The Hook

This episode apparently closed season 1, and it does in fine fashion. In the prior season, we find her in the hospital, and her identity has been discovered, even though she thought she was free at last. When she leaves the hospital after two months, her bill is paid, and Cliff is there to take her back. She has to come face to face with Mr. Sterling, who ran the casino that started her running in the first place. And as Cliff asked Mr. Sterling, how deep to dig? Well, there are twists and turns that no one will probably see, and it becomes even more serious for her. And it sets up for a very interesting second season. More of the running, with more deadly peril.

I was not expecting to be taken in by Poker Face, although not hooked I did enjoy it a lot.

The first season finale had a few twists and the seeds for a second season.

With Charlie recovering in hospital and thinking Obamacare is very generous. Sterling Frost Sr (Ron Perlman) now has Charlie in his clutches. Only he does not have murder in his mind. He has bigger fish to fry and he needs Charlie's assistance.

As for Cliff. He has spent a year on the road, in crummy motels and eating bad food. Only for Charlie to go on living. So no surprise that when Frost Sr is killed, Cliff is behind it with the help of Beatrix Hasp and the five families.

A good conclusion of the first season, some varied stories and it was nice to see FBI agent Luca return.

Been waiting a while for "Poker Face" to turn up on this side of the Atlantic, but eventually it has. Whilst it was, for me, not quite at the very top tier of TV it was certainly worth the wait.

Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) has an innate ability to know when someone is lying to her, having used this ability to win at casino poker but been caught, she ends up working as waitress there when the boss takes a shine to her. Following a death at the casino, she's forced to leave and heads across American, taking various jobs and keeping on the move. At each stop she ends up involved in a murder and uses her gift to unmask the killer. But she's not a police officer, and any undo publicity would see her pursuer Cliff LeGrand (Benjamin Bratt), a fixer for the Casino boss, close in on her, so justice is harder to come by.

In what feels like a nostalgic gimmick nowadays, the series borrows heavily from the style and tone of several shows made in the 70's and 80's. The most obvious, and repeatedly namechecked by the creative team is "Colombo". Like with that show we, the audience, see the central murder take place and know who the murderer is, then the show flashes back a few days to show Charlie's interaction with these characters and we'll see her discover who the killer is and why the murder took place. There are guest starts for each episode, which range from legends like Ron Perlman, Nick Nolte and Ellen Barkin to rising stars like, Stephanie Hsu, David Castaneda and Danielle McDonald. There is also a nice return to working with Rian Johnson for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's Lyonne's show though and as with "Russian Doll" she proves herself to be an absolute star.

Why not a slightly higher score then? Well, occasionally I thought that perhaps it drifted too far into slapstick comedy, particular I felt in some of the fight scenes that Charlie ends up in. She's not law enforcement, so the killers often work out that killing her is all that stands between them and getting away with it. Maybe that tonal problem is slightly bigger than I initially thought too, as, as I think back over the episodes for this review they do seem to end up getting both bigger and more implausible as they run on.

I did enjoy it though, don't get me wrong, and the positives far outweigh the negatives - I'm looking forward to the proposed second season too.

We have followed the series from day one, and I appreciate the way each episode distracts the viewer, so we never see it coming. No spoilers here, just an appreciation for the little things, like the fact that Burl Ives is singing Bob Dylan in the background.

I have read comparisons of the show to earlier ones, like "Columbo," but, for me, it is a combination of "The Fugitive" and "Murder She Wrote," only much funnier. My wife and I are really looking forward to season 2 to see how many distractions the team can concoct to keep us from guessing what happens next.

The only thing I am sure of is that there will continue to be obscure references to Gene Hackman in "The Conversation."

I fell in love with "Poker Face" almost immediately, which is why it's so weird that I haven't gotten around to watch the finale before now. This sort of "howcatchem" is a great twist on the classic procedural murder mystery, and it seems like Rian Johnson has found a real love for this style of entertainment, because now only has made a lot of it, he's really good at it. So with this final episode, he wrote the script for Janicza Bravo to direct it. And the season ends on top, with an episode that utilizes the tropes of the genre in a clever way.

The gimmick of this show has always been Charlie's ability to spot when people are lying, so in an effort to make the finale more interesting, they largely do away with this. Not in a weird plot holy-kind of way, but in a tightly structured way that owes a lot to Johnson's writing. He knows his audience so well, and with the last few episodes, the show has fallen into its own tropes a lot - which is completely understandable. Most shows do that. This and the previous episode set up challenges for Charlie, though, and in this, she is faced with the consequences of the plot she uncovered in the first episode in a wildly entertaining final rump that finally brings Charlie face-to-face with a surprisingly subtle Ron Perlman and Benjamin Bratt's cool hitman who has been on his trail for the entire show. For most of the show, we all understood that she would eventually get caught, but like the rest of the show, it's not about any of that, it's about how she'll find the murder, or in this case, get out of a very bad situation. Some aspects about the episode's climax felt a little easy to accomplish for Johnson on a script level, but the episode's overall genius, plus Janicza Bravo's brilliant direction of the piece, is enough to make those small bumps feel like nothing. The show has been picked up for a second season, and with the stakes constantly rising for Charlie, I, for one, can't wait to see what happens next.

"The Hook" brings this show to a satisfying finish in an episode that subverts its own tropes and relies mostly on clever writing. The results are stunning and brings it all to an end that certainly leaves the door open for the second season, and I can't wait to see more of Natasha Lyonne's incredible lead character very soon.