David: Poker Face
Why is it, in this world we live in, when something is incredibly successful and audiences say, "Give us more!" the more is always a parody of the thing that went before or a stupid subversion?
Paging Rian Johnson.
I loved Knives Out. Like really loved it. It was a throwback whodunit that morphed into a howcatchem masquerading as a comedy. I was pumped for "Knives Out 2", but what we got was "Glass Onion" which was a poor comedy masquerading as a whodunit. The middle section twist could have made rewatches more rewarding, but instead they just built the rewatch right in almost as insufferably as TENET (I'll not digress into Nolan territory, but suffice to say Oppenheimer won way more praise than it deserved as an overall film).
The Force Awakens was already a rework of Star Wars (A New Hope, I mean, not the entire universe). I was so hyped for more Star Wars I overlooked a lot of its failings then. My critical eye was back for The Last Jedi, and it is a long ass film where nothing happens other than destruction of the world building done in the previous installment. The low speed space chase is such a strange plot device and the hyperdrive kamikaze move both misunderstands hyperspace travel completely and creates a stupid moment of "why is anyone fighting with laser swords when we can just hurl large ships into any obstacle?" You can't tell me Saw Gerrera wouldn't do a 9/11 on the Emperor or Vader.
Shit, what was I here to talk about?
Oh yeah. Rian.
Columbo. It's the best. A beautiful formula that can be repeated endlessly. Guest stars galore (Dick Van Dyke! Jack Cassidy! Johnny Cash?). All sold by the brilliant performance of Peter Falk. When Poker Face was announced as a show in the spirit of the Columbo formula I was excited, and when it came out I loved the first season. Sure, there was a bit of a stretch here or there and I wasn't always sold on the performances, but the spirit was there. It was fairly grounded with just a dash of ridiculousness that went just to the rim of the pot without boiling over.
Season 2, so far, has been a cartoon. Everything is overly contrived, we've pulled the classic Rian move of throwing away the world building from before, and the involvement of the main character is, for the most part, superfluous. The first episode itself would have been solved by the police in the same amount of time it took Charlie Cale to reach her conclusion. Yesterday's episode featured Kumail Nanjiani doing "an accent" while saying "gator done" and someone sprinkled meth on an alligator's nose. I wasn't even tired when I started watching it, and I fell asleep.
In conclusion, Poker Face season 2 bad. Thank you for listening to my talk.
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