{"id":10359,"date":"2023-05-12T08:00:32","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T14:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/?p=10359"},"modified":"2023-05-08T15:17:32","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T21:17:32","slug":"not-quite-a-blank-poker-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2023\/05\/not-quite-a-blank-poker-face\/","title":{"rendered":"Not quite a blank poker face"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Image: Peacock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Charlie Cale is on the run from Ron Perlman for the death of Adrien Brody. Along the way, she has to solve crimes involving everyone from Nick Nolte to Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Chloe Sevigny using her super power of always knowing when someone is lying. And if that sounds like a modern update of\u00a0Colombo\u00a0<\/em>with Trump-era wish-fulfillment thrown in, well, that\u2019s kind of what Rian Johnson\u2019s\u00a0Poker Face\u00a0<\/em>is doing.<\/p>\n

As a show,\u00a0Poker Face\u00a0<\/em>is a solid watch and worth your time. And frankly, I think it\u2019s probably only going to get better. The first season was somewhat uneven and struggled to find the right tone. Sometimes it wanted to be quirky and fun (think the monster-of-the-week shows from\u00a0Supernatural\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0X-Files<\/em>). Other times it wanted to be meaningful mystery (again, think\u00a0Colombo<\/em>). Obviously a show can be more than one thing, but to shift around like that requires a lot of skill and so far the transitions are a bit disorienting.<\/p>\n

Like\u00a0Colombo<\/em>, we\u2019re shown the murder first and then shown how the star solves the mystery. Unlike Colombo<\/em>, Poker Face <\/em>gives us Charlie\u2019s perspective after we see the murder, which means we\u2019re usually seeing the same action again from a different perspective. Sometime we\u2019re given it a third time. So functionally we\u2019re watching 10-20 minutes worth of action two or three times in a sixty minute episode. Again, this can be done well, but Poker Face <\/em>needs some more experience to get this to where they\u2019re using their time efficiently.<\/p>\n

None of these are problems with the actors\u2013they\u2019re all at the top of their game and more than make up for the shaky writing.<\/p>\n

I said above this is a modern update of\u00a0Colombo\u00a0<\/em>with Trump era wish-fulfillment thrown in. How many times in the past seven years have we wished we could\u00a0know, <\/em>instantly and without doubt or hesitation, whether or not someone was telling the truth? Without having to fact-check, without having to ask clarifying questions, without, well, without anything, don\u2019t we want to just\u00a0know<\/em>? I don\u2019t even need to pick a political issue, we all have them and we all suspect someone is lying but don\u2019t have the tools to use to confirm it. Enter Charlie Cale, who just knows.<\/p>\n

To its credit, the show steers clear of political issues and keeps the stakes \u201csmall\u201d (not small for Charlie, obviously, but not dealing with the future of the civilized world or anything like that). And as far as it goes, there\u2019s an important lesson here. We have to live in a world where the truth is something we have to fight for. Yes, the Truth has been revealed in God\u2019s Word and can be trusted. But aside from what we need to know for salvation truth is something we have to work for. We\u2019re born into a world that was made good and has fallen, so we have to fight every day to know who is lying and who is telling the truth. We have to know how reality works and when the words and actions of others are at odds with or aligned with that reality. So it\u2019s nice to be able to watch someone\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>have to deal with that\u2013though obviously the parallel message is that knowing the truth doesn\u2019t automatically make life all sunshine and puppies either, given what Charlie Cale has to deal with.<\/p>\n

Clearly, there\u2019s a lot to like about\u00a0Poker Face\u00a0<\/em>and we should look forward to the next season!<\/p>\n

Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast<\/a> an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog), and an Associate Profess<\/em>or of Political Science at\u00a0Southwest Baptist University<\/a>\u00a0in Bolivar, MO<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review of Rian Johnson’s “Poker Face”, Streaming on Peacock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1469,"featured_media":10362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560,424],"tags":[1386],"class_list":["post-10359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-tv-show","tag-peacock"],"yoast_head":"\nNot quite a blank poker face<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Review of Rian Johnson's "Poker Face", Streaming on Peacock\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2023\/05\/not-quite-a-blank-poker-face\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Not quite 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