“Poker Face” is a road show in the vein of “Kung Fu,” “The A-Team,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “The Fugitive,” and so on. Charlie, a drifter, travels across the United States and encounters various murders in various cities. But after “The Sleazy Georgian,” she doesn’t leave the Big Apple as you’d expect. Instead, she settles down, and the next few episodes leading up to the finale take place in New York.
In episode 9, “A New On Death,” Charlie crosses paths with Alex (Patti Harrison) at a New York coffee shop and they become friends. In the following episode, “The Big Pump,” Alex helps Charlie solve a mystery at his local gym and bring the killer to justice. Since “Poker Face” and Charlie have planted their roots in the city, is there room for another recurring character, a companion, a Watson to Charlie’s Sherlock?
No, because the season finale blows that up. In episode 11, “Day of the Iguana,” a killer wearing a latex mask (Justin Theroux) frames Alex for the episode’s murder. The victim (Haley Joel Osment) is the son of mob boss Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman), whom Charlie helped bring back in season 2, episode 3, “Whack-A-Mole.”
While Charlie is determined to prove Alex’s innocence and save her from the mob’s hitmen, the FBI realizes this is the work of the Iguana, a ruthless killer and master of disguise. The Iguana is trying to find Hasp, who has disappeared into witness protection, and has devised a complex scheme to make Charlie do the hard work of finding the HASP so that the Iguana can simply follow Charlie to the target and extract the HASP.
In “The End of the Road,” “Poker Face,” season two pulls its final twist. The previous killer isn’t actually the Iguana, just another pawn of the real Iguana: Alex . Charlie is just a pawn who, together, is already dead. “Alex” had heard of Charlie’s reputation and wanted to see if she could fool Charlie’s BS detector; it turns out she’s the only one who can. As the episode explains, Alex isn’t Charlie’s Watson, she’s his Moriarty.
The episode includes flashbacks to the previous three episodes to recontextualize Alex’s scenes with his true intentions. These kinds of exposition drops are common in whodunits, but “Poker Face” isn’t usually that kind of murder mystery. If someone is a killer, we usually already know it by the time they meet Charlie. Maybe in another detective show, we’d suspect Alex, but not this one. “Poker Face” is a show without twists about the killer’s identity, so this surprise became a structural twist and a plot device.
The second season of “Poker Face” ends with Charlie on the run from the FBI, who hold her responsible for Hasp’s death. This may upset fans who thought the overarching story of Charlie escaping the mob was the biggest problem with the first season of “Poker Face,” but it puts our heroine back on the road with more mysteries (said) more mysteries. If “Poker Face” returns, and as the writers hopefully continue to experiment, we’ll know that not all murders on this show are what they initially appear to be.
“Face Poker” is flowing on the peacock.
