A Delightfully Unpredictable School Mystery Is A Return To Form For The Peacock Series

Warning! This review contains spoilers for Poker Face season 2, episode 6.

Poker Face’s latest episode fits the pattern of the last few installments, as the killer goes after their unsuspecting rival. In “The Taste of Human Blood,” a by-the-book cop went after the TikToker cop who kept overshadowing her at the local policing awards. In “Hometown Hero,” a washed-up has-been pitcher went after the new hotshot rookie who threatened his gambling winnings. And in “Sloppy Joseph,” Stephanie, an overachieving straight-A student at a prestigious private school, goes after Elijah, the new kid gunning for her gold star record.

The episode opens like a Wes Anderson movie, with planimetric staging and meticulous camera pans across science projects, calligraphy, and the classroom gold star chart. And, unsurprisingly, it follows Anderson’s visual style and touches on a common theme of his work; child prodigies like Stephanie can be seen in Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Asteroid City. The opening act plays around with the fact that you know a murder is coming. As Stephanie grows to resent Elijah, she types “How to murder a boy” into a search engine, then keeps typing to reveal the full search: “How to murder a boy’s self-esteem.”

Stephanie finds out Elijah is an avid magician, so she sabotages his magic act at the school talent show. I know this show has a dark sense of humor, but I was dreading the moment Stephanie would kill Elijah (even inadvertently). Thankfully, after having some twisted fun with that expectation, the episode goes in a different direction. Stephanie rigs Elijah’s magic trick so that he squishes Joseph the class gerbil with a mallet and sprays his blood all over the kids in the front row. It’s still hilariously dark, but at least Elijah gets to live.

Poker Face Season 2, Episode 6 Is Led By Two Brilliant Child Actors

Eva Jade Halford & Callum Vinson Steal The Show

Poker Face got some really great character actors to guest-star in this episode. Margo Martindale plays the super strict principal, while David Krumholtz plays Elijah’s dad, who works as the school’s janitor to get his son’s tuition fees covered. But the stars of the episode are the two incredible child actors at the heart of it. Callum Vinson is such a beacon of light and childlike innocence as Elijah that it made me tear up just to see him so sad. And Eva Jade Halford is utterly hilarious as the “pig-tailed demon” Stephanie, brilliantly leaning into the character’s sadistic villainy.

Kate Thulin’s script wrings a ton of dark laughs out of Joseph’s tragic demise and Stephanie’s boundless evil. After Joseph is killed, Charlie wheels a “Rest in Peace, Joseph” cake into the classroom, adorned with a doctored image of Joseph bearing an angel’s wings. The kids assemble a shrine to Joseph at the back of the room. There’s a perfectly timed stark cut from Stephanie running in slow-motion with badass music on the soundtrack (“Spitfire” by The Prodigy) to what it really looks like: a kid plodding down a hallway while disinterested teachers tell her to slow down.

“Sloppy Joseph” Has The Escalation Of Twists That Last Week’s Poker Face Episode Lacked

The Mystery Has An Easy Resolution, But The Challenge Is Proving It

My biggest issue with last week’s Poker Face episode was that the mystery was too easy for Charlie to solve. This week’s mystery has another relatively easy resolution. Elijah’s dad figures out the trick was sabotaged, so half the investigation is done before Charlie even realizes anything needs to be investigated. Once it’s established that Elijah was sabotaged, the most obvious suspect is the right one. As soon as Charlie sees the gold star chart with Elijah closing in on Stephanie’s record, she figures out whodunit.

But this episode has the additional twist that last week’s installment lacked. Last week, as soon as Rocket was rumbled, he had no chance of getting away with it. But Stephanie is much smarter than Rocket (despite being a fraction of his age), so the real mystery is how Charlie will prove it. Stephanie swallows her only evidence (a button clasp she found at the scene of the crime), so it’s just Charlie’s word against Stephanie’s.

As it turns out, Stephanie is like a mob boss at this school. She’s got dirt on the principal, so she’s untouchable. She’s one step ahead of all her enemies, and she’s orchestrated a complex web of blackmail and extortion. She really lives up to the “pig-tailed demon” moniker that Charlie applies. After an underwhelming installment last week, “Sloppy Joseph” is a return to form for Poker Face. It sets up a unique murder mystery, it escalates the stakes with unforeseen twists and turns, and it’s anchored by two phenomenal child stars.

Poker Face Season 2, Episode 6

8/10

Release Date

January 26, 2023

Network

Peacock

Directors

Lucky McKee, Natasha Lyonne, Janicza Bravo, Ben Sinclair

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  Natasha Lyonne

  Charlie Cale

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  Benjamin Bratt

  Cliff Legrand

Pros & Cons

• Child stars Eva Jade Halford and Callum Vinson are spectacular
• After solving the mystery, Charlie has the extra challenge of proving it without evidence

• Charlie doesn’t have to do much investigating to figure out whodunit