Like a neighborhood information broadcast or little bit of Russian propaganda, the primary season of Poker Face portrays the US as being infested by liars and murderers. Every episode of Peacock’s thriller collection depicts such horrors as fratricide and fraud in traditional American locales: a Nevada on line casino, a Texas smokehouse, a Colorado ski lodge. The present’s heroine, Charlie Cale (performed by Natasha Lyonne), wields an uncanny, presumably mystical expertise for detecting bullshit, whether or not spewed by hotshot race-car drivers or kindly previous girls. “Everybody, they lie continually,” she says. “It’s like birds chirping.”
And but, as this week’s season finale culminated with photographs of a freeway slicing by means of amber-toned fields, it impressed a counterintuitive feeling: hope within the American dream. The brutality contained in Poker Face’s 10 episodes is outweighed by humor, humanism, intelligence, and, maybe most crucially, optimism. The truth that the present is successful speaks to a starvation for leisure that counterbalances cruelty and kindness. In Poker Face’s America, justice relies upon much less on vigilantism or the regulation than on common folks making genuine connections with each other. (I received’t considerably spoil any plot particulars.)
Poker Face’s message arises from its masterful building. Every episode begins with the portrayal of against the law; Charlie then suits collectively puzzle items the viewer already comprehends. Which means that to make the present entertaining, its creators—the chief producer Rian Johnson and the showrunners Nora and Lilla Zuckerman—needed to concentrate on, effectively, leisure. Zippy dialogue, memorable jokes, punchy visuals, and lovable characters supersede rote formulation for suspense. Episodes find time for formal detours (a Odor-O-Imaginative and prescient-like montage, a creature-feature-like sequence) and meandering diner-booth banter. On a deep, structural degree, each little element issues.
This suits with Poker Face’s divergence from a morally doubtful cultural development: true crime. Whether or not through a podcast a couple of real-life assassin or a docudrama a couple of Silicon Valley scammer, streaming-era storytelling has wrung limitless revenue from learning horrible folks doing horrible issues. Nothing is new about gawking at creeps, however the true-crime growth presumes to show actuality whereas really distorting it into the form of a modern, propulsive thriller. By making criminals so central, collection corresponding to Inventing Anna and Dahmer inevitably humanize and glamorize them. Serving secondary roles, victims are flattened into tragic, hapless marks. We’re left with the trendy amplification of a tragic truism: As a result of our society is constructed on belief, liars—even liars who’re additionally killers—can get very far. These tales current as cautionary tales, however they’re actually how-to kits.
In Poker Face, the baddies are humanized as effectively, however to totally different results. The early elements of many episodes zoom in on banal existences: the Peloton-and-delivery-food routine of a wealthy man on home arrest, the restlessness of radical activists residing in a retirement house. Finally, these killers’ backstories come to the fore—however often simply to spotlight the pathetic hypocrisies that underlie their wrongdoing. Seemingly noble motives for homicide—love, vengeance, justice—are mentioned, however they are usually flimsy covers for greed and self-interest. Within the season finale, one character makes a speech about how they’re betraying another person as a result of they’ve been grossly mistreated. However their final incentive for pulling the set off is to amass a yacht.
Reducing towards such cynicism is Charlie, a raspy-voiced raconteur with an ear for deception and a priestly religion within the goodness of individuals. She’s drawn into every thriller much less by the voyeurism of a true-crime aficionado than by her real connections with the folks affected (though at one level this season, she does enlist a murder-solving podcaster to assist her out). The finale, through which she declines provides of employment from varied organizations in want of a truth-sniffer, reveals that she stays on the highway, serving to others, just because she desires to. By revealing a little bit of her backstory and household historical past, the finale additionally implies that she has made sacrifices as a way to hold utilizing her abilities. Like a crusading cowboy or lonely superhero, the value of a righteous life is rootlessness.
In contrast to conventional Hollywood heroes, although, Charlie by no means presumes she will do her work on her personal. Every episode, she makes allies who’re as sharply drawn because the killer and herself. Mechanics and waiters and drifters are all vested with life by means of spicy writing and top-tier casting (veterans together with Nick Nolte and up-and-comers corresponding to All the things All over the place All at As soon as’s Stephanie Hsu make appearances). All too typically, certainly one of these buddies seems to be the episode’s homicide sufferer. The truth that Charlie will get to know them so effectively makes their dying significant to each the present’s hero and its viewers. It additionally offers function—and a story arc—to the aspect characters who help Charlie’s crime-solving. Though evildoers exist all over the place, the magic of Poker Face is that it makes them appear outnumbered by first rate folks.
And magic, to make sure, is an enormous a part of the present. Charlie’s lie-busting powers are inexplicable and unerring, and thus, we should assume, by some means supernatural. So, too, is her sample (curse?) of stumbling into homicide wherever she goes. Within the finale, she even acquires a glowing, lewd talisman that guides her quest. Harkening to a time earlier than the true-crime wave, when Columbo and Homicide, She Wrote approached grim realities with far-fetched whimsy and coronary heart, Poker Face is lovingly, enthusiastically a fantasy. We don’t fairly stay within the nation the present depicts, however in an odd means, we must always want to.
