The Creepy thing about "Poker Face"
Rian Johnson's clever update to the Columbo formula has me wondering
The charms of Rian Johnson’s Poker Face (streaming, Peacock) are beginning to wear thin for me, despite its universally glowing reviews. Johnson conspicuously models his new series on the long-running hit Columbo (1971–2003) but with some significant twists, one of which is beginning to creep me out. I’ll get to that shortly.
Here’s what Johnson kept from the Columbo formula: We in the audience meet the murderer and victim in the first act. We see the murder. The detective has no trouble figuring out whodunnit. The detective drives an old, ratty car. Each episode features, if not A-iist guest stars, than at least some beloved B-listers. The detective is a lot smarter than they first present. The story is built around the duel between detective and murderer where the issue is not whodunnit but how—and how to prove it. As the episode progresses, the murder grows increasingly annoyed with the detective’s persistence.
Here’s what Johnson changed. Unlike Peter Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo, Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale is not police. She’s a civilian who has reason to avoid police. Columbo is rarely in personal jeopardy. Charlie is rarely safe. If she loses her duel with the murderer she might be killed herself. Where Columbo has a steady job, Charlie is on the run. There’s a big bad out there, hunting her—an element borrowed from the TV version of The Fugitive (1963-1967). That increases the stakes for Charlie: the more time she spends nailing the killer the more she risks. Where Columbo can cuff the perpetrator, Charlie has to somehow deliver them to authorities she’s trying to avoid. All of these changes add interest. Another key departure is the setting. where the murderers in Columbo were all rich, privileged Angelinos, the murderers in Poker Face can be any class you'd encounter in the backwaters of the rural American Southwest.
One change strikes me as unnecessary—beyond setting up the first episode. Where Columbo is just a very smart detective, Charlie has a superpower: she’s a human lie detector who knows infallibly when anyone lies to her. Nobody can bullshit her.
But, finally, here’s the creepy change. In Columbo, time is linear. We start with the murder and then Columbo shows up and solves it. In Poker Face, while we also start with the murder, the next act has time jumping backwards. We discover in flashback that Charlie has already been on the scene even before the crime was committed. Not only that, but she has developed a relationship with the victim. For Columbo, it’s a job. For Charlie, it’s personal. But that fact, week after week, makes her something of an Angel of Death. It makes Charlie a fatally dangerous person to befriend. As she wanders through the American Southwest, the people she meets and befriends all wind up dead. You have the comfort to know that she'll solve your murder. But that's hardly compensation for getting murdered in the first place. Charlie’s a smart detective. I wonder how she’ll deal with it when she catches on that she is, as she says in the trailer, “a death magnet.”