I love this show! Another beautiful loser! Charlie has to lose at the end of each episode so she has to move on to the next place.
I have a lot to say about the show Poker Face. Some of it is structural. Some of it is character. Some of it is just viewing experience.
Let's start with what works.
Charlie! Highly engaging, empathetic, relatable, kind, cares about her friends, even the new ones she just met. This is so appealing. She picks up an obnoxious stray dog that won't stop barking at her. She befriends the obnoxious drummer boy who the rest of the band can't stand and kick out. She likes the old anarchist ladies who are kind of dicks to everyone. She's such a great character! She stops and talks to everyone along the way, people someone else might skip over or be rude to, such that this is a constant feature of solving her story of the week. She befriends everyone! I love her.
Also she sounds exactly like Marge Simpson. I don't know what to do with that information, except of course we love Marge Simpson. Maybe smoke less? I don't know.
She's being Columbo, like really clearly is being Columbo, with a big sweater or jacket instead of his trench coat. So that might be part of the voice. It's so gravelly sometimes that it's distracting. And sometimes she's not doing that voice at all. I don't know that either.
So I love Charlie.
There are lots of big name familiar guest stars. That helps Miss No New Faces Face Blindness a huge amount! No lie, that makes it work for me because I can recognize those people. They HAVE faces for me. I can't always place who they are but I will identify them again even if they change their clothes. Look. I'll go, "Who is that lady in the glasses? I know her." And then later get on IMDb and go, "Ohhhh, S. Epatha Merkerson!" How in the world do I know her? Look down her list of credits. She was in Jacob's Ladder, which I saw in grad school in the 90s, but once I know your face, I know it forever. Actually it was her voice that got me.
Oddly I just discovered last night, reading the IMDb cast credits, that my no new faces face blindness is getting better. I looked down the whole list of cast and got pings of recognition from a bunch of people who were new to me in the 7 episodes I watched yesterday. That's awesome! Thanks, Poker Face!
Here's what works less well:
The Johnson Maneuver. You know how Rian Johnson loves to show you something, then turn it around and show it to you again only now you understand it a whole different way? Yes, that's very cool, except in Glass Onion where a lot didn't make sense after you'd seen it once, but see that post for that.
Every single episode of this show does the Johnson Maneuver. It's exhausting. Because the things we see twice are all guest actors, which means we know they're only in it this episode. We can't get invested. Which means we're just sitting there watching some random people play out their drama.
I can't tell you how off-putting this is. It's like getting fooled with the same card trick over and over and over and OVER. Stop it.
Also yes of course you're going to be able to make us see things one way then another. You literally hold all the cards. Stop being someone's boring uncle at a wedding, doing the same card trick repeatedly to the same people.
It's like lying to someone then going "Haha, you believed me!" Hi, I am punching you in the face right now.
So that's annoying.
Also the client drama takes up literally half of the episode quite often, by time, which means a lot of time where Charlie isn't even there. Except twist! It turns out SHE WAS THERE the whole time! We just didn't get to see her! THAT IS INFURIATING. Why do you have a drama where your main character is there but not seen until we've watched half of the episode???
So it's an open mystery. We watch the story unfold, then we watch it again from another angle as Charlie figures out what happens. But it's all dramatic irony. We know and watch her not knowing. I guess that's fun? It's fun to know and see someone figure it out, Columbo style.
I have to watch Columbo again and see just how long the client part is. In my memory it's quite short. I've been thinking of every other show I've seen that begins with client-only sections and they're never more than a minute.
Because--and this is essential--we don't know or care about these people. It gets to be like, "Oh boy, more randos to get bait and switched by, who cares?" Because we know they'll be taken away soon.
Look at a show like Wonderfalls where we meet characters *through Jaye* and care about them because she cares about them. We're here for Jaye, though. It's just bananas to me that this show is structured like that. It's not even history leading up to the point when Charlie joins the picture, either. It's flashbacks to a time when she's there but not visible. Why on earth?
Anyway.
The structure of this show is seriously problematic for me. Like I'm mad going into each episode because of the long client section.
How about you just tell a story without all the backfill? Do it from the point where Charlie joins them. Have the backstory just be backstory. Skip the Johnson Maneuver (sounds worse every time I say it) and tell a story instead of being tricky about it. It really is a gimmick. And although it worked in Knives Out, it did not work in Glass Onion, and it's not working here because it becomes annoying very quickly. Same card trick! Stop it!
Here's a show that tells every story twice every episode. How do you not see how terrible that is as a plan? That is a terrible plan. That is two-card Rashomon.
The pilot also threw me immediately because it started with a flashback we couldn't possibly know was a flashback because we were new to the whole thing. You see (spoilers) a hotel cleaner see something and report it, then the security guy murders her husband and then her. I think? Hard to say--it's in darkness and you can't actually see the people. But then there she is again. I think? Again, face blindness. So then I thought he killed someone else and it was foreshadowing killing her. Or he got the wrong people. I was waiting to hear he killed the wrong people. And then the husband has that same recognizable pearl-handled gun from the murders. How did he get that? Did he go to the murder scene? Except no, it's supposed to be that that part was in flashback.
Even if I could recognize faces, it would have been insanely confusing.
What threw me personally off was that the cleaner woman had her hair pulled back while working, then loose while going home. SO I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS HER. OMG it's confusing being me.
I had to explain can't learn new faces to some new doctor person. I said: if I see you next week, I won't recognize you. That is just the facts. I won't! I can't remember my own doctor's face. I know she has blondish longish hair and is about my height, maybe a little less, slender build. I think glasses sometimes? Maybe not. Faces. Why do we even have them if I can't register them.
So having big curly hair in one scene but a ponytail in another scene, also with a change of clothes, that means I don't know whether it's the same person. Especially given we already saw the one woman get murdered. So presumably this is a different one? No? See.
Try a chyron. 24 hours ago. Yesterday. Something.
Also the pilot was a thriller and the rest are cute and funny, which seems like a mislead.
There's more to say about mysteries being honest and fair with the audience. A mystery has to play fair. It has to give you the information, even if you don't understand the significance at that moment. Withholding information is cheating. I have strong feelings about this drawn from reading all of Agatha Christie multiple times. Agatha Christie plays fair. Rian Johnson does not always play fair. I don't know who's in charge of this show, but the show doesn't always play fair either.
It's okay if we don't know things, like if we lack expertise, but the puzzle pieces should all be on the table. Some of these episodes were fair and some weren't.
Anyway, Charlie is super appealing. People like her and she likes people so we like her a lot. I want to spend time with her. Not, for example, a bunch of new characters we'll never see again after this. Like, every time, it comes out with: invest your energy in this--it is sure to be wasted!
I'm trying to break down in my head how many episodes are about busting the bad people for doing something bad. I think maybe all of them. That's awesome. I'm in favor of that. I think it would be better done straightforwardly without all the timeline shenanigans and hiding Charlie from us so we're misled and see things she doesn't see that she then has to figure out.
However, I adore the helping people mandate. That's what I'm here to see! That's what I wanted the show for, to compare to Wonderfalls and the other helping people shows. How is it set up? What's the logic? What's the reasoning? What's the story logic for it?
I like how Charlie just shows up and goes: hey, wait a minute, this is no good, what are the rights and wrongs of it? Who's the good guy here? Who's the bad guy? Asks questions, researches, figures it all out, then wreaks justice and vengeance upon the people who want to hurt or exploit others. My very favorite is the thing she does at the end of the pilot where she seems to be trapped in a tight spot, but she has set things up so that the villain totally loses just when they thought they won.
I'm watching a Columbo episode right now and it is EXACTLY like Poker Face, a very long first part where we meet the people and see the crime carried out. 11 minutes in already and no sign of Columbo himself. It's all setting up who did what and why they did it. Jeez, it's so seventies in look. 1972. Takes me back to my childhood, how people look. I was five. 12:45, Columbo appears!!
There is some hilarious background acting going on here. People talking and talking with bobbing heads. There is a ludicrously shirtless man in a hard hat on a construction site.
The criminals are underestimating Columbo. I remember this was a thing. He plays dumb quite a lot.
There is also hilariously dubbed in dialogue without room tone. And all these rooms without ceilings. And that lighting they always have that makes big stark distracting shadows behind everyone. And so much smoking! So funny. A man playing tennis in long pants, a shirt, and a jacket, while the woman playing opposite is in her little tennis outfit. A hat with a bunch of obvious tomato sauce on it that is meant to be blood. Really it's like watching a play, where you have to suspend disbelief so vigorously all the time.
Anyway. Research continues. Columbo has to find out what happened because he's a detective. Jaye Tyler has to figure things out because the tchotchke animals make her or else they'll drive her crazy. Police or law or medical shows have obvious reasons for trying to solve problems. What reason do others have for working on these things? Charlie doesn't seem to have a reason and that's okay, but she also has this magic lie detector ability that needs a way to play out. That's an external reason, though. Don't we want an internal reason?
I have only ever seen a little of My Name is Earl but it has a wonderful story engine. I like it when there's a strong internal story engine like that. But then I'm from olden times. Maybe we don't need it as much now? Like what drives Supernatural? Those boys driving around in their car. I only watched the pilot so I don't know what makes it go. Vengeance for their mother or something?
Look what IMDb says: "John Winchester raised his two sons Sam and Dean to hunt and kill all
things that go 'bump in the night' after his wife Mary was murdered by
an evil supernatural being when the boys were little. 22 years later the
brothers set out on a journey, fighting evil along the way, to find
their recently-missing father; when they finally do he reveals he knows
what demon killed their mother and has found a way to track and kill it.
Meanwhile, Sam develops frightening abilities such as seeing visions of
people dying before it actually happens. These visions are somehow
connected to the demon that murdered his mother and its mysterious plans
that seem to be all about Sam. When their father dies striking a deal
with that very same demon, the brothers determine to finish his crusade."
Crusade! That's a good story engine. Fifteen years of episodes from that, huh? Cute boys and a mighty mission with practically infinite permutations for each episode.
Think think think.
