Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Poker Face Season 2 Episode 1.
After a critically acclaimed first season released in 2023, Peacock’s Columbo-like mystery series Poker Face is finally back for yet another run. Starring Natasha Lyonne as amateur sleuth and human lie-detector Charlie Cale, the show has added numerous big names to its list of guest stars this second time around, from Awkwafina to Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo, ensuring viewers that we will get some of the best acted howcatchems this side of Peter Falk. And the very first episode of this new batch, the Erivo-led “The Game Is a Foot,” already fulfills this promise. Playing not just one, but five different characters, Erivo is absolutely delightful in one of the most entertaining cases that Cale has worked on so far. As quintuplets Amber, Bebe, Dede, Delia, and Felicity, Erivo proves that she is truly a one-of-a-kind type of performer, and Lyonne… well, Lyonne is her usual charismatic self as she solves a murder that is as much about money as it is about love.
Directed by showrunner Rian Johnson and written by Laura Deeley, “The Game Is a Foot” follows Charlie as she attends the funeral of a cruel stage mom who robbed her four daughters of everything they had, and then left her fortune for a secret fifth child no one even knew existed. Seemingly easy to resolve, the mystery of who Felicity Price is endures throughout the whole episode. The truth of the matter is that Felicity is actually dead, and her secret sister Amber has taken her place in an elaborate plot to get their mother’s fortune — a fortune that she and her other three sisters are more than owed after wasting away their childhoods starring in a sitcom called Kid Cop Nights. But how exactly Charlie finds out what is really afoot at the quintuplets’ former residence is the whole sauce of the show, and, let me tell you, that sauce has never been so delicious.
What Is ‘Poker Face’ Season 2 Premiere About?

Image via Peacock

The first of the many secret ingredients is the absurdity of the plot, which pokes fun at twin kid duos that played one single character in ’90s sitcoms, a la Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. After being robbed of a life by their mother, who subjected them to alcoholism, ruthless work hours, and awards such as Best Intergenerational Kiss, Bebe, Cece, and Delia all moved on with their lives. Amber, however, stayed behind to care for her ailing monster of a mom, all in the hopes of getting the money that was taken from her. Old Norma (Jasmine Guy), however, leaves all the cash to a certain Felicity Prize, whom Amber finds out is yet another sister of hers, one who grew up with their deadbeat dad and escaped the whole Kid Cop Nights nightmare. To add insult to injury, unlike Amber, an Etsy artist who creates clay figurines, Felicity is also a bona fide sculptor, painter, and whatnot, having been featured in many galleries throughout her lifetime.
Enraged by the hand life has dealt her, Amber kicks off her plan to kill Felicity and fake her own suicide in order to assume her sister’s identity and run away with the money. What she didn’t expect was for Felicity to have a prosthetic leg, one that she tries to do away with, but that ultimately comes to bite her in the butt. After realizing that all the words coming out of fake Felicity’s mouth are, in her own words, bullshit, Charlie takes a good look at the real Felicity’s portfolio and realizes how having lost a leg was important to her. She tries to use this to expose Amber, but it takes dropping the aforementioned pointy Best Intergenerational Kiss Award on her foot to finally get the truth — and a lot of blood — out in the open.

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Hop in the Plymouth Barracuda. We’ve got mysteries to solve!

In the middle of it all — or, rather, right at the very beginning and then again in the end — we learn about Charlie’s troubles with Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman). The Five Families sure seem to be more intent on catching her than Sterling Frost (Ron Perlman), probably because they effectively want to kill her instead of just asking her nicely about joining a very specific scheme. At the very start of “The Game Is a Foot,” we see Charlie on the run from Hasp’s henchmen, who are certainly not shy about shooting at her in the middle of work. Likewise, the episode ends with Charlie running away from Norma’s mansion as said henchmen appear once again, a conclusion that seems to suggest a running gag that might be funny once, but will probably get old pretty fast.

Image via Peacock

But maybe we’re nitpicking here. And maybe we’re doing that precisely because it’s quite hard to find a flaw worthy of talking about in “The Game Is a Foot.” To be perfectly honest, this is one of the most well-written and entertaining episodes of Poker Face so far. Besides, the acting, done mostly by a single person, is absolutely irreproachable. It’s always fun to watch an actor playing more than just one role in a single work, and it’s also a great opportunity for audiences to measure their level of skill. Can they infuse each character with their own uniqueness? Can they make sure that audiences will be able to tell the different roles apart from one another? Well, Cynthia Erivo sure can, and she does it so well that there is a point at which we are watching not just five characters on screen, but actually seven. After all, the Amber that is pretending to be Felicity isn’t exactly Felicity nor Amber, and the same goes for the Amber that is pretending to be Delia that pops up in the middle of the plot. If we add to that the fact that the story is about former child stars, well, “The Game Is a Foot” becomes a veritable treatise on acting.
While he doesn’t get as much time to shine as Erivo, Jin Ha, who plays Norma’s lawyer Paul, is also amazing to watch. The scene in which he has an argument with Charlie about whether a set of six twins is called sextuplets or sixtuplets is funny to the point of making you wheeze, and his brief interactions with Amber are also pretty amusing. Known mostly for his work in Pachinko, Ha proves that he has impeccable comedic timing that should be put to use more often.
As for the story itself, it certainly falls on the more nonsensical side of things. Think more “Exit Stage Death” and less “The Night Shift.” However, even if the final resolution does still feel excessively convenient, what with Amber putting a little star on her fake prosthetic leg, bringing back memories of her Etsy work, the episode feels so entertaining that it is hard to care. “The Game Is a Foot” isn’t Poker Face trying to be a serious mystery, but instead, Poker Face trying to be a comedy. And, by God, does the show excel at that!
The first three episodes of Poker Face Season 2 are now streaming on Peacock.

Poker Face

Cynthia Erivo shines as quintuplets in a banger of a first episode.

Release Date

January 26, 2023

Network

Peacock

Showrunner

Lilla Zuckerman

Pros & Cons

Cynthia Erivo delivers a stellar performance as quintuplets Amber, Bebe, Cece, Delia, and Felicity.
Jin Ha proves he has impeccable comedic timing.
Albeit somewhat absurd, the story is histerically funny.

The resolution feels a little too convenient.