Poker Face Season-Premiere Recap: Imposter Syndrome

Poker Face
The Game is a Foot
Season 2 Episode 1
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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It’s been over two years since Poker Face last graced our screens, and that’s simply too long to be without Charlie Cale. There’s no one else quite like Natasha Lyonne’s amateur sleuth. This former cocktail waitress uses her innate ability to suss out lying in order to solve the murders she encounters while on the run. Sure, we now have Elsbeth’s Elsbeth Tascioni, a cheerier but nearly as intuitive crime-solver who scratches a similar itch. Elsbeth and Poker Face are both inverted detective stories, or “howcatchems,” in which the mystery is not who did the deed — something the audience knows from the jump — but how the killer will be caught. Even so, Charlie stands alone. Thanks to Lyonne’s trademark deadpan and the gruff good nature that series creator Rian Johnson has imbued the character with, she makes a distinct impression, and her absence since March 2023 has been keenly felt.

Of course, Charlie’s not the only reason to love Poker Face, which returns with the high caliber of writing and direction — the premiere is written by Laura Deeley, with Johnson directing — we’ve come to expect from Peacock’s unlikely hit. And then there are the guest stars, who end up proving integral to the show’s success given how much time we spend with them before Charlie even shows up. “The Game Is a Foot” features notable names like TV icon Jasmine Guy and Broadway star Jin Ha, but it’s recent Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo who emerges as the standout by virtue of the fact that she takes on five separate roles — seven, if you count one character impersonating two others — and makes them each her own.

The first Erivo we meet is Amber, a wannabe artist forced into being a caretaker for her domineering mother, Norma (Guy). While Amber gets to share Norma’s impressive mansion, it’s clear she would rather be anywhere else, especially when Norma taunts her over being the “Gauguin of Etsy.” Norma only has weeks left, but that’s still weeks of Amber hearing digs like, “Four daughters, and the one I kept closest is my biggest disappointment.” More troublingly, Norma has asked her lawyer, Paul (Ha), to help her revise her will. While Paul owes his client confidentiality, he’s ultimately a people-pleaser, so he ends up blurting out to Amber that Norma has cut her and her three sisters out of the will entirely. Everything — the house, the money, the royalties — is now going to Felicity Price, a mixed-media artist in Vermont. Amber’s never heard of the mystery woman now getting her inheritance, so she decides to track her down. There, at Felicity’s off-the-grid trailer, Amber discovers that she has a secret fourth sibling: Felicity is, of course, also played by Erivo. 

The styling of these two characters goes a long way toward distinguishing them, but Erivo also does impressive work in establishing their divergent personalities — Amber beaten down by her mother and desperate for approval, Felicity cool and self-assured. When Amber offers to take a new artist photo of Felicity, her plan becomes clear. She documents every inch of her secret sister so that she can start becoming Felicity, chopping off her hair and getting a (fake) septum piercing. After Norma compares Amber’s new look to that of (Super) Mario, Amber decides to let her mother die, moving the help button just out of reach. Her “It’s okay, you can go now; I’m ready” is suitably chilling, no matter how much Norma kind of deserves it.

On the day of the funeral, Amber lures Felicity to the bluff near her home, sharing her motivation for breaking bad: “You have everything I want, everything I deserve.” They tussle, but Amber has the upper hand and launches Felicity off the cliff. Amber then sends her sister group chat a very unconvincing good-bye video, letting them know that the body they’ll find at the bottom of the bluff is hers. There’s just one problem: the titular foot. Felicity had a prosthetic lower leg, which her corpse is now notably missing. Thinking quickly, Amber arranges the body in just the right position ahead of an oncoming train, so that it looks like “Amber” jumped from the bluff and landed on the tracks, where her leg was torn off. 

Enter Charlie. When we last saw our accidental hero, she had decided to stay on the run, with casino owner Beatrix Hasp swearing that she and the five families would be coming for revenge. As it turns out, she was not bluffing! Every job Charlie works, from parking-lot attendant to haunted-hayride mummy, ends abruptly when Beatrix’s goons show up and open fire. While working at an apple orchard, however, she’s saved by her new friend Delia, who tells the men that Charlie left the day prior. Delia is — you guessed it — also played by Erivo. All of the siblings are. The Kazinsky sisters were (to their knowledge) quadruplets who shared the starring role on the series Kid Cop. Norma pitted the siblings against each other (sending Delia to multiple stints in rehab) and pocketed all their TV money herself. When Delia learns Norma has died, she assumes all the money will go to Amber, but she’s determined to ask Amber to share so Delia can realize her dream of buying out the apple orchard. While Charlie has balked at sharing too much with Delia (“introspection, it just makes me queasy”), the two have bonded enough for Charlie to drive her home to the funeral.

At Norma’s mansion, Charlie meets the remaining sisters, Bebe the DJ and Cece the professor. Erivo continues to impress here, particularly with Cece’s affected French accent. (She did a year of postgrad in Québec.) As Charlie examines the sisters’ Latvian Critic Award for Best Intergenerational Kiss — a dangerously pointy glass object that is obviously going to be used to do violence at some point — they receive the apparent good-bye video text from Amber. At the bluff, they find her dead body (actually Felicity’s), but there’s not much time to mourn. Back at the house, Paul explains that all of Norma’s money (“Kid Cop is huge in Indonesia”) is going to Felicity. That’s Amber’s cue to reenter the picture as “Felicity,” which she does by putting on a brand-new southern accent. (The other sisters called her “Hamber” for a reason.) Delia threatens to sue to contest the will, but “Felicity” has planned for that: If the remaining sisters sign an agreement to not file a lawsuit, she’ll give them each $150,000. Delia is the only holdout, and that’s an issue, since litigation could tie up the money for years. And that’s not Amber’s only problem — Charlie couldn’t help but notice that the tragic life story “Felicity” shared was mostly lies.

Amber can’t let Delia’s resistance keep her from her inheritance. After Delia goes for a drive in Charlie’s car, Amber puts on Delia drag to sign the form in her name. Unfortunately, Charlie spots her before she can change back — and soon “Delia” is listening in horror as Charlie shares her suspicions about “Felicity,” along with some helpful exposition about how her lying trick works. After confirming the real Felicity’s background with Paul, Charlie deduces that the “Felicity” at the house must be an impostor, which would mean there was a secret sixth sibling. (We know that’s not true and this is all Amber’s doing, but I do give Poker Face credit for throwing something this convoluted at the audience in its first episode back.)

Once the real Delia returns, Amber changes back into “Felicity” just in time for a showdown with Charlie. She knows Charlie can spot lies, so she drops the “dinner-theater Blanche DuBois” accent and ends up monologuing about how “Felicity Price is an invention, a reaction to the cruelty I’ve suffered, the years of abuse.” This is all true, and it’s good enough for Charlie, even after “Felicity” refuses to share any more of her inheritance with Delia. As for Delia, she realizes someone impersonated her to sign the form on her behalf, but she’s going to avoid the legal battle and content herself with the $150,000, far less than she’d need to buy the orchard. 

It really looks like Amber might get away with it — except for the matter of the missing foot, which the cops still can’t locate. That brings Charlie back to a brochure about Felicity’s art, noting her strange fixation on foot-related subjects. More importantly, Felicity’s artist photo proudly displays the prosthetic leg. This is enough for Charlie to solve the whole thing, so she decides to confront Faux-licity (her pun, and one I wish I’d thought of) with the evidence. It’s a perfect Columbo-inspired ending, and Lyonne really leans into the trope. Unfortunately for her, Amber has thought ahead, and she lifts her pant leg to show a prosthetic, seemingly proving that she’s the real Felicity after all. But when Charlie drops the pointy end of the Latvian Critic Award for Best Intergenerational Kiss (I told you!) on Faux-licity’s foot, it starts gushing blood. The prosthetic is fake, the foot is real, and the jig is up for Amber.

Almost immediately, the cops arrive with an urgent update: They’ve fingerprinted the body and learned its true identity as Felicity Price. Hilariously, this does suggest Amber was always going to get caught and Charlie served no real purpose, though I’d argue getting to pull off a perfect killer reveal scene is always worth it. Because Felicity had no other family, Norma’s money will go to the siblings who aren’t going to prison. (Poor Amber. She really did put in a lot of work to be left empty-handed!) Delia asks Charlie to go in on the orchard with her, and I don’t know if the sapphic undertones are intentional, or if Lyonne and Erivo just have natural chemistry. “Maybe I can use a little settling down,” Charlie muses. “What am I even running from, right?” With perfect comedic timing, Beatrix’s goons arrive and start shooting. “Oh, right,” says Charlie, who will have to return to her life on the road — and whatever murders in need of solving await her there. At least we’ll be along for the ride. 

Just One More Thing

• Delia says her favorite Kid Cop co-star was Joseph Gordon-Levitt, inviting some terrifying existential questions, since he played Trey in last season’s “Escape From Shit Mountain.”

• Erivo is so good at playing all of the different roles in this episode that I resisted making a “defying gravity” joke in regards to Felicity falling off a bluff to her death. You’re welcome. 

• Charlie reacts to the arrival of a fifth identical sibling with a perfect Gremlins reference: “Man, they gotta stop feeding these girls after midnight.”

• There are so many great details to the brief bit we see of Charlie’s life on the run before the apple orchard. I’m dying to know more about her Parktopia co-worker Cookie, who doesn’t look like the kind of guy you’d see reading Fear of Flying, but who apparently has thoughts about second-wave feminism.

• While the structure of this show requires that Charlie keep moving, I hope we don’t end every episode with Beatrix’s men arriving. Benjamin Bratt’s Cliff was a great low-level threat in season one, but the goons feel a little too cartoonish to rely on regularly. 

• I’m thrilled to be taking over recapping duties for season two of Poker Face and look forward to reading your comments — in part because I trust you to tell me if I just imagined the romantic vibes between Charlie and Delia.