Warning! This review contains spoilers for thePoker Faceseason 2 finale.
Poker Face’s season 2 finale is a clean break from the established formula. Rather than spending the first act with an unsuspecting murder victim, we’re following Charlie from the beginning. “The End of the Road” picks up right where the last episode left off, and as its name would suggest, it feels truly climactic. There’s seemingly no murder to solve;it’s a completely different kind of mystery, as Charlie tries to clear her new friend Alex’s name and get the Five Families off her tail.
The stakes have never been higher. The finale subtly shows that Charlie is a lot more stressed out than usual. She ditches the vape pen she’s been puffing on all season in an attempt to kick tobacco and goes back to chain-smoking cigarettes. Following on from the setup inPoker Face’s penultimate season 2 episode, the finale sees Charlie and Alex racing to Beatrix Hasp’s safehouse to ask her for help.But that setup is all just misdirectionto distract you from quite possibly the best twist the show has pulled off to date.
The Poker Face Finale’s Alex Reveal Is One Of The Show’s Best Twists Yet
Patti Harrison Nailed The Misdirection
When Charlie approaches Beatrix’s safehouse and finds all the federal agents stabbed to death, Beatrix with a bullet in her head, and Alex missing, the real conflict of the episode rears its head. Alex isn’t just some oyster shucker who would never harm a fly; she’s a notorious assassin who’s been playing Charlie from the beginning. The pontificating villain monologue is usually a tired cliché, butthis twist is such a doozy that you’re genuinely intrigued to see how we got here. Charlie’s ability to detect lies, paired with her season-long efforts to connect with other people, made her too trusting.
Alex is the perfect villain for Charlie. A few weeks ago, inPoker Face’s art-of-the-con episode, Charlie told John Cho’s conman that the only person who could lie to her and get away with it would be the world’s greatest sociopath. In this week’s finale, she meets that sociopath — and it turns out to be her new bestie. Charlie’s “kooky little Watson” turns out to be more of a Moriarty. This is an ingenious twist because Alex seemed like one of the nicest, most unassuming characters on the show.It’s a testament to Patti Harrison’s performance-within-a-performancethat she had everyone fooled.
Natasha Lyonne stepped in front of the camera to direct this one, and her tense, energetic direction proves she should direct more.
Natasha Lyonne stepped behind the camera to direct this one, and her tense, energetic direction proves she should do it more often. This episode is full of stylistic flourishes. She uses a Dutch angle to shoot Charlie having an emotional breakdown to capture how jarring it is to see this tough-as-nails amateur sleuth show vulnerability;she makes extensive use of ’70s-style grainy freeze frameslike theSeveranceseason 2 finale.
Lyonne does really interesting things with the camera in the driving scenes. She sits a camera on the road underneath her speeding 1969 Plymouth Barracuda to convey how fast it’s going. She has a camera swooping between cars, weaving left and right, to capture the chaos of a high-speed police chase. Lyonne has directed TV episodes and comedy specials, but I’d love to see what she’d do with a movie.
Poker Face Season 2’s Ending Feels Truly Climactic
It Brings All The Season Arcs Full Circle (Except One)
It’s a bit disappointing that we never got to meetSteve Buscemi’s “Good Buddy.”His conversations with Charlie seemed like a big deal earlier in the season, but it ultimately went nowhere. When a truck pulled over to pick up Charlie in the final scene, I half expected it to be Good Buddy. But, while that would’ve brought back the biggest lingering story thread of the season, it also would’ve been an unbelievable coincidence, so it was probably for the best that she was picked up by someone else. Maybe she’ll reconnect with Good Buddy over this trucker’s CB radio.
Poker Faceis streaming on Peacock.
When Alex drove Charlie’s Barracuda off a cliff,Thelma & Louise-style, it initially looked like the show was going for yet another “To be continued…” ending, which would’ve been a huge let-down — not only because it would be two cliffhangers in a row, but because this one would take at least a year to be resolved, not a week. Butthankfully, the finale goes for aSimpsons Movie-style “To be continued… immediately” fake-outand resolves the literal cliffhanger there and then. (As a side note, seeing Charlie’s vintage car destroyed was as heartbreaking as watching the Mandalorian’s Razor Crest get blown up.)
The ending of the episode sets up a juicy premise for season 3. Charlie went into season 2 on the run from the mob, butshe’s going into season 3 on the run from the federal government. Now, when she gets swept up in murder investigations, she’ll have to be wary about running afoul of cops who might recognize her from the FBI’s most-wanted list.Poker Face’s second season hasn’t been perfect, but it’s had a lot more hits than misses, and this finale is a more than satisfying conclusion.
