Streaming: where it can take almost two and a half years since its premiere for a hit show’s second season to start. Poker Face arrived in early 2023 as a smart, modern riff on Columbo starring Natasha Lyonne as an effortlessly cool, almost-psychic, entirely unintentional detective, with a stage-setting pilot written and directed by Knives Out creator Rian Johnson. With its twisty mysteries, world-class roster of guest stars, and compelling season-long arc about Lyonne’s character Charlie Cale hiding out from Ron Perlman’s vengeance-seeking casino owner, Poker Face was a buzzy favorite back in ‘23, with an Emmy nomination for Lyonne and a win for guest star Judith Light.
Two years is a lot of time, though. Since Poker Face’s first season the broadcast networks have hopped back on the Columbo train, with CBS’s Elsbeth fully embracing the same guest star-heavy “howcatchem” format Poker Face is known for (where viewers see who committed the crime in the opening act). Elsbeth and ABC’s High Potential also both have a similar comedic tone and both star idiosyncratic, unlikely crime-solvers in a vein similar to Charlie Cale. Between the long break and the busier airwaves, it’s fair to wonder if Poker Face’s second season can measure up to the first, or if it will struggle to recapture what made it fresh and exciting to begin with.
Based on the first 10 of this season’s 12 episodes, Poker Face’s second season retains enough of what made the first work to entertain the show’s fans. It’s not as smooth or satisfying as that first batch of episodes, though, leaning too hard into the humor throughout, and too often with a self-satisfied quirkiness that the first season only occasionally flashed. At its best Poker Face Season 2 rivals the best of Season 1; at its worst, it just tries a little too hard. And part of the problem lies with the show’s central conceit: that Cale has the preternatural ability to tell when somebody’s lying.
Lyonne matter-of-factly muttering “bullshit” after a character tells a whopper doesn’t ever get old, but the idea that she’s a walking lie detector has never fully felt right. It builds the whole show on a foundation that’s just a little too inherently silly, and becomes an easy shortcut that writers take instead of fleshing out their mysteries. Certain episodes in Season 2 do smartly account for this narrative gimmick, with characters eliding facts without actually lying, or phrasing things in such a way that they’re not technically untrue despite being lies; they’re clever bits of writing, but it’s so obvious a technique that it only underscores how Cale’s superhuman skill has become a crutch.
Season 2 is also hurt by how it handles what appears to be its season-long mystery. It wraps up surprisingly early, with most of the season’s episodes serving as one-offs. It’s possible the last two episodes, which weren’t provided to critics, might pull on threads introduced earlier in the season, but even then it wouldn’t have the impact of Benjamin Bratt’s recurring hitman from the first season. There’s really no hint of a larger direction during the season’s second half, and although that’s in no way a deal-breaker as long as individual episodes are still strong, it does make Season 2 feel a little less planned out and more like a typical network detective show.
Fortunately the show’s guest stars remain excellent, with a strong cast of familiar faces for Lyonne to amusingly croak at. Particularly great is Patti Harrison, who isn’t a typical one-off, but a new recurring character. She arrives as a kind of sidekick for Cale late in the season, providing a jolt that would’ve helped earlier on, as a partner whose own unique neurodivergence is a perfect complement to Cale’s; if her character remains unscathed and on good terms with Cale after those last two episodes, she’d be a more than welcome full-time addition for a possible third season. Cynthia Erivo steals the premiere by playing four different roles (with A Different World’s Jasmine Guy, never on TV enough, as those identical twins’ hateful mother), Giancarlo Esposito crisply enunciates his way through another meticulous villain role opposite Katie Holmes as his unfulfilled wife, and John Mulaney and Richard Kind stage an unofficial Everybody’s Live crossover as (respectively) an FBI agent and the husband of Rhea Perlman’s mob boss—and that’s all just in the first three episodes. Kumail Nanjiani and Gaby Hoffman are each excellent in an over-the-top “Florida man” episode that is the season’s funniest (which also co-stars John Sayles, improbably), and Simon Rex continues his unlikely late-career rebirth as a legitimately good actor as a washed-up minor league pitcher who never hit his potential. And hey, Sam Richardson: we love you in everything.
As funny as the Florida episode is, though, and as good as Rex is as a one-time ace-in-the-making who never panned out, those two back-to-back episodes highlight some of the new season’s problems. The former episode is heavy on broad, goofy comedy, and it works well because Nanjiani and Hoffman (and Lyonne, who’s great throughout) make sure it works. The following baseball episode falls flat, though, coming off as too broad, too silly, with too much unearned confidence in its comedic instincts. Both episodes have animated sections that represent cosmic epiphanies (one of them does it twice, with two different characters), and that’d be too much for one season of a TV show, much less two episodes in a row.
The best episodes of this season are the ones that most subvert the show’s format. Harrison’s character, who basically can’t tell a lie of any magnitude, brings a notable and welcome shift to the formula, and an episode that focuses on school kids completely rethinks the show’s approach to murder. (Which, seriously, if you live in the world of Poker Face and ever meet Charlie Cale, get as far away from her as possible and never talk to her again; she loses friends just as quickly and easily as she makes them, but, like, permanently.) And given we haven’t seen the last two episodes yet, it’s entirely possible Season 2 ends so strongly that it makes us reevaluate the whole season—although that’s pretty unlikely to happen. Also the last episode, directed by Lyonne herself (hopefully without the use of AI, “ethical” or not), is ominously called “The End of the Road,” so who knows, perhaps this season will be the end of Poker Face and Cale entirely.
Hopefully that’s not the case. Even though it all feels a little slighter than that first season, there’s enough juice in this basic concept to run for a while—especially if it downplays the bullshit meter. Poker Face’s second season is less a modern Columbo than a hipster Elsbeth—a fun, enjoyable, cooler version of what you can find on CBS, but not an especially better one—but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Traditionally shows like this are breezy entertainment, first and foremost, not award-winning bastions of what this artform can aspire to, even if Peter Falk did rack up the Emmys back in the day. If Season 1 was a full house, Season 2 is three of a kind, to make the most obvious, least imaginative comparison possible, and there’s no bullshit in that at all.
Poker Face‘s second season premieres on Thursday, May 8, with three episodes on Peacock. A new episode will start streaming every Thursday through July 10.
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.
For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV
