Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Poker Face Season 2 Episode 2.
Not all explosions end with a bang. Well, okay, technically, they do. However, when Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) throws her Chekhov’s vape into the fire at Finch and Sons Funeral Home, we can’t help but hear nothing but a timid fizz instead of a loud boom. Preceded by a scene in which Charlie tells an uninterested child about how her electronic cigarette runs on batteries and then another one in which Giancarlo Esposito’s Fred Finch tells a group of grieving bikers getting ready to cremate a dead relative that batteries explode when they come in contact with fire, the moment is as predictable as it can be. Now, that, per se, is not exactly a problem: lots of stories with obvious endings are still thrilling. What makes the conclusion of the second episode of Poker Face Season 2 is how unsatisfying it is. Though it is clear from the get-go that Charlie will somehow use her vape to crush this episode’s baddie, there is still the mystery of exactly how that will happen, and the answer to that question is: with a lot less fanfare than we would want.
It’s a pity. After an absolute hoot of a first episode, Poker Face falls just short of putting the fun in funeral home with a plot that feels too convenient, uninteresting, bleak, and out of place. It’s certainly a sudden change of pace for those who have decided to binge the first three episodes of the show’s new season that dropped simultaneously on Peacock. “Last Looks” is a story that falls on the darker side of Rian Johnson’s creation, one that is on par with Season 1’s “Escape from Shit Mountain.” However, while that episode came later in the season and thus felt like it had higher stakes when it put Charlie’s life on the line, “Last Looks” feels somewhat hollow in that regard. Its villain-of-the-week gets an appropriate ending, but how we get there and what happens to Charlie herself just doesn’t seem earned.
‘Poker Face’ Season 2 Episode 2 Puts Charlie Back in Touch with Show Business

Image via Peacock

Following in the footsteps of Season 1’s “Rest in Metal,” “Exit Stage Death,” and “The Orpheus Syndrome,” “Last Looks” once again puts Charlie on the path to show business. This time, it’s her 1969 Plymouth Barracuda that catches the eye of a man involved with the production of a movie taking place in the 70s. Said movie is being shot inside the aforementioned Finch and Sons Funeral Home, where Charlie also manages to get a gig as a corpse in an important murder scene. There, she makes friends with some of the cast and crew, as well as with Fred the mortician’s wife, Greta (Katie Holmes). Having met her husband when she was, in her own words, “25 going on 18,” right after her parents’ untimely demise, Greta is less than happy with her life at Finch and Sons. When the film crew pops into her home and brings life into it, she sees it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leave everything behind and move to Miami, where she plans on putting her cosmetology degree to the service of the living instead of the dead. And who promises to give her a ride there? Why, Charlie, of course.
There is, however, one problem: Fred isn’t all that excited about his wife leaving him and moving to Miami. Most of all, he’s not excited about her wanting her half in the upcoming divorce. Thus, taking advantage of the fact that his house already looks like a murder scene and that the film crew will be cleaning everything up in the morning, he kills Greta with a fireplace poker and burns her body down so that she can be taken away alongside the ashes — or remains, as he puts it — being used in the film. The next morning, he simply tells everyone that Greta has gone away without them, using her phone to send out text messages that make her newfound friends believe that she is fine.

Related

If There Is Only One Episode of ‘Poker Face’ To Watch, Make It This Wintery Neo-Noir

Holy shit.

The only person who doesn’t believe him is Charlie. At first, because she hasn’t received a text from Greta and knows that she isn’t hanging out with the film crew anymore. Then, she finds a splatter of blood in a lightbulb that was protected back when the movie was shooting at the funeral home. Finally, she hears Greta’s phone ringing from inside Fred’s drawer, and puts the whole puzzle together in her mind. As the pieces click, though, she is attacked by Fred, who puts her out with chloroform and traps her in a box in order to burn her down to her remains. His plan is thwarted by Charlie simply thrashing too much inside the box and falling to the ground. Subsequently, she throws her vape into the fire, and there goes the funeral home up in flames. Watching as Fred burns to death inside his beloved family business, Charlie is surprised by Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman) sitting in her car and putting a gun to her head.
‘Poker Face’ Season 2 Episode 2 Just Feels Too Convenient

Image via Peacock

Now, we have to admit that Charlie’s lie-detecting superpower is already a pretty convenient plot device, albeit one that we have come to accept as necessary for the existence of an incredibly entertaining show. It’s always interesting to see Charlie sniffing “bullshit” and then proceeding to try and prove herself right. However, in “Last Looks,” Charlie doesn’t get a chance to use her powers. After all, Fred isn’t lying when he says his wife told him she would leave and then left with the film crew. In a way, that’s precisely what happens, as Greta’s remains are now forever part of a prop. So Charlie has to rely entirely on her snooping skills to find out what has happened to Greta, and, boy, does the episode make everything too easy for her! She lies down on a coffin to hide from Fred and sees a bloody lamp on the ceiling. She’s leaving the house distraught when Greta’s phone suddenly rings. She just happens to have switched from smoking to vaping after getting a brief break from Hasp’s henchmen. There is no struggle, no challenge: everything is just handed to her. This makes for a pretty boring episode, in which everything just feels too on the nose to work.
Then there is the issue of the stakes regarding the threats to Charlie’s life. Now, “Escape from Shit Mountain” is a one-of-a-kind episode because it was the penultimate one in a series that didn’t have a second season yet. When Charlie’s life is put on the line or when we see Cliff (Benjamin Bratt) waiting for her right outside the hospital, the threat feels real. At this point in the season, we know Charlie is going to survive to see the next day, so to have someone try to kill her and Beatrix Hasp surprising her so early in the season just feels cheap. We know she’s getting away in two episodes, tops.
This isn’t to say that there is nothing good to be found in “Last Looks.” The ending of Giancarlo Esposito’s Fred feels properly poetic, what with him burning down not just with his business, but with the remains of everyone he loved. As he tells Charlie, many objects in his home — including a toilet — are infused with the grounded bones of his family members, the house serving as a mausoleum to all the Finches that came before. So it’s pretty to see him burn alongside them. It also feels fair to Greta: if Fred’s business was so important to him that he couldn’t even bother to take his wife dancing, then let him burn with it. It’s just a pity that the flames aren’t enough to light this episode’s fire.
The first three episodes of Poker Face Season 2 are now streaming on Peacock.

Poker Face

Charlie Cale’s second Season 2 mystery feels too convenient to work.

Release Date

January 26, 2023

Network

Peacock

Showrunner

Lilla Zuckerman

Pros & Cons

Giancarlo Esposito’s character gets a poetic ending.

Without her superpowers, Charlie has to rely on too many plot conveniences to solve the mystery.
The stakes feel too low this early on the season to have Charlie’s life threatened not just once, but twice.