Review: Poker Face, "Dead Man's Hand" and "The Night Shift" | Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2

In which we meet the charming and loquacious Charlie Cale.

Photo: Peacock

Welcome to Episodic Medium’s weekly coverage of Poker Face, which debuts with four episodes on Peacock today—this review covers the first two episodes, while an additional review covering the third and fourth will be sent out on Saturday. As always, the first review is available to all, but subsequent reviews will only be available to paid subscribers. You can find out more on our About Page.

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“I’m not a cop. Bitch.”

Rian Johnson excels at telling detective stories that exist outside the police force. His debut film Brick transposed old-fashioned film noir tropes and dialogue in the middle of a California high school at the turn of the 21st century, as a dogged young man delved into his hometown’s seedy underground to figure out who killed his ex-girlfriend. And most recently, Johnson waded very definitively into the detective genre with his two Agatha Christie-inspired Benoit Blanc mysteries, Knives Out and Glass Onion, with a third one on the way.

Now we have Johnson’s latest project, the Peacock case-of-the-week detective series Poker Face. Starring the motormouthed and ebullient Natasha Lyonne, Poker Face very much fits into a specific subset of the offerings on Peacock. Yes, the streamer is the home of various sporting events, new-ish Universal Pictures titles, and myriad Hallmark Channel films. But Peacock is also home to a fair few old-fashioned detective series from The Rockford Files to Murder, She Wrote to the show that serves as a partial template for this one: Columbo.

Ah, Columbo. If you have not yet watched Columbo, a) you should, because it’s amazing; and b) the show’s full run is conveniently available to stream on Peacock. You can start with the two pilot films from 1968 and 1971, each of which served as long-form introductions to a rumpled detective from the Los Angeles Police Department with a rundown car, a droopy dog, a raincoat, a chomped-on cigar, and an innate tenacity to get under the skin of various and sundry murderers in Southern California. These days, Columbo is best known for two things: the incredible, Emmy-winning work from Peter Falk as the eponymous sleuth and its inventive format. 

That format is worth discussing in the context of the Poker Face premiere. As opposed to the “whodunit,” Columbo presented the “howcatchem”. There was never any mystery about who died, why they died, or who killed them. Where so many other mysteries and detective series start with the detective trying to figure out what happened, Columbo began by depicting the murder and showing us the killer, who spent the rest of the episode attempting to evade capture by the dogged sleuth, who almost always appeared after a murder as opposed to before.

From the start of the pilot episode, “Dead Man’s Hand,” Poker Face makes clear some recognizable connections to Columbo, down to the font style of the opening titles. (Columbo was one part of the “wheel” series known as The NBC Mystery Movie, so other series within that wheel, including McCloud and McMillan & Wife, had similar title designs.) Most importantly, like Columbo, “Dead Man’s Hand” starts by introducing the victim, their killer, and a clear enough explanation for why the murder occurs, all before we meet our detective, cocktail waitress Charlie Cale (Lyonne). 

Poker Face deviates from Columbo in its broader setup. Yes, this is a detective series. Yes, it’s a case-of-the-week show. But in spite of some public comments from Johnson and Lyonne, there is a key serialized aspect to Poker Face related to the events of “Dead Man’s Hand.” As the quote at the start of this review attests…well, Charlie Cale is not a cop. Now, we can talk about how Lt. Columbo of the Los Angeles Police Department was not a very good cop. Columbo was an excellent detective. But he didn’t drive a cop car, he never carried a gun, and as depicted in one episode’s subplot, he doesn’t even want to fire a gun. Yet even though Columbo was arguably antithetical to the image of the police officer, he was a cop.

Charlie Cale is a gregarious, charming woman who lives on the border of Arizona and Nevada, scraping by in her work at Frost Casino and living out of a trailer. She doesn’t mind scraping by, either—she has a sunny disposition and good friends, such as casino housekeeper Natalie (Dascha Polanco). Charlie knows her way around, and she’s smart enough to eke out a living.  Of course, it also helps that Charlie Cale is a human lie detector. Yes, as it turns out, Charlie can always tell—in person or on a tinny little video screen—if someone is telling the truth or spouting bullshit (even if she doesn’t always know why they’re lying). This preternatural gift makes her a dangerous poker player – that’s why she’s conscripted into duty by casino head Sterling Frost Jr. (Adrien Brody) to spy on a private poker game spearheaded by a well-known high roller and fleece said high roller for millions.

Knowing when someone’s lying also makes Charlie dangerous when crimes are committed around her, both to the killer and to herself because…well, as she says, she’s not a cop, so she doesn’t have the protection that being a cop would lend her. In “Dead Man’s Hand,” the crime is most personal. Natalie winds up dead at the hand of Frost and his right-hand security man Cliff (Benjamin Bratt), who eliminate her because she sees something horrifying on the laptop of a well-known high roller from whom Sterling wants to rob.

Charlie knows a red flag when one is raised; even the notion—created by Cliff—that Natalie’s abusive husband killed his wife and then himself rubs her the wrong way. Not being a cop is an albatross around Charlie’s neck, even (or especially) she starts a rough investigation of her friend’s death. Revealing to Frost and Cliff that she knows what they did all but marks her for the grave.

It’s to the credit of Johnson (who wrote and directed “Dead Man’s Hand”) that the tension manages to exist hand-in-hand with the raffish humor Lyonne brings to the role of Charlie. Her laid-back mannerisms are Falkian (Falkesque?) in their own way without being a carbon copy and are disarming even amid the potential for Charlie to get killed the same way her friend did. Eventually, Charlie escapes, though not before a) Cliff shoots her and b) she witnesses Frost jump off the side of his hotel upon being found out by his terrifying offscreen father. The murders here have even larger consequences than on those 70s-era shows.

Photo: Peacock

“You’re not a cop. You’re just some…woman.”

In the second episode, “The Night Shift”, Charlie’s stuck overnight in a small New Mexico town after her ‘69 Plymouth breaks down. That same night, Damian, a Subway sandwich maker artist/TikTok celebrity (Brandon Micheal Hall), is killed almost offhandedly by a very creepy young mechanic (Colton Ryan) who pins the death on Marge (Hong Chau), a quiet trucker who came to Charlie’s aid in closing up the festering gunshot wound. When Charlie hears that Marge apparently bludgeoned young Damian to death—as opposed to using her pistol—to fend him off for apparently trying to steal some off-brand medications, our heroine smells bullshit and tries to get to the bottom of the death before Cliff can hunt her down. 

Generally speaking, these two episodes—both of which are directed by Johnson—are sturdy, well-made pieces of television that hearken back to the 70s style of filmmaking, with long and patient shots, rapid zooms, and pacing that lets character dynamics breathe without lagging. And some of how Poker Face turns the notion of a show like Columbo on its head—such as the fact that Charlie can’t protect herself behind a badge, and can barely muster up the energy to lie that she’s a cop to see some security footage—raise the stakes for the charismatic lead character. 

But there are aspects of Poker Face that make me somewhat hesitant, at least so far. (As I write these words, the first six of ten episodes are available to critics, but I’ve watched only these two.) Considering how Knives Out and Glass Onion (which, for reference, I adore almost equally) play around with chronology, it should not come as a shock that Poker Face does the same. While Columbo began each episode by depicting a murder and how the killer tries to shift suspicion off themselves, the rest of the story would follow sequentially. 

In Poker Face, it’s not just that we witness the murder first and learn why the killer does what they do. It’s that when we meet Charlie in each episode, we’re meeting her before the murder has occurred, with the scripts rewinding to establish where Charlie is when the crime is committed. In “The Night Shift,” withholding Charlie’s whereabouts for almost 20 minutes raises the tension as we’re wondering what happened to her post-gunshot. But it also means that the crime-solving part of the show takes up less overall time. “The Night Shift” clocks in at 62 minutes, and Charlie gets wind of Damian’s death 28 minutes in, largely because of how much time it takes for us to figure out how she plays into the murder and Marge having been framed. 

On one hand, I get the rewinding-with-time aspect: Charlie’s not a cop, so it’s not like we should expect her to wander onto the scene only after a murder is committed. If she’s not already there when the dirty deed goes down, her arrival may seem too timely.

But the flip side is that there’s in medias res storytelling going on, and I’m not going to lie to you folks: I’m not a fan of in medias res storytelling in general. (With Knives Out and Glass Onion, at least, the back-and-forth chronologies do not mirror each other exactly. Here, the show appears to be establishing its own formula to be repeated in each installment.) I don’t know how necessary it is in this show’s case, either. If the narrative flowed in chronological order, there may be less tension, for example, in figuring out how Charlie is doing post-gunshot wound (or, in the case of the opening episode, how she and Natalie are connected), but it would allow for more time to let Charlie flex her sleuthing abilities. 

Considering Rian Johnson’s other work, the timey-wimey aspect is not altogether shocking. At one moment in “Dead Man’s Hand,” Charlie is watching Pulp Fiction on her cell phone, specifically the scene at the film’s end where Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield are eating in a diner, talking about life in general. It is likely no accident that one bit of dialogue we hear is Jules saying he’s going to “walk the Earth. You know, like Caine in Kung Fu.” Charlie Cale is going to have to solve a handful of murders beyond the ones in the first two episodes of Poker Face, but she’s not going to stay in one place for very long.

One thing is exceedingly obvious from these installments: Natasha Lyonne is an absolute delight as Charlie Cale. She’s a shambling figure of a detective, as Columbo-like as she’s similar to The Dude in The Big Lebowski or Philip Marlowe in Robert Altman’s 1973 film The Long Goodbye. Lyonne’s as funny in big showdowns as in offhand comments, such as a shocked reaction at being woken up on a picnic table by a literal buzzard. And the deadpan reactions from many of the people surrounding her are equally funny and unexpected. (I particularly enjoyed how a young convenience-store employee, upon Charlie explaining her ability to spot a lie, says, “It’s OK, I don’t care.”)

As Poker Face proceeds through its first season, I’m hoping that some of the less serialized elements get stronger, especially considering the massive list of one-and-done guest actors. Even though I’m dubious regarding a couple aspects, the show’s starting out in an intriguing fashion. Hopefully, with Johnson passing the buck to some other writers and directors, the show’s shape will smooth out.

Stray Observations

• Peacock is releasing the first four episodes of Poker Face today—as noted above, another review is on the way to cover the other two opening installments on Saturday. Two and two, as Chuck Woolery would say.

• It’s no accident that the Pulp Fiction clip briefly glimpsed in the pilot reflects how Quentin Tarantino plays with time—the scene is both the film’s finale and ties into the opening, which sets up a potential diner robbery that Vincent and Jules evade. 

• It’s been a while since I watched Orange is the New Black, so it took me until a Wikipedia search to remind myself that I recognized Dascha Polanco from that series as well as from co-starring in the film version of In the Heights.

• If my ears do not deceive me, the gravelly tones of Sterling Frost, Sr. are provided by Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman, who I imagine we’ll see at some point in the flesh.

• The smash-cut from Sterling and Charlie shaking on the deal to take down the morally repulsive whale to the word “SLAIN” in the headline regarding Natalie’s death is impressive, and immediately topped by the shot of Charlie’s wide eyes, the online story reflected in her teary gaze. This Rian Johnson fellow might have a future in directing!

• I choose to believe that Noah Segan’s local sheriff is the same as the Harlan Thrombey-loving detective he portrayed in Knives Out, and you cannot convince me otherwise.

• I hope we get to see Charlie drink coffee again because super-fast Natasha Lyonne is very funny indeed.

• A good chunk of pop-culture references in these two episodes, but my favorite has to be Cliff comparing Charlie to Michael Westen from Burn Notice. Peacock, like the USA of old, must truly believe characters are welcome.

• Among the cast in “The Night Shift,” there’s John Ratzenberger as Cliff Clav–er, sorry, as Abe, the “last honest mechanic in New Mexico”, and Colton Ryan as the very obviously weird mechanic Jed. If you are like me, you may remember Colton Ryan from the film version of Dear Evan Hansen, and if you are like me, you may wish to forget you ever saw the film version of Dear Evan Hansen.

• The standout scene in “The Night Shift” is the conversation between Damian and Jed, climaxing in Damian’s death. The lengthy scene unfolds with enough tension that, the first time through, I was genuinely unsure who was going to die.

• Oh, just one more thing. (Sorry/not sorry.) While Poker Face only has some recognizable similarities to Columbo, I will use each week’s review to recommend an episode of Columbo that has some tonal connections.

  • To go along with “Dead Man’s Hand,” I’m recommending “A Friend in Deed”. It’s Columbo’s final third-season episode and the first in which Columbo is forced to investigate his own department – specifically the LAPD Deputy Commissioner. In terms of having two killers and the notion of the murder being committed to hide another crime, “A Friend in Deed” fits quite well.

  • To tie into “The Night Shift,” I’ll recommend “Old Fashioned Murder,” a season-six episode. The primary connection here is the old-fashioned frame job. In the episode, set in an antiquities museum, Ruth (Joyce Van Patten) frames her niece for a pair of murders after attempting to send Columbo down a rabbit hole involving a faked robbery.