about Dad, what you did, what you ruined with your truth and bulls---" They could build a new relationship. "But that's not the life you chose. That's not the Charlie Show." Are there hypocrisies lingering beneath Charlie's merry wanderings? "This is not just a series of situations you keep getting reeled into," Emily says. "You choose to be out there."
Recall Charlie stepping back to Senior's table. Now Emily refuses the worshipful TV instinct to make everything about the protagonist's emotional wound. Is this speech too aware? This long-lost sister seems to know all about her sibling's weekly-adventure lifestyle. DuVall's no-bull delivery sparks with vitality, though. "I bet you do some good," Emily says. "I bet there are a lot of people out there who need someone like you. But us? We're doing just fine."
It's a deft bit of cliché defiance, teasing Charlie's past without ever leaving the present. DuVall's amazing, playing a No-Fun Mom with moral wisdom. She's the force field Lyonne bounces off, wordlessly slinking out of the laundry room. Cliff will get caught, Luca will flirtatiously offer Charlie a job. Turning him down this time seems suicidal, since Beatrix promises that her "fully modernized crime syndicate" wants Charlie dead. The finale leaves our hero where the premiere did, another phone crushed on another highway. This time, we understand the excitement and the tragedy of Charlie's existence. A series of situations lie ahead. Does she only like the beginnings of things?
Also, did you catch Hook playing in this episode titled "The Hook"? And how about Rhea Perlman as Beatrix? One Perlman kills another, Rhea replacing Ron as Big Bad: Wow! Bratt leaves in glory, monologuing Blues Traveler before saying the lovely phrase "I'm on a boat." And we get the Full Lyonne, racing for her life in a glamour-comedy dress, sipping Coors by the open road. Emily and Beatrix both call Charlie "ruinous," so there's something self-destructive and self-sacrificial about her decision to leave. She'll never be somebody's aunt or somebody's stable employee. But at least she's trying to ruin the right things.
Finale Grade: A
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