Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall reunite as the breezy Peacock show’s first season ends.
Also, Benjamin Brett is on a boat.
Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season 1 finale ofPoker Face.
Natasha Lyonne on ‘Poker Face’.Peacock
Poker Facerisks everything in its exceptional season finale.
Cliff (Benjamin Bratt) brings her to Atlantic City for two reunions.
There is the threat of an origin story when Charlie reconnects with the family she left behind.
Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall on ‘Poker Face’.Peacock
That’s good news for season 2 and, maybe, the doom Charlie chooses for herself.
The finale, which I will nowspoil, pushes chronological playfulness to new heights.
The first scene finds Senior in the premiere timeline sending Cliff after Charlie.
A rapid-fire montage follows the gunman through the season.
The very cool Bratt is very funny drinking bad coffee through bad motels,Burn Noticehis only joy.
He catches his prey in Colorado after Charlie recovers from getting buried alive twice.
You expect the worst because Senior wears a black hat and a bolo tie, and because New Jersey.
Twist One: Senior doesn’t want vengeance.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he promises.
They’re in the Hasp Casino, the mood so public and non-torture-y Senior gets Charlie a floral dress.
Her Barracuda’s in valet.
Twist Two: Sheiscurious.
Charlie storms away and comes back.
(That gives her agency in the ensuing trap).
He wants Charlie to polygraph the crime lord sit down.
He offers half a million, and more to keep working for him.
He hands her a present and looks shocked when she finds a gun inside.
The bullets surprise him, too.
It’s a frame: Cliff betrayed his boss for a yacht.
Now Charlie’s fingerprints are on the gun.
The Southwest Syndicate and the Five Families want her dead.
Trusty FBI Agent Luca Clark (Simon Helberg) warns her off corrupt law enforcement.
“Your only one goal,” he says, “Is to get off this island alive.”
Charlie slips out with bachelorettes.
One of them, a Staggeringly Drunk Woman (Alexi Wasser), offers Charlie a “talisman.”
(“What have I done to the garden that was entrusted to me?”
she cries, a poem or a prayer.)
Between the party bus and the showdown yacht, the script by creatorRian Johnsonmanages its best trick.
Charlie seeks help from her sister Emily (Clea DuVall).
Heavy history in that casting, since DuVall romanced Lyonne inBut I’m a Cheerleader!andThe Intervention.
I was worried, though.Poker Facehas managed to avoid the overexplain-y instinct that dogs most dramas lately.
I didn’t need the show to reveal Charlie’s hidden psychic wound.
That can be so reductive and Emily, in refusing to really talk to her sister, speaks volumes.
“But that’s not the life you chose.
That’s not the Charlie Show.”
Are there hypocrisies lingering beneath Charlie’s merry wanderings?
“This is not just a series of situations you keep getting reeled into,” Emily says.
“You choose to be out there.”
Recall Charlie stepping back to Senior’s table.
Now Emily refuses the worshipful TV instinct to make everything about the protagonist’s emotional wound.
This long-lost sister seems to know all about her sibling’s weekly-adventure lifestyle.
DuVall’s no-bull delivery sparks with vitality, though.
“I bet you do some good,” Emily says.
“I bet there are a lot of people out there who need someone like you.
We’re doing just fine.”
It’s a deft bit of cliche defiance, teasing Charlie’s past without ever leaving the present.
DuVall’s amazing, playing a No-Fun Mom with moral wisdom.
She’s the force field Lyonne bounces off, wordlessly slinking out of the laundry room.
Cliff will get caught, Luca will flirtatiously offer Charlie a job.
The finale leaves our hero where the premiere did, another phone crushed on another highway.
This time, we understand the excitementandthe tragedy of Charlie’s existence.
A series of situations lie ahead.
Does she only like the beginnings of things?
Also, did you catchHookplaying in this episode titled “The Hook”?
And how aboutRhea Perlmanas Beatrix?
One Perlman kills another, Rhea replacing Ron as Big Bad: Wow!
She’ll never be somebody’s aunt or somebody’s stable employee.
But at least she’s trying to ruin the right things.
Finale Grade: A
Related content:
