Poker Face

[Kaos]

If you ever watched Columbo you might find yourself wondering how he somehow got reincarnated into the misshapen, frizzy-haired body of 'Charlie', the human lie detector who is the centerpiece of this new Peacock series.   

The show has the same opening look as the opening of Columbo from coloring to font to graphics.  It has the same format as Columbo. You see what happened, know who did it and then work backward as oddball Charlie - played by Natasha Lyonne figures the crime out. It uses the same reliance as Columbo on episode-by-episode special guest stars. Columbo was Dick Van Dyke, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, Vincent Price, etc.  Poker Face is Benjamin Bratt, Adrian Brody, Chole Sevigny, Judith Light, Ellen Barkin, Tim Meadows, etc.

It's so similar, I expect the quirky Charlie to stop at the door and turn to the suspect and say "just one more thing..."  At some point I'm pretty sure it will happen, honestly. 

The difference?  Columbo was a detective, solving the crimes for law enforcement. Charlie is a hustler, on the run from a casino owner who travels around the country in a beat to shit vintage car, picking up odd jobs.  Wherever she goes, she happens to turn up just as a murder (or attempted murder) occurs.  Her gift for knowing when somebody is lying ends up being crucial to solving what would ordinarily be an unsolvable case.

Lyonne's Charlie is a odd one.  She's bizarrely charming and is clearly having fun in the role.  But she looks like she would smell like three-day-old ass sweat, stale cigarettes and dirty socks.

If you liked Columbo (and I did) this is an obvious homage to the dogged detective in almost every way.  But it's not quite as good.

[GH2001]

Always liked her character in the American pie franchise. Which they later turned gay I think in the reunion one. Not sure why. But she was always funny.

[Kaos]

Always liked her character in the American pie franchise. Which they later turned gay I think in the reunion one. Not sure why. But she was always funny.

Never watched any of American Pie films.  The only thing I knew of her before this was playing a disco slut in the terrible Detroit Rock City - a KISS movie that was so bad I can't even watch it any longer. 

Bad casting and badly directed.  Every character was a caricature. The worse choice of all was Edward Furlong - at the beginning of the creepy-nasty phase that has defined him. He was god-awful. 

What's sad is that it could have been a good story if it was told honestly and not with these over-exaggeraged moronic characters and ridiculously improbable set ups.

I was really looking forward to seeing my story played out and not the cringe-inducing garbage this movie turned out to be.  When I was about 15-ish one of my friends "borrowed" his parent's car, we drove to Birmingham (without tickets) crudely painting our faces along the way, managed to get tickets from scalpers and watched what was (then and now) the greatest concert I've ever seen -- a fire-breathing, blood spewing, rocket-firing, drum rising, guitar smashing spectacle so full of raw energy that it made me a KISS fan forever.

And then our stupid asses photobombed a live TV broadcast, got seen by parents and ended up grounded until 2027.  Just a few more years and I'll be able to leave the house again. 

That has nothing to do with Poker Face but my story, filmed properly, would have made a better movie than the one Natasha Lyonne was in.