Poker Face S2E2: Last Looks
One of Poker Face‘s biggest strengths has been director Rian Johnson’s contacts list, as he’s able to get heavy hitters like Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Holmes (in her first TV role in 8 years), as well as 90s indie film mainstay Kevin Corrigan.
The downside is, the casting is this good every week, so a killer lineup of guest stars can’t wallpaper over an episode’s flaws like it might on another series. “Last Looks” has one of the same problems as the previous episode – there’s a lot of setup before Charlie Cale arrives on the scene, and we don’t get a ton of time with her once she does. But that episode was a fun acting showcase for Cynthia Erivo, and a good test for Charlie’s bullshit detector, and this episode isn’t either of those things.
It goes without saying that Esposito is good in his role – that of Fred Finch, a mortician who’s frustrated that his funeral home is being used as a movie set, and that his much-younger wife Greta (Holmes) isn’t entirely happy with a life among the dead. But he doesn’t get to do much we haven’t already seen from him. We get a quick flash of Gus Fring’s menace in one scene, but he mostly just gets to play the stiff (no pun intended) so that Greta can get frustrated, threaten to leave him, and get murdered for her trouble.
There’s some cleverness in how Fred uses the movie set to cover his tracks, and in the mementos he makes from people’s mortal remains. But the mystery isn’t terribly compelling. Charlie’s bullshit detector doesn’t really come into it, and the flimsy excuse Fred gives for her disappearance is too flimsy. He claims she ran off with the film crew; Charlie just checks in with the film crew and one scene later has a pretty good idea who the killer is.
The ending is also pretty broadly telegraphed. Until a kicker in the final shot, which sets up quite an episode three. But it’s a slow ride through episode two to get there.
Stray bullets:
• This is Katie Holmes’ first TV role since her high-profile divorce from Tom Cruise. Wonder why a story about a wife trying to escape a controlling much-older husband appealed to her.
• Corrigan is the latest in a long list of Lyonne’s former costars to grace the show — he played her boyfriend in 1998’s Slums of Beverly Hills.
