New series called Poker Face. The opening credits uses the old simple yellow fonts and episode titles to deliberately start the show off with an old feel, and that may have primed me for it, but it reminds me of the old 1970s less-than weekly, hour and a half TV shows, with leisurely-paced stories. It actually reminds me a lot of Colombo, with a new cast of well-developed characters each episode, and the main character first showing up well into the episode, after the “crime of the week” has been shown. Really good so far, with the first four episodes already out.
Lyonne is really good in this. I thought her career was over by the time she threatened to rape her neighbor’s dog, but she pulled out of the spiral.
Ever since Russian Doll, so many people (including me) have been suggesting online how well she’d fit as Columbo, but it wasn’t really likely to come together quite so serendipitously as that, so Rian Johnson took it in his own hands to create something Columbo-esque for her that satisfies those desires we have long had.
I have only watched the first episode so far, but I loved it.
I was familiar with her early in her career: The Slums of Beverly Hills, Krippendorf’s Tribe and Comic Book Villains. She was also in American Pie movies. Just because you are now only given one character doesn’t mean that you can only play one.
Fair enough. I like her a lot, I’ve just noticed that, at least for the last several years, her characters have very similar personalities and mannerisms.
Mrs. solost and I watched ep1. I enjoyed it. I assumed the casino murder / poker scam plot was going to have a seasonal arc, so about 45 minutes in I thought “whoa, a lot is happening in the first episode”. Only at the end did I realize it was going to be a ‘crime of the week’ type show. Did have a kind of retro, 70s feel.
To be fair, the last few parts she co-created. This seems to be the character she enjoys playing.
So the Show was probably sold as Columbo meets Kung-fu or Fugitive.
We know who done-it up front and the fun is in how does the off-beat detective (with a crappy car) uncover the clues. While travelling the country on the run.
It’s enjoyable enough and yeah, Lyonne is basically playing the same character she always does but I can handle that. What I can’t handle is this insistence she has on wearing her hair in that gawdawful scraggly look–I just want to sit her down, cut off the bottom eight inches of frizz and give her a good conditioner pack. I know her hair isn’t actually as overprocessed and gross as it looks and I get it plays into the “tuffgirl on the run” motif but dayum, are there no showers in Motel 6 any more? Get some product, girl, and go to Supercuts for a trim, that mop is more distinctive than anything else about you and sunglasses don’t help cover it up a bit.
That’s a good point, she doesn’t have an agenda per se she just gets curious, flips some tables and leaves the mess behind once she knows what happened. The complete lack of followthrough is rather refreshing, hope that stays constant.
She doesn’t directly interact with the police, at least as of the third episode I’ve seen (she’s already wanted by the police in connection with the events of the first episode). She uncovers evidence and then gets one of the locals to turn the evidence over to the police.
Did they explain why she has such amazing powers of observation? Her lie detection ability only piques her curiosity; it doesn’t really help her solve the murders.
