In this lively and hilarious recap video, Natasha Lyonne and Rian Johnson walk us through everything that happened in Season 1 of 'Poker Face', ahead of the Season 2 premiere. From Charlie Cale’s humble beginnings as a casino cocktail waitress with an uncanny ability to detect lies, to her cross-country journey solving murders and evading hitman Cliff, the duo highlights the season’s wildest moments. They break down standout episodes—like the one where Charlie befriends a trucker and learns nomadic survival tips (never use an ATM, always carry Krazy Glue), the one where she punches Krampus in the face, and the surreal, effects-heavy episode featuring a giant horse head courtesy of legendary creature designer Phil Tippett.
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00:00The death toll is high.
00:02That's a death toll.
00:03Don't edit that.
00:06Previously on Poker Face.
00:08So the season starts with Charlie Kale working as a casino cocktail waitress.
00:14And she has an uncanny ability to always tell when somebody is lying.
00:19Six of hearts.
00:20Bullshit.
00:21You see Charlie, right?
00:22She uses this ability to uncover the truth behind her best friend's sudden murder.
00:27After she discovered some unsavory information that hotel management did not want exposed.
00:33Mr. Sterling, who is the powerful casino owner, puts Charlie on his hit list.
00:39And he sends his crony, Cliff, to hunt her down, blaming her for the death of his son.
00:45And when I do kill you, finally, you can thank me.
00:51I gotta go.
00:52Ryan, this is a bad scene.
00:54This is not good.
00:54I mean, the stakes are high.
00:55Very, very bad here.
00:56What happens next?
00:57Oh, I remember.
00:59Charlie, you see?
00:59She goes on the run, making new friends and foes across the country.
01:04And what does she do?
01:04She solves a suspiciously high count of murder mysteries.
01:08So she befriends a trucker who teaches her valuable nomadic life lessons.
01:14Don't use an ATM card.
01:15No ATMs.
01:15Because they can track you down.
01:17Right.
01:17Always have a burner phone.
01:18Pay cash, but use a burner phone.
01:20Right.
01:20And use crazy glue if you've got an open wound.
01:23Super glue.
01:25Yes, it is.
01:26She knows what she's doing.
01:28She's a boss.
01:28Other things Charlie does.
01:30Discovers the secret to the perfect brisket and reluctantly helps out a fascist dog.
01:35That dog is now Secretary of the Treasury.
01:38Oh, that's interesting.
01:39Anyway, the dog is charming.
01:41It's charming.
01:41Go build a wall, you jackpot piece of s***.
01:44She learns to never meet your rock and roll heroes.
01:46If I definitely meet Chloe 7, he should have come up.
01:50Security!
01:51And goes internet viral for punching Krampus in the face.
01:56Oh, boy.
01:56I know what's coming.
01:57Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:57You're getting it in the face, you Krampus.
01:59Be friends to ex-felons at a retirement home.
02:03Oh, this was a great app.
02:04Judith Light and Peppa.
02:05Yes, yes.
02:06This was a major app.
02:07Judith Light.
02:08Look at her.
02:08Look at that.
02:08She's so creepy.
02:11This is one of the days.
02:12Ow!
02:12That's Becca GT.
02:13Stunt Maverick.
02:14But it's also me, and I have a tendency, due to lack of stretching, to cramp up, not like
02:19Krampus.
02:20And Judith was on top of me, and I thought, I don't want to stop her, because who am I
02:24to say no to Judith Light?
02:25Exactly, yeah.
02:26She won an Emmy.
02:26I remember with Lucky McKee, who directed this one, discussing the fight scene from They
02:31Live, in that it should just keep going on and on beyond when it's ridiculous.
02:35And where?
02:37Oh!
02:38Hey!
02:39Hey!
02:39Hey!
02:40Hey!
02:40Hey!
02:41She doesn't care.
02:41Oh, she's guarding me.
02:42She's just watering her plants.
02:43She's just guarding her plants.
02:44Nice shot.
02:45Yeah, he's fine.
02:45Also, the line, you talc'd me.
02:47Ah!
02:48Ah!
02:48You talc'd me!
02:49You fucking whore!
02:50You talc'd me, you whore?
02:51You talc'd me, you whore?
02:53All because of the sort of foot powder thing.
02:55Ah!
03:03I'm his nephew.
03:04Sure.
03:05This is where we meet Luca.
03:06Oh!
03:07Oh, Simon!
03:08It's fun because the show, it's new stars, new guest stars every single week and so it's
03:14a little bit like The Tonight Show where it's not like there's regulars, except for Simon
03:18coming back.
03:19Hey, fake nephew.
03:20And so I feel like he's kind of become like a buddy that keeps coming back.
03:24So Luca is a FBI agent and he first, not weird at all, he first meets Charlie at the
03:32retirement home in that episode and is kind of low level.
03:35Basically, Charlie keeps stumbling into these situations where she ends up doing his job for him really well and so he keeps rising in the ranks of the FBI.
03:44It's a very sweet relationship.
03:45Let's skip ahead.
03:47Charlie heartily defends the backstage crew at a dinner theater.
03:50It wasn't Phil's fault.
03:52I think someone drugged him and futzed with the floor door.
03:55That was a big ep.
03:56That was good.
03:57That was huge.
03:58Do you want a gram with the shrine?
04:00I'm good.
04:01Karina collects these old magazines and every single hot guy, it's always the reluctant
04:06sense.
04:07It's like Brad Pitt with his shirt off like by a pool.
04:09Right.
04:10It's like reluctant sex symbol.
04:11Listen, Charlie, some other stuff that she gets into.
04:14I mean, she acquires some sick driving skills.
04:17Geez, why am I so afraid of crashing?
04:19I mean, it's just an arcade game.
04:21Holy Toledo!
04:22Charles Melton, he was so good.
04:23He's kind of teaching her why driving is actually a skill and not just turning left.
04:28You got to trust the car.
04:30He teaches her to trust the car.
04:32You got to trust the car.
04:33Do you trust the car?
04:34Well, it's an arcade game.
04:36When I say slam on the gas hard and turn, I'm ready.
04:39I am not!
04:40Now!
04:43I think we originally scripted this scene to be done out at the track in a real car.
04:47And then, hey, we shoot these episodes in 10 days.
04:50So we're like, yeah, maybe we just do it in the arcade game.
04:52It was also very warm out.
04:54This was a surprisingly hot season.
04:57Cars were melting.
04:58Yeah, I think that's true.
04:59Tires were just getting stuck to the road.
05:08Let's jump forward.
05:09She assists a special effects artist and discovers hidden film footage to avenge a death.
05:15And she rocks a giant horse head in an episode that she directed, that Natasha directed.
05:22And wrote with Alice Jo.
05:24The real Phil Tippett, legend of all legends, actually shows up, makes those creatures for us, and is even on set, sometimes actually doing practical as Nick Nolte's hands because he maneuvers them so well.
05:37And so for us, it was really, like, special.
05:39We loved making this one.
05:40That was amazing.
05:41It was really amazing.
05:42It was really amazing.
05:43Between that, Phil Tippett's work right here.
05:44Oh, God.
05:45And his team, his whole team at his studio is just incredible.
05:49They designed these, and they did the animation.
05:52And you can actually see his hands, like, blurring in there, which I thought was a really cool effect that they did.
05:57A little tip for multi-hyphenates.
05:59A little tippets.
06:00A little tippets.
06:01If you're going to have to do multiple jobs, you see, if you just put yourself in a full horse costume, then you can kind of multitask more easily because they don't know it's Becca in the horse costume.
06:10And she's much better at horsing around.
06:12She's a professional stunt man.
06:14What was that a reference to?
06:15You had pulled out a...
06:16Cocteau.
06:17That was a Cocteau film.
06:18That's right.
06:19Was it the Orpheus trilogy?
06:20Orpheus is involved in a title.
06:22It's a black and white criteria.
06:23No one's really ever watched the full film, I'll be honest.
06:25No, it doesn't really.
06:26Just like Jaren and I, our cinematographer, we're just, oh yeah, what happens in Spike Lee movies?
06:31They put him on a treadmill?
06:32Oh, they say, yeah, yeah, they stick it to him.
06:33Let's do that.
06:34Yeah, yeah.
06:35Look how gorgeous Cherry Jones is here.
06:37It's beautiful.
06:38If she steps one hoof on this property again, have her arrested.
06:43Let's jump forward.
06:44Charlie becomes a murder victim herself.
06:48Well, sort of.
06:49That is not a stick.
06:54Yeah, that's a bone.
06:55Stephanie.
06:56Stephanie Zhu.
06:57Stephanie Zhu and Joseph Grand Leavitt.
07:00And just, this was a very fun episode written by Lilla and Nora.
07:05The Zucks.
07:06The Zucks.
07:07And the escape from, can we say .
07:10Oh, escape from .
07:12From that mountain.
07:13From that mountain.
07:14From that mountain.
07:15From that mountain.
07:16From that mountain.
07:17And so there's this mix up that the Zucks came up with, which I thought was brilliant,
07:21where you do the traditional poker face thing, where we see the murderer, and then we flash,
07:25where a form you don't see gets hit by a car.
07:28When we start up the next act and we do our flashback, you think it's going to be Stephanie's character, Morty, who is dead.
07:34And in fact, it's actually Charlie who's been hit.
07:37We think we see Charlie get killed by Joe Gordon-Leavitt's character.
07:41But then we realize she's actually survived.
07:44And not only that, you've been able to foil Joe by grabbing his ankle monitor to bring the cops to her.
07:51Kaboom!
07:52Pretty solved.
07:53Major episode.
07:54Pretty great.
07:55And then the tag on it is that Cliff has finally found her in the hospital.
08:00Sticky situation.
08:01Was I wearing a neck brace?
08:02I think you were.
08:03I had a leg in a thing, right?
08:04Robocop.
08:05Charlie solves one last murder.
08:07That of Mr. Sterling himself.
08:11$500,000 clean cash, which I hope you will regard as the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship.
08:17And if you don't, no obligations beyond this afternoon.
08:22Deja vu.
08:23Robocop.
08:24Robocop is someone that I wanted to kind of work with for a long, long time.
08:29And he was very, very kind.
08:30He came in and played the big, big heavy of the episode.
08:33And there's just a long, long, long scene in the beginning of the episode where it's just him and you at a poker table having this long conversation.
08:42And we knew we needed somebody who could really just come in and fill those shoes.
08:47And Ron's a legend, man.
08:49He's amazing.
08:50And Ben Bratt crushes.
08:51Ben Bratt is a big Ben Bratt episode.
08:54Yeah.
08:55And Clea Duval is in it.
08:56Clea appears as your sister.
08:57In the famous Crawl Up.
08:58Crawl Up the Stairs.
08:59Crawl Up the Stairs.
09:00That's something I do IRL whenever I see a set of stairs because no one ever taught me you're supposed to walk on them.
09:05Use your feet.
09:06You know, I do it if it's a public space, but it's not my preference.
09:09Yeah.
09:10Remember old dildo finger.
09:12Oh, that's right.
09:13The dildo ring.
09:14Right.
09:15Oh, there's a string of great, very professional emails.
09:17Took a lot of time to dial in the design of the dildo ring.
09:19Yes.
09:20The dial in the design of the ring from the bachelorette party.
09:22The final beat is Beatrix Hasp, you see.
09:24Right.
09:25She calls on a cell phone.
09:26Cliff told me about your circus freak lie detector thing.
09:29You come back right now.
09:30You put it to work for the hasps.
09:32And we'll see how it goes.
09:34There she is, Rhea Perlman on the line.
09:36Rhea Perlman making an appearance, yeah.
09:38And she gives a sort of ultimatum and Charlie takes that phone.
09:41Burns it.
09:42And burns the burner.
09:43Burns the burner.
09:44Janixa Bravo.
09:45Janixa Bravo.
09:46Directing the finale last season, bringing it home for us.
09:49Remember the last day and the ending and the rain and the rainbow and waiting.
09:54That's right.
09:55The very last shot, Natasha leaning against her car, drinking a beer with the sunset behind her.
10:00We literally just scouted it that day and we just found this road and we were huddled and there was a thunderstorm.
10:06And so we were all in the car and we were like, is the thunderstorm going to break before the.
10:10And it was like, the thunderstorm is broken, but the sun's going down.
10:13Run, go.
10:14And we were all out there and it was just this mad dash.
10:16And we got to pretend like we were on a Werner Herzog set or something.
10:21Yeah, but then it got really beautiful.
10:24It was gorgeous.
10:25I love that.
10:26That was a special day.
10:27That was a real like, oh, we're making movies.
10:29And she sets off back on the road in her Plymouth Barracuda.
10:32Yahtzee.
10:33That's it.
10:34And off we go into season two.
10:36Season two, there's going to be more murders.
10:39Not a spoiler that there will be more murders.
10:41More solved murders.
10:42More solved murders.
10:43If we have anything to say about it.
10:44More incredible with the guest stars we got in season two are off the charts.
10:48Bonanza.
10:49And that's pretty much everything you need to know about the season, right?