Shuffle Up and Re-deal

It's been two years since I raved about the television series Poker Face. But now season 2 has come and gone, and I think it worth one more moment to highlight what a top-notch series it is.

Poke Face stars Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a woman who floats around the country bumping into crimes, and solving them thanks to her uncanny ability: she can instantly tell when a person is lying. The Columbo-inspired format generally shows us the crime in the opening act, before Charlie arrives on the scene. The game is not to solve the whodunnit, but to watch the dance between amateur detective and perpetrator -- how will Charlie figure everything out, and how long will the criminal be able to evade her?

Another big part of it is: what stars are going to show up this week? Natasha Lyonne has been working in the business for a long time, and has presumably developed a lengthy contact list of friends. The creator and sometimes-director of the show, Rian Johnson, has one too -- thanks in part to all the ensemble films he's been making. Add to that the fact that Poker Face has its own reputation now as a good show that's always going to have some juicy part for a guest star, and you shouldn't be surprised who's showing up each week.

Season two episodes include Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Holmes, John Mulaney, Richard Kind, Kumail Nanjiani, Carol Kane, David Krumholtz, Margo Martindale, Corey Hawkins, John Cho, Awkwafina, Alia Shawkat, Method Man, Justin Theroux, Haley Joel Osment... and a host of other television royalty who anchored a successful show at some point in their careers. It's easy to attract these kinds of people when you're offering them the opportunity to play characters from a set of quadruplets to grating internet personality to a con artist to a hitman. The invitation seems simple: come on Poker Face and have fun.

With Natasha Lyonne remaining the magnetic anchor of this show, and a writing staff able to constantly find new twists on the core premise, I found myself looking to Poker Face more than anything else in my viewing rotation for the 12 episodes it was back on the air. To me, this show is the reason to subscribe to Peacock... and you can stumble across enough deals online to get an entire year's subscription for around $20 that I don't feel bad at all if I never watch another thing on the service in that entire time.

Right at the end of the season, Poker Face served up a two-part finale episode that personally wasn't my favorite -- its clear Sherlock Holmes inspirations didn't serve the show as well in my mind as the Columbo roots. But even that was only "slightly less enjoyable" to me, not "bad" -- and it came at the end of 10 other episodes that had made me smile every single time without fail.

If anything, season two of Poker Face was even better than the first. I give it an A- (the "minus" only because the finale wasn't as perfectly suited to my tastes as the rest). No word yet on whether they will get a season three, by I'm happy to let them take another two years making it if that's what's necessary to make it happen.