Sleuths, by and large, aren’t given the luxury of lying low. Worn-down beat detectives are always getting called to the next crime scene. Part-time investigators can’t resist a femme fatale’s desperate pleas (or ample pocketbook). But even when you set aside their professional obligations, puzzle-solvers usually don’t know what to do with themselves when the game is not yet afoot. Typically, gumshoes crack cases by compulsion.
Take Rian Johnson‘s last “Knives Out” mystery: At the start of “Glass Onion,” Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) has grown frustrated by the pandemic’s stultifying effect on real-world brainteasers. With too much time off (and too much time moping in the tub), he thinks he’s going insane. He’s tried reading books, he’s tried playing games, he’s even enlisted help from a few similarly-minded peers (including Angela Lansbury and “Poker Face” star Natasha Lyonne). But nothing helps. “The last thing I need is a vacation,” he says. “I need danger, the hunt, a challenge. I need… a great case.”
In “Poker Face” Season 2, Johnson sees this quandary through the looking glass (onion). Lyonne’s Charlie Cale has too many cases to solve and too little downtime in between. No matter where her baby blue Plymouth Barracuda takes her, there’s another liar, another dead body, and another wrong waiting to be righted. Her situation, like her innate ability to identify a lie, is unique. She’s not a cop on assignment. She’s not a private eye looking for work. She’s happy to make a living picking apples from an orchard or snagging foul balls in the minor leagues. And yet, death haunts Charlie wherever she goes, so it’s only natural to wonder: Is her nose for bullshit a blessing or a curse?
What a mystery! Resolving this dilemma gives “Poker Face” Season 2 a sturdy spine, which is especially important since the individual vertebrae (aka the individual episodes) aren’t quite as compelling (save, once again, for one true gem).
Since we’ve known Charlie, she’s been running. In the first season, she seeks justice for her murdered friend and, as a result of doing the right thing, has to go on the lam. Each week, she’s in a new town, working a new gig, caught up in another suspicious story. The lone wolf lifestyle suits Charlie just fine — for a while. Her ebullient personality helps to make friends wherever she goes, but when some of those friends end up dead and the rest have to be left behind when it’s time to skip town, well, those losses add up.
As Season 2 starts, Charlie’s traded one vengeful mob boss for another. She out-maneuvered Sterling Frost, Sr. (Ron Perlman), but after refusing to use her “gift” to help another crime family, she now has to deal with Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman). Here we go again: Charlie does the right thing, and her reward is a life spent in hiding.
For a procedural, starting over is more of a comfort than an annoyance, and the first episode, directed by Johnson, offers numerous pleasures — five of which are all played by Cynthia Erivo! There’s also a mini-montage of Charlie trying out odd jobs (and making new friends) before she’s chased off by gun-toting mobsters. There’s lovely cinematography by director of photography Jaron Presant, and Johnson savors every odd little eccentricity available in the wacky initial investigation. (His ability to reveal key details through playful yet carefully considered camera movements is downright Spielbergian.)
Perhaps most importantly, Episode 1 also makes it clear Charlie is enjoying her life as best she can; that is, she’s enjoying her life whenever she’s not staring death in the face (those mobsters’ bullets come awfully close) — a pattern that persists in her subsequent cases. While most of those aren’t as satisfying as the first, Charlie always is: Generous and bright, like the long curly locks spilling out from under her various trucker hats, Charlie is an unnatural charmer, her wide smile and gravelly intonation a congenial contradiction that convincingly cultivates curiosity in wherever they’re aimed. She makes the most out of her fleeting conversations with strangers, and only the liars among them are ever upset for sharing a few sentences with our affable star.
It’s a testament to Lyonne’s well-honed charisma and attentive performance that Charlie remains the top draw despite an onslaught of shiny guest stars playing distinct characters. Katie Holmes is a delight as a fed-up mortician’s wife more than ready to fly the coop. Gaby Hoffman’s quick turn from straight-laced Cop of the Year candidate to a feral Florida Woman is batshit fun. Simon Rex settles in nicely as a washed-up pitcher looking to make a little money off losing. Melanie Lynskey and John Cho crackle with chemistry in the season’s best episode (of the 10 screened for critics), and Erivo brings the perfect playful pitch to each of her nearly half-dozen characters.
Two tweaks to the format help distinguish Season 2’s journey from the original run: The first is a notable uptick in chaos — the situations Charlie finds herself in range from psychotic scams (“A New Lease on Death”) to absurd send-ups (“One Last Job”), but each episode attempts to ratchet up whatever quirky quality it’s working with, including an early entry that nearly goes supernatural (“Last Looks”).
The other departure is simpler: Charlie, without crossing into spoilers, gets to come out of hiding. She’s free to decide where to go and when, which allows the show to revel in an extended stay later on and serve the season’s central conceit: Season 2, by and large, is about accepting who you are, even if living your best life doesn’t mean living an easy life.
Charlie yearns for enough time to appreciate “the unobserved pageant of the ordinary,” as she calls the knickknacks filling up random cars, and thus, random lives. A life on the run doesn’t allow for much rumination, but neither does a stationary one. Giving Charlie the time to experience both allows her to examine what she really wants, and what she really needs, without deluding herself into thinking things would be different if she wasn’t being hounded by mobsters (or, on the flip-side, if she wasn’t tied down to any one place or person).
She’s not like Benoit Blanc, always itching for the next great case to crack; she’d be perfectly happy floating in untroubled waters. She isn’t a detective, and she’s certainly not a cop; for all the odd jobs she’s had, solving mysteries isn’t one of them. Charlie is just a person in a unique position to help, so of course she’s persistently hounded by people who need it — and lots of people need it! At a time in America when our institutional safety nets are being disbanded and the burden to support each other often comes down to individual efforts, Charlie’s struggle feels all the more apt. She wants to help — she just also wishes there was less need for her to do so.
And therein lies her salvation. Charlie can’t help but love people. She’s a people person. Even when she tries to stay out of their lives, she’s inevitably drawn in by natural or circumstantial curiosity. Because Charlie thrives around people, so does “Poker Face.” As a howcatchem procedural, it has to resolve similar issues as its lead: The formula requires a certain amount of repetition, just as the audience demands a new mystery each week. When episodes rely on people to bring them to life — be it famous guest stars, well-realized characters, life-affirming arcs, or all of the above — they’re that much easier to enjoy. For the most part, “Poker Face” Season 2 is quite easy to enjoy. After all, it knows helping people isn’t a gift or a curse; it’s a calling, and when you realize how fulfilling it can be, the only mystery left to solve is how to help others see the same thing.
Grade: B
“Poker Face” Season 2 premieres Thursday, May 8 on Peacock. Three episodes will be released the first week, then one episode weekly through the finale on July 10.
