Poker Face: Less-than-anticipated-but-still-good beat?

 

I have recently started watching webseries. Started with Sitcoms, the first one was How I met your Mother. But am now diversifying a bit. Poker Face is one which I liked. The leader charector is a human lie detector and often gets involved in murder cases which require her skill to unravel. I will confess that I was looking for a Poker themed show when I can across this show, but the comdey-mystery did get be hooked up. I ended the first season and it was genius.

For much of the first season, Charlie the lead character was on the run, living off her car. Many episodes were set in rural Texas. This is a part of USA I seem to be discovering a lot recently. Sheldon is from here, and as such both Young Sheldon and Georgie and Mandy's First Marriage is set here. Recently, I read 'I was a Teenage Slasher', it didn't work for me but the description of the country life was vivid. And now Poke Face, the loke star state reaches out to me. There is a small, but as of now very distant, possibility that I may land a Postdoc position in Texas. But thats something I can worry about in like 5 years, for now, more pressing carrer update is having a seminar on 25th of this month.

Simon Helberg, more familiar to me as Howard from The Big Bang Theory and Loki lookalike, plays a FBI agent and he is indeed a good actor here too. The lead actress, I will confess that I don't recognise her from anywhere, is simply fantastic. The way she walks and talks just makes Charlie seem a real person. 

Come season 2 and a few episodes in Charlie doesn't really have much reasons to be on the run. Can't settle she prays, and we all go with it. Well the intresting thing is the varied location and situation and sections of contemporary American populace the show offers a world view into. And Charlie is not a investigators for hire, it is only that she keeps finding herself into such situations. A normal episode is normally non linear, Charlie is missing for about 25% of it and then we get a recap of the entire show from Charlie's POV and we get to know how she was connected to it. I really like this structure, a quater of each episode is just a new world. And like a spiral model of reinforced learning, we come back. This non linearity of narration is something I loved about HIMYM. This video explaining why it's spinoff failed does a much better job of saying what I want to say. 

But the absence of Charlie (and her powers) from the beginning of each episode that made the narrative unique now seems to have oozed into the entirety of the season 2. In many of the episodes the ability to detect Bullsh*t, as the captions put it, is only tangentially involved. In fact, some episodes may have been without Charlie but anyone else in her place and it won't have went much different. I will not say it is bad. It is good, entertaining, brilliant at times even. But still, as a blog puts it "This is not the Poker Face we were sold." (btw Good and more importantly active blog that I found today, read the review of the First part of the second season too.).

It is like the SJG book stripped on horror elements, it is good but could have been better. It is getting a flush on the river rather than the straight flush that was promised. I will not be continuing with the series as such. Bullsh*t! Okay, but this is not a reccodemndation I'll give to anyone. Bullsh*t! Okay, Okay, I still love this, the directors and writers are good. I need more of them, as I do of the lead actress.