[7.5/10] I enjoyed this one because, like the episode at the nursing home, it expertly plays with your sympathies.
In the first act, Kyle Owens is the good guy. He’s an old man who wants to make his legendary father proud before he retires. But what’s preventing him from doing that is some cocky young hotshot who employs dirty tricks on the track and tears out his mailbox to add insult to injury, Kyle doesn’t seem perfect, but he’s easy to sympathize with as someone trying to have his last run while being thwarted by someone who seems disrespectful and underhanded.
But then, at the end of the act, Kyle Owens sneaks into Davis’ garage to sabotage his car, and then seems to smile when the kid crashes, which, as with the nursing home cool kids, makes you question what kind of person he is.
The second act cements that, as we get to see events from Davis’ perspective. And yeah, he is a bit overconfident, but he also has legitimate grievances with the Owenses. From his perspective, he’s the little guy, who has to scrape by to get a car on the track, in contrast to Kyle and his daughter, who have a family name to trade on and the resources that big sponsors provide. You also get the sense that he genuinely loves this, trying to live up to the standard of his own grandfather and share his minor success and celebrity with the kids.
It doesn’t hurt that Charlie’s friends with his mom either! It’s a good way to give her an in to the murder mystery, and making Davis the offspring of someone who seems genuinely kind and decent helps put the audience on his side, especially when it looks like he’s got a tragic end coming. The way he tries to show Charlie the magic of racing, and even seems to be a little sweet on her, makes him a more likable guy than the cocky upstart we thought we knew from the first act.
But then, Poker Face switches our sympathies again. You can see Kyle’s daughter, Katy, showing up Davis on the go-kart track, which chaps his hide and spurs the mailbox-ripping revenge. But the true dark side comes out when he catches Kyle sabotaging his racecar.
The reveal that Davis sabotaged it further, and then put Katy in the driver seat, is both poetic and diabolical. It makes Davis seem like an active murderer, or at least muddies the blame for the incident with Katy, especially when Davis too seems pretty cold about the whole thing. And it makes Kyle somewhat sympathetic again, both when he’s clearly devastated by the ironic twist of his actions leading to his own daughter’s accident, and eventually because he stands up to face the music when confronted about it by Charlie and his no-nonsense but loving wife.
The chase from Charlie only reinforces that. I like the fact that she outs herself as a “cancer dog” for lies with Davis pretty quickly, so he’s smart enough to evade any statements that would give her a clue that he’s not on the up-and-up. It’s nice to see the villains here being clever enough to slip through Charlie’s detection methods. And the simple fact that what cracks open the case for Charlie is him trying to reassure a kid that seatbelts are safe has a poetry to it too.
He’s also damn menacing! Both the way he threatens Charlie with a tire iron and tries to run her down on the road is some of the most scary stuff Poker Face has pulled off. This being a Rian Johnson-penned episode, I appreciate the trademark setup, payoff, and ironic echo, where the fishtail move and “trust the car” mantra Davis taught her in the video game turns out to be the technique she needs to use to evade him.
The other odds and ends of the episode are good too. Charlie’s clues are all fair play, from the seatbelt lie, to Davis knowing what type of wire Kyle used for the sabotage, to the picture of Davis’ grandfather that was missing from the dash, to his mom’s forgetfulness about her keys that allow Charlie to slip into their garage. The humor was also particularly on point here, with Natasha Lyonne being especially amusing in her line deliveries about the glory of Deliverance and her regrets at accepting the “cancer dog” metaphor.
But what I like best here is Davis’ comeuppance. Rather than turning him into the cops or otherwise getting him to incriminate himself, Charlie deliberately gives him the yips! I like that as an alternative to the usual ways she brings people down. Davis getting what he’s always wanted (something clunkily announced in dialogue), only to find that with the pressure, the likely disapproval of his dead grandfather, and Katy awake and soon to take his crown, is some nice karmic retribution. And again, as is the hallmark of a Rian Johnson script, has the bookends of Davis’ shaking hand as a parallel to Kyle’s in the beginning.
Overall, another good mystery of the week with some well-played games of sympathy switching, along with a cool and unique way for Charlie to bring down the baddie.
this show gets better every time, whats not to love here? driving love. intriguing mystery times two and charlie being awesome again. rian johnson continues to get better with everything he makes.
A format shift, with us not witnessing the whole crime before Charlie's latest job is introduced. Lots to like here, as usual. I'll be sad to see this show end.
For a show whose every episode is essentially paint-by-numbers, it has to be hard to mess up the formula. That said, this episode found a way to do it. Terrible writing from the first scene to the last. Cringe-worthy dialog. I am surprised that a show with this kind of visibility could have been done so poorly. Sure, it did mess with the formula a little bit but the twist was still there and if you'd seen the other episodes you could see it coming a mile away.
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Maybe I shouldn’t say some of this, but that episode was so good! Nobody died - A+, I didn’t know how she was going to figure it out, and I thought Jerry was behind her on that road. I loved how they cast the Owens family - superb job on all fronts! Also, 2 episodes in a row that left me asking questions about our characters of the week! Keep it up, Poker Face!
Weak episode, script and delivery lacking in several scenes
wow how original, in this one no one dies but only gets severely hurt
good on you peacock, the show still sucks ass though
Less terrilble than the previous episode about theater but still quite a few steps down from the first few episodes.
Finally! Nobody died! And I liked that it ended with the guy getting arrested, karma it’s gonna do its thing, and with someone that hotheaded, things aren’t gonna end right
A few days ago in Brazil, some folks were having a "friendly" game of pool, and when the locals beat their opponents for 2 consecutive games, they laughed and chided their opponents as losers, then went to a table to have a few beers. A little while later, the "losers" returned with a pistol and a shotgun, lined all seven of the patrons up against the wall, including a 12 year old girl, then had the Brazilian version of the "Saint Valentines Day Massacre", after which they recovered their lost cash, as well as that of the innocents simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/seven-killed-brazilian-pool-hall-massacre-losers-mocked-video
Yes, revenge may be a "dish best served cold", and may even be satisfying when we feel the other person "deserved" it, but it ALWAYS requires us to disregard "the better angels of our nature" and take the easy road to a darker place.
I opened my comment on this episode with this news item, because, I found myself, after watching the first act of this episode, basically saying "well, the little shizz DESERVED it", and, also, wanting the father to tell the daughter, as Richard Pryor's Grandmother used to tell him, "go get me something to beat your azz with". This IMO is both the brilliance and yet the troubling aspect of Rian Johnsons writing. Playing with our sympathies is not an issue for those with an accurate moral compass, or like Charlie, who have BS detectors turned up to 11. But for people (like many in recent news) whose consciouses may already be on a slippery slope, or pretty much non existent, like those pool players in Brazil, I wonder if muddying the waters of our natural sympathies can lead to a, for lack of a better word, "demagnetization" of the psyche, so that the correct course of action, like a non functional compass, is not so clear.
Yeah, I realize that "It's just a show", but, sometimes these things are brought forward in ones mind after watching something thought provoking, as this particular episode was for me. But then again, if Ted "Theodore" Logan, could just have a conversation with John Wick, reminding him to "be excellent to one another", and, "party on dudes", well, perhaps we wouldn't be so eagerly anticipating the upcoming Part 4. Just a thought.... nuthin' serious,... just buggin'.
Episodically, as @Andrew Bloom once again thoroughly details, like Oprah on a Christmas show, Kyle gets his comeuppance, Davis gets his comeuppance, EVERYBODY gets their comeuppance, but then again, how long will it be before Charlie, in the eyes of certain peoples, gets HERS?
Shout by Stuart DavisBlockedParent2023-02-16T01:26:35Z
What is not to love?! This is an amazing show with so much going on under most people's noses, it would make that idiot ‘Q’ blush…or just embarrass her to death…
You must check it out! It gets better & better & so do the celebrity lineups