Whack-a-Mole

This episode brought us John Mulaney AND Richard Kind and references to Sondheim's Assassins? Lots of fun!

I do need to address this 6 star review mocking railroad tracks on the beach in the first episode of this season... um... what point are you trying to make? There's railroad tracks at the beach where I live. In fact you can take the Amtrak down the pacific coast and it crosses the beach at multiple points. Used to play on the tracks at San Clemente beach and have my parents yell at me that it wasn't safe. And clearly these weren't added in post production but shot on a location in real life with railroad tracks.

Show is great and it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here this season given the end of this episode kinda freeing things up a bit.

"Whack-a-Mole" is a terrific episode of "Pokerface" in that it feels like two or three episodes combined because so much takes place!

For several episodes, Beatrix Hasp and her assassins have been chasing Charlie. However, after the mob boss, Hasp, catches her, instead of killing her, she tells Charlie she will let her go and cancel the contract IF she helps to discover the identity of the mole within her gang. Charlie has no choice but to agree...and then all sorts of crazy things happen and the show is filled with twists.

The story is wild and manages to wrap up everything so well....so well I wonder what the show will do next with Charlie. Not the very best of the episodes so far (that would be "The Stall") but one of the best.

This season seems to be trending towards poor writing held up by stellar performances. Without Mullaney, this episode would have completely crumbled under the weight of its uninteresting anticlimax. It's no longer a tension and action filled mystery show, it's a comedy/sitcom with mystery elements that the writers don't seem particularly interested in. I often find myself losing interest completely by the time Charlie enters the narrative, instead of being excited that Charlie will use her BS abilities to bring the killer to justice. The highlight of this episode was a gag about lip-reading and an argument about song lyrics, instead of a twisting turning and satisfying plot, which was the strength of season 1, and gave it its rewatch factor.

In this particular instance, Mullaney and his new uncanny-valley jawline are contemptable enough that I was rooting for his downfall, but I think this is to his credit and not that of the writers. The criminal-defeating gag in this episode is so tired, it's having a midday nap at the retirement home.

I'm pretty sure I like this series, but it's a soft like, in the way I used to enjoy mid-series Simpsons episodes. Watchable, not terrible, but not especially gratifying. Gone from my brain as soon as the channel has changed (back when channels were still a thing).

The show's gimmick is starting to become its undoing: Charlie has a natural BS-meter, and always knows when someone is lying.

The show has asked us to suspend disbelief, the same way we accept that Superman can fly simply because he's an alien, ignoring that even an alien would require some kind of system for propulsion and lift. We're just supposed to accept it.

The show doesn't even feint toward an explanation. Does Charlie cross reference visual cues with vocal inflections? Can she hear heartbeats, like Daredevil can? It doesn't matter. In this episode, everything goes out the window: Charlie polygraphs three men at once, based on one syllable each, and delivered at the same time.

Yes, her interrogation is flawless. Just as it is, later, while listening to voices on speaker phone. Charley's powers are magic, like Superman's flight powers, and everyone in-universe has already accepted it. (Charley's enemies also trust her powers.)

This is not the worst set-up for a show, of course, and can make for some chuckle-worthy television, but it certainly gets goofier the longer it goes on.

Plot contrivances keep the boat afloat: In season 2's premiere episode, Charley befriends a Gibney quintuplet at the moment that a second Gibney quintuplet is murdered by a third Gibney quintuplet while the... AUGHH! It's all quite absurd, but provides the odd chuckle, even while assassins are popping out of birthday cakes and duck blinds.

Yes! That's my criticism... The show began as a Comedy/Mystery show, and now it's merely a Comedy/Comedy show, because its mysteries have become so ridiculous that they're beside the point.

I think I saw railway tracks on the beach.

Yes. Railway tracks on the beach, I'm pretty sure. It was a huge plot point.

If you accept that Poker Face takes place in the Naked Gun universe, then you'll probably have a great time...

Me, I'm ending this review so I can go watch the new Superman trailer. It's up today! A man can fly! An alien man! Hooray!