DISCLAIMER: This recap of Poker Face Season 1 Episode 10, “The Hook,” contains spoilers. Proceed at your peril.
Welcome back, drifters! It’s season finale time for Poker Face. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready for the ride to end yet. We need approximately 50 more episodes this season. Helmed by Janicza Bravo and penned by Rian Johnson, “The Hook” is a solid closer to a wildly entertaining first season. It digs deeper into Charlie’s backstory and complicated family dynamics, reuniting Natasha Lyonne with Clea DuVall after they starred together in the 1999 comedy, But I’m a Cheerleader. Lyonne and DuVall are dynamite together.
“The Hook” ties this season’s overarching arc into a bow while leaving loose threads aplenty for Season 2.
Ready to delve into “The Hook”? Let’s get to it.
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We open with Sterling Frost, Sr. (Ron Perlman) exiting the county medical examiner’s office. We’ve flashed back to the pilot shortly after Sterling Frost, Jr. jumped off the balcony of his casino. The living Sterling calls Charlie (Lyonne), and we hear an extended version of their conversation in the first episode. Sterling claims he’ll stalk her to the ends of the Earth—no corner of the planet’s small enough for her to hide. Cliff (Benjamin Bratt) arrives. His boss gives him the order to search for Charlie.
Then, we see a montage play out, with Cliff hitting all the stops Charlie makes throughout this season. Days pass. Weeks and months fly by. Cliff appears to lose steam as he stays in crummy motel after crummy motel the country over. Finally, a whole year has passed since Charlie departed Vegas, and Cliff has a lead. In Denver, he views the body of “Charlie Cale,” a.k.a. Morty (Stephanie Hsu). He knows Charlie’s still alive and registered as a Jane Doe at the local hospital. Uh-oh.
Cliff calls Sterling, who demands the former wait until Charlie’s healed before bringing her to him. Two months later, Charlie hobbles out of her hospital room. She bids farewell to the staff and patients therein. Charlie learns a generous third party paid her bill in full the day she arrived. Sure enough, Cliff waits for her outside the building. He claims she can ride in the passenger seat or the trunk. After a bumpy start in the trunk, Charlie asks Cliff to make space for her as a passenger.
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During their road trip to Sterling Sr., Charlie muses about how the mobster will kill her. She always knew she was living on borrowed time, waking every morning this past year with an immovable knot in her stomach. Cliff mentions “the hook” and how it’s inevitable. The hook gets us all someday. One day, Charlie asks Cliff if he killed her best friend Natalie on Sterling Jr.’s orders. Cliff merely asks her to open the glove compartment and procure the gun within. She holds it silently and slowly trains it on him. Cliff gently takes it from her before stowing it away. What a powerful moment, portrayed beautifully by Lyonne and Bratt.
Next, Cliff recites the bridge to “The Hook,” a 1994 tune from Blues Traveler (also the episode’s title). Naturally, this annoys Charlie. Benjamin Bratt makes everything sound smooth as butter. Then, our duo arrives in Atlantic City. Cliff orders Charlie to don the sequin floral dress on her hotel room bed. Charlie and Cliff meet with Sterling Sr. in the casino. Sterling asks her what she’s been up to over the past year. Charlie urges him to spare her the niceties and get on with the murdering.
However, Cliff doesn’t want to kill her. He only chased her because she ran. That’s how this whole cat-and-mouse game began. He doesn’t blame Charlie for his son’s death, either. To prove he’s not a foe, Sterling tosses Charlie her car keys and reveals her vehicle is parked outside and in pristine condition. So, why does he want her here? Sterling believes his late son was in cahoots with Beatrix Hasp, the owner of this Atlantic City casino. Beatrix is a sworn enemy of Sterling Sr.’s.
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Now, Sterling, Beatrix and the five mob families will meet in this spot to broker a peace of sorts. Sterling wants Charlie to utilize her bullshit detector to determine if the five families are telling the truth. It’s also to ensure Sterling’s safety in the room where it happens. He’s willing to offer her $500,000 (clean cash) for her assistance, with the choice to either forge a long-term partnership or walk away scot-free. No harm, no foul. Charlie makes Sterling swear to this on his tape recorder.
Then, Sterling gives Charlie a purple gift box. She opens it to find another gun. What is it with these dudes and guns? Charlie points it at Sterling. Suddenly, the lights go out. We hear a gunshot as light flashes over Sterling. He’s riddled with bullet holes. It appears Charlie shot him dead, but we know this isn’t true. Charlie flees after Sterling collapses, with Cliff calling out to the proper authorities to catch our girl.
Flashback time! Cliff sits in his vehicle outside the Denver hospital, chatting on the phone with a woman. We learn it’s Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman), and she’s striking a deal with Cliff. Cliff will kill Sterling to free himself of working under the Frost name while taking out Beatrix’s archenemy. Among other things, Cliff gets a yacht out of said deal. He and the Hasps are framing Charlie.
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Next, we see how Cliff methodically framed Charlie for Sterling’s murder, planting a poker chip and triggering the light outage. Cliff shoots Sterling under cover of darkness, using the gun Charlie touched in his car as the murder weapon. Of course, he wears gloves to ensure her prints remain on the gun. Initially, Sterling put Charlie’s old work name tag in the gift box. He meant to offer Charlie her job back. Cliff disposed of the name tag and replaced it with the gun. What a conniving, malicious and hot man.
After the murder, Charlie calls Luca (Simon Helberg), her FBI pal from “Time of the Monkey.” Luca knows what happened because he’s at the casino investigating the murder himself. The killing of a prominent crime boss is significant. Luca also confirms he tracked down Charlie’s email of the photo from Kazamir Caine’s laptop. You know, the one that got Natalie killed. That image gave them ammo aplenty to arrest Caine. So, there’s that.
Luca urges Charlie to lay low and refrain from fleeing in her car. Instead, she must find another method of egress. Charlie spots a flock of gals — a bachelorette party — running and gesturing wildly, so she blends in with them. She boards the bachelorette party bus bound for who knows where, but at least it transports her out of the hotel and casino. Charlie has the driver drop her off somewhere in a residential neighborhood. She calls Luca, who encourages her to leave Atlantic City as soon as possible. Charlie notices a dildo ring on her finger that won’t budge. A free parting gift!
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Earlier, we learned from her meeting with Sterling that Charlie hails from Atlantic City. She still has family here. Charlie crawls under the house of her sister Emily (DuVall) and emerges through a side door into a laundry room. Emily’s daughter, Shasta, spots her, not knowing this is her aunt Charlie. Emily catches Charlie and chastises her for sneaking into the house. Charlie and Emily harbor a strained relationship. This is the first time they’ve seen each other in years.
We learn bits and pieces regarding their fractured bond. Charlie sent Emily money a few years ago. Charlie did something awful to their father. No mention of their mother, though. Emily accuses Charlie of being “ruinous.” Charlie asks for the keys to their dad’s boat. Then, she promises to leave for good. While Emily searches for said keys, Charlie formally meets her niece. She notices Shasta uses her dildo ring as a curling iron for her doll’s hair. Emily, of course, isn’t thrilled about this.
Once Charlie snags the keys, she departs, but not before asking if she can see her niece again. Emily explains that, in another life, this could’ve been their world. However, Charlie chose to live her life in this manner. It’s such a painfully raw and vulnerable monologue that encapsulates the messiness of families. It’s abundantly clear Emily loves her sister, but she’s imposing firm boundaries between them. Charlie awkwardly climbs out of the house the way she came, making this goodbye scene 50 shades of uncomfortable. I love it.
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Later, Charlie arrives at the dock to look for her dad’s boat. She pulls out the new phone Sterling gave her before he died. It only has two numbers: his and Cliff’s. She calls Cliff, who’s lounging on his new yacht courtesy of the Hasp family. He tries to conceal the fact that he murdered Sterling, not her. Charlie believes Beatrix Hasp set them both up, so she makes her way toward Cliff, hoping they can stick together. After she hangs up, Cliff phones the authorities to notify them of Charlie’s whereabouts.
Then, Cliff and Charlie share drinks belowdecks. Charlie wonders how the murderer killed Sterling without detection. Cliff carefully frames his answers so that Charlie’s bullshit detector won’t catch him in a lie. Charlie recalls a bright light appearing when Sterling bit it. Cliff rattles off a list of items that could emit such a glow, like glow-in-the-dark poker chips.
Next, the pair decides to take to the high seas. Cliff asks Charlie to retrieve his iPad from belowdecks. Charlie rummages through Cliff’s bag, unearthing a container of, you guessed it, glow-in-the-dark poker chips. Charlie rushes to the door, but Cliff locks it. She calls him out for murdering Sterling. Suddenly, Charlie hears sirens, increasing in volume, before the authorities approach the boat. Charlie picks the lock to the door, and she and Cliff engage in a brief skirmish before she punches him in the eye with her dildo ring. See, dildos are multipurpose!
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Charlie clambers out of a window and dives into the waters below to evade the cops. Cliff, his eye bleeding profusely, stumbles toward Luca and the FBI to inform them of Charlie’s escape. However, Luca’s not there to arrest Charlie for Sterling’s murder — he’s there to bring Cliff in for the murders of Natalie and Jerry. Booyah!
Later, Luca drives Charlie’s car to a diner, where he meets her for coffee. Luca thanks Charlie for helping him solve his second significant case in six months. He already received a promotion because of her. After Cliff was arrested, he threw Beatrix Hasp under the bus. All the crime boss dominos are falling. Luca offers Charlie a position on his team as a friend, and, as a friend, Charlie rejects him. I love that when Charlie departs, we see a man with an eye patch sitting behind Luca. Maybe someone punched him with a dildo ring, too.
Then, while preparing for the open road, Charlie receives a phone call from Beatrix herself. Her thinly-veiled threats are textbook mafia stuff, reading almost verbatim like what Sterling Frost, Sr. said to her the year before. She asks Charlie to join her and the five families for a meeting. Charlie can use her bullshit detector to draw out any lies. Beatrix claims the offer closes once she hangs up. If Charlie refuses, Beatrix will hunt her down. Naturally, Charlie rejects the offer. Side note: I love that Beatrix uses the term “ruinous” to recount the mafia war that’s about to go down, as Emily used that word to describe Charlie.
After ending the call, Charlie destroys her phone before embarking on her next adventure as our modern-day Columbo.
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“The Hook” explores themes like life’s transient nature and death’s inevitability. Of course, these are prevalent themes throughout Poker Face‘s first season, but Bratt’s character, in particular, drives this home. I love the attention to detail in this episode and how nothing happens by accident. There aren’t any throwaway lines or moments — it’s all important. It’s wonderfully airtight storytelling. I love that we had a Perlman as the Big Bad for Season 1 and another Perlman as (presumably) the villain for Season 2. There’s a symmetry there that I enjoy.
All in all, Poker Face Season 1 is an unadulterated delight. It’s the Columbo of our time, with Natasha Lyonne channeling the spirit of Peter Falk every step of the way. This vintage-infused mystery-of-the-week series had me hook, line and sinker. The episodic format is familiar enough for audiences to follow, even as the writers cleverly tweaked it to cater to the narrative, ensuring it stays fresh. There are fun twists and turns and brilliant stylistic choices on the cinematography front.
I love the intricate character work that went into the diverse and eccentric cast of supporting players. Also, Rian Johnson’s casting team deserves accolades for the broad range of incredible guest stars they snagged. I’m excited to see who they bring in for Season 2.
This show is like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s day. It’s that sick vintage fringe jacket in your closet. All hail Charlie Cale, the Queen of Raspy-Voiced Cool. May you solve mysteries forever.
Poker Face Season 1 is now streaming on Peacock.
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What I do: I'm GGA's Managing Editor, a Senior Contributor, and Press Coordinator. I manage, contribute, and coordinate. Sometimes all at once. Joking aside, I oversee day-to-day operations for GGA, write, edit, and assess interview opportunities/press events.
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