Poker Face Recap: Rat Catcher
The episode opens, we meet our special guest stars, we see a murder take place, we learn how Charlie is connected, and we watch her solve the case. At this point, the formula of Poker Face has been so well-established that it should have grown stale. But that’s the thrill of a great procedural — through sharp writing, direction, and casting, every new episode feels fresh, even if the basic structure remains the same. In “Whack-a-Mole,” however, the show tries something different, and while it should be an exciting twist on the format, it ends up falling a little flat. The problem isn’t the deviation itself so much as the way it’s executed. Thankfully, the high standards of a show as rock solid as this one mean that even a middling installment has plenty to offer.
“Whack-a-Mole” picks up where “Last Looks” left off, with Charlie being held at gunpoint by Beatrix Hasp. Beatrix explains that the situation with the five mob families is not good. “What we are dealing with now is a war,” she tells Charlie. “It’s expensive and a pain in the ass.” Thanks to Charlie’s interference, the Hasp family is on the run, with the Southwest Syndicate and the FBI hot on their tail. Beatrix has an escape plan, but before leaving the country, she has to quell her suspicion that someone in her crew is a rat or a mole. (Charlie asks for a clarification on the difference, and I would also have appreciated an answer here.) Beatrix is forcing Charlie to drive her to a safe house, where the human lie detector will use her special talent to sniff out … whichever rodent term is appropriate here. Rhea Perlman manages to pack the appropriate amount of menace and humor into her five feet, and Natasha Lyonne plays off her perfectly, conveying the resignation of someone who is tired of running (and who very recently escaped a near-cremation).
Stopping at a gas station for snacks, Beatrix connects with an unknown but sharply dressed man inside. (I mean, we recognize him as John Mulaney, but for the show’s sake, he is just an unknown character.) When she returns to the car, she retrieves a note from a can of shrimp-flavored Vienna sausages (I share Charlie’s disgust), which tips her off that the safe house has been compromised. She has her men relocate to the Gem of the Ocean Motel, and that’s where she and Charlie head next. Charlie is nervous about helping Beatrix find the rat — especially after Beatrix promises, “I’m gonna slowly skin ’em alive and watch them eat their own flesh in front of me” — but she’s put at ease by the presence of Beatrix’s husband, Jeffrey, played by the incomparable Richard Kind. He’s not part of the Hasp family operation, but he does make panini with an iron, and he greets his beloved wife by singing “Hello, Little Girl” from Into the Woods. This begins a Sondheim runner that continues throughout the episode and is maybe my favorite thing Poker Face has done so far.
Beatrix sits Charlie at a poker game with three scary-looking men, warning her to tread carefully. But Charlie has run out of patience, so she immediately asks if any of them are working for the feds. They deny it, and she can tell they’re telling the truth. “Great, got what I needed!” she says before bailing. Beatrix isn’t satisfied, though, even after Charlie confirms that Jeffrey is clean, too. She wants Charlie to accompany them to the getaway plane just in case it’s an ambush. And wouldn’t you know it — it is an ambush. When Charlie makes it onto the plane, she discovers that the pilot is a blow-up doll. The FBI arrives, including our old friend Luca (Simon Helberg), along with Hooper (Chris Bauer) and Danny (Mulaney, suddenly looking pretty suspicious). The situation devolves quickly. When Jeffrey panics and tries to make a run for it, Luca shoots him multiple times. An enraged and grief-stricken Beatrix attacks Luca and gets a hold of his gun, shooting him at close range. She heads to the plane and finds Charlie cowering behind the blow-up-doll pilot. Charlie barely has a chance to speak before Beatrix fires.
Obviously, we’re missing some context here. In classic Poker Face style, we go back in time to find out what’s really going on. Leading an FBI meeting, Hooper explains that Beatrix is running scared, and they’ll soon be able to apprehend her thanks to Luca’s source embedded in the Hasp crew. Danny, obviously a mole for the other side, tries to get Luca to give up the name, but while the two agents are close — they even have a bit where they sing “Old Friends” from Merrily We Roll Along — Luca’s sticking to protocol. Danny still has enough intel to meet Beatrix at the gas station and tip her off about the compromised safe house with the Vienna sausages note. One of my quibbles with this episode is that the flashbacks often feel redundant; we’re repeatedly shown information we’ve already deduced or that’s explained elsewhere. We do learn that Danny has been working for Beatrix for years, and it’s given him a painful stomach ulcer, which is why he keeps chugging milk. He also doesn’t seem all that good at being a mole, at least when it comes to exposing the rat.
The rat turns out to be Jeffrey, as we learn in the next scene, where he meets Luca in a parking lot. Luca wants to know if Beatrix will work with the feds in exchange for witness protection, but Jeffrey thinks that’s unlikely. He’d like his own trip to WITSEC, though; as much as he loves his wife, he knows she’ll always choose work over him, and he needs a break. Jeffrey will reveal the double-crossing FBI agent’s identity provided he’s given protection after Beatrix is in custody. Luca agrees, noting the only way to make it work is to fake Jeffrey’s death. The new plan is for him to run from the planned ambush, and for Luca to shoot him with blanks while Jeffrey detonates squibs sewn inside his shirt. When Luca warns his informant not to muck up the plan with bad acting, Jeffrey shares his background in regional theater, including roles in Into the Woods and the “criminally underrated” (true!) Assassins. As the two sing “Everybody’s Got the Right,” Danny and a lip-reader watch the whole thing through binoculars from another car. Maybe Danny’s a better mole than I gave him credit for.
When we return to the motel and the scene of Charlie asking Jeffrey if he’s working with the feds, we can see that she’s covering for him. We also learn that she contacted Luca from the motel bathroom before the ambush, and that he gave her clear instructions. Obviously, things didn’t go according to plan. We watch the shootout again — do you get what I mean about this all being a little repetitive? — but this time, we see the aftermath of Beatrix firing at Charlie. Nothing happens, and she quickly realizes the bullets are blanks. Well, most of them, at least: Outside, Luca approaches Jeffrey and discovers he’s been shot for real. We get a brief flashback to Danny replacing the blanks with real bullets, another moment that feels superfluous since Charlie confirms as much later in the episode. As far as Luca knows, however, he’s somehow screwed up and killed his informant.
Beatrix is now holding Charlie hostage on the plane — she’s switched over to a gun with real bullets — but for whatever reason, Charlie is also helping her by calling out lies. Over the walkie-talkie, Danny tells Beatrix, “All I want is to make sure that nobody else gets hurt here,” and Charlie immediately clocks it as bullshit. The FBI is also not planning on getting Beatrix a real pilot to fly her out, at least not until she mentions her mole on the inside. At this point, and much to Danny’s growing panic, Hooper is willing to make a deal: He’ll gladly let Beatrix loose if it means finding a compromised agent. Beatrix isn’t in the business of naming names — “You want me to rat on my mole like a snake?” she demands, confusingly — but Luca and Charlie convince her that it was her FBI mole who’s actually responsible for Jeffrey’s death. That’s enough to finally get Beatrix to reveal the identity of … Maverick McTitticutty. An obvious alias, but a mention of milk-chugging is enough for Luca to put the pieces together.
Luca doesn’t want to believe his Sondheim-loving friend could be a turn cloak, but he would have been in the right position to switch the bullets. “He’s a weasel and a mole,” says Beatrix. “And now possibly a snake,” Charlie adds. Whatever animal he is, Danny makes a last-ditch attempt to save himself, but Charlie’s quick thinking (and his untied shoelaces) save the day, and he ends up in handcuffs. As for Beatrix, she’s suddenly willing to get witness protection in exchange for her testimony against the other four families in the Southwest Syndicate, which strikes me as an awfully abrupt change of heart. With Luca’s nudging, she also calls off the hit on Charlie. The whole thing feels a little too easy, and I’m not just saying that because I was hoping to see more of Perlman on the show. For the time being, though, Charlie is indeed free and clear. “No mob on my tail, nothing to run from,” she notes. The episode ends not with Charlie under fire, but with her choosing her next destination at random on a map. Just because she’s no longer on the run doesn’t mean she’s ready to stay in one place.
Just One More Thing
• In my recap of the season premiere, I pointed out that the repeated arrival of Beatrix’s goons could grow tired fast, but I didn’t expect Poker Face to abandon the storyline so quickly. While I like the idea of Charlie wandering of her own volition, it does feel like the show has suddenly lost some of its urgency.
• Still, I’m not overly concerned since I’m happy to hang out with Charlie in any capacity. She has a real way with words, as when she tells Beatrix, “I already have pissed myself five times today, and yet still a little something left in the tank.”
• It feels like Gen-X erasure when Beatrix calls Charlie a millennial, though that may be a reflection of Beatrix’s ignorance. (Or maybe Charlie is a few years younger than Natasha Lyonne.)
• Describing Charlie to the FBI, Luca provides my favorite character breakdown thus far: “probably in thrifted clothes, genial, inquisitive, voice like a rusty clarinet.”
• Nothing in the episode made me laugh more than Danny’s frustration at the lip-reader getting the Assassins lyrics wrong. “He’s the best lyricist of the 20th century,” Danny snaps. “Why would he write ‘bowl on sight’?”