‘Poker Face’ Season 2 review: Another winning hand from Natasha Lyonne and Rian Johnson 

Even with an extra two episodes than Season 1, Poker Face still leaves us wanting more. After the three- episode premiere where Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) with her lie detector at full throttle and solving crimes, dodges hits ordered by Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman), the mob boss she crossed last season, Poker Face settles to its episode/murder a week format.

At the end of episode 3, ‘Whack-A-Mole’, Hasp agrees to go into witness protection and call off the hit on Charlie. As she drives through the country, Charlie has a fellow radio user, a trucker with the call sign, Good Buddy, (Steve Buscemi) for company. FBI agent Luca (Simon Helberg) also looks out for Charlie.

Poker Face works for many reasons from the cast to the writing. Starting with the criminal’s point of view and then introducing Charlie’s connection and figuring out the crime from her perspective is ingenious and engaging.

The ensemble cast features a dream line-up. There is Cynthia Erivo playing four siblings, who were child actors, abused and exploited by their evil mother. Giancarlo Esposito plays a funeral director who sees an opportunity to get rid of his wife (Katie Holmes) when his house is used to shoot a thriller.

Kumail Nanjiani plays a Florida police officer with a pet alligator called Daisy and Awkwafina plays a bike messenger who wants to save her grandmother from her sketchy new girlfriend. Justin Theroux might or might not be the world’s top assassin as he infiltrates a wedding to kill Hasp’s son, Kirby, played by Haley Joel Osment.

The people Charlie meets on her pilgrim’s progress include the owner of a floundering gym who would do anything to keep it afloat, a baseball player who loses his fastball and gets it back in a horrific manner, an eight year old who does not think murder is too high a price to pay for success, a bunch of smooth con artists and an employee at a big box electronic store who decides to turn his reel inspiration real.

By Episode 9, Charlie ends up in New York and meets Alex (Patti Harrison), who seems to be the one person who does not lie to her. The two-episode finale sees Charlie and Alex supplying oysters at a posh society wedding. When Alex is accused of murder, Charlie needs to find the real killer.

That Thelma & Louise style finale is pure gold. Poker Face’s writing is thoughtful and detailed (Daisy the alligator has little daisies on her collar). The movie references are beyond fun, including a character saying Anatomy of a Fall has a great dog performance and the close ups from Heat on the television as the electronic stores is being shot up.

The fact that the crimes are intimate, human ones and not the result of some impossible master criminal, is another plus point. Lyonne is the beating heart of the show as she turns in another brilliant performance as the “compulsive do-gooder.”

Rian Johnson, whose third edition of Knives Out will be dropping later this year, has delivered a cracker of a show. Hopefully the song at the end of episode 12, Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, is not true and we will get to spend many more hours with the warm-hearted redhead with a voice like a rusty saxophone.     

Poker Face is currently streaming on Jio Hotstar