Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne’s ‘Poker Face’ Is Still Quite the Card Trick in Season 2: TV Review

Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne's Peacock procedural remains quite the card trick in Season 2.

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Ever since “The Pitt” premiered in January, the Max medical drama has been held up as an example of how streaming services can embrace the lost art of the procedural. Four months later, reinforcements have arrived in the informal campaign to preserve classical TV structure. A collaboration between “Glass Onion” filmmaker Rian Johnson and “Russian Doll” co-creator and star Natasha Lyonne, the Peacock series “Poker Face” won acclaim in Season 1 for reviving not just the episodically contained investigation, but a specific strain of it: the “howcatchem,” an inversion of the whodunit that depicts a crime first, followed by the hunt for the criminal, “Columbo” style. With Season 2, “Poker Face” proves it can consistently deliver a fresh batch of delightful capers while pushing gently at the boundaries of its distinct, defined world.

The last time we saw Lyonne’s Charlie Cale, the amateur sleuth was on the run from a Mafia hit put out by aggrieved boss Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman). Charlie is blessed, or maybe cursed, with the ability to tell truth from lies, quite literally calling “bullshit” several dozen times an episode. She’s also a custom-built outlet for Lyonne’s doe-eyed, frizzy-curled, throaty-voiced charms, and is our Virgil through America’s obscure corners, which Charlie tours in her Plymouth Barracuda as she attempts to out-hustle the Hasp organization. But after escalating this framing device in the final minutes of Season 1, when Beatrix enlisted the rest of the Southeast Syndicate’s ruling families in her hunt for Charlie’s head, Season 2 dissolves the tension in an early episode — the only one of 10 shared with critics devoted entirely to the show’s larger lore. From there, “Poker Face” asks what kind of life Charlie would choose if it were entirely up to her, and how much of her itinerant, risk-taking instincts are due to necessity versus nature.

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For the most part, though, “Poker Face” takes evident pleasure in upping its own ante. Johnson directs the premiere, a riff on “The Westing Game” — or Johnson’s own “Knives Out” movies — with every potential heir played by “Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo. Naturally, Erivo is just the first of many guest stars to make a meal of their time in the spotlight. Other standouts include John Mulaney as an FBI agent with a sketchy side hustle, Simon Rex as a washed-up baseball player and Corey Hawkins as an unlikely love interest. But it’s in the nature of the “Poker Face” setup that each episode becomes a three-hander between Charlie, killer and victim, creating as many memorable turns as there are prominent roles.

What Season 2 adds to this inherent advantage — besides a couple more episodes, bringing the total count up to an abundant-for-streaming 12, and a new showrunner in Tony Tost (“Damnation”) — is a willingness to toy with the show’s baseline. What if Charlie gets mixed up with misbehaving kids, not murderous adults? What if, after spending so much time in the South, she settled down for a bit amid the hustle and bustle of New York? What if she craved some companionship, romantic and platonic alike, after more than a year on her own?

“Poker Face” is inherently flexible; there are virtually no constants beyond the flash-forward structure, a suspicious death and Charlie herself. For all the show admires and emulates classic network series, it eschews sets and backlots for lived-in locations in a flex of streaming-era investment. With Season 2, “Poker Face” takes increasing advantage of that blank slate while maintaining the soothing repetition of a comfort watch. It’s quite the card trick

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