Cue the circle back, in which we find out that Charlie has been living in the same building as the Saint Maries, in Good Buddy’s apartment, dodging the persnickety superintendent Otto (David Alan Grier). Despite her attempts to lay low, Charlie—as is her nature—quickly befriends the Saint Maries. She also gets to know and dislike Kate, whom Charlie first meets at a bodega, lying about a fruit purchase, and then is later surprised to find living with Anne after Maddy’s fatal “accident.”
Charlie, of course, becomes the second impediment to Kate’s big real-estate grab. But Kate proves stubbornly tough for Charlie to trip up for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Kate is so smarmy that nearly everything she says in her ingratiating tone smells faintly of bullshit, even when she’s technically telling the truth. (When they first meet at the bodega, Kate claims to admire Charlie for catching her lies about the fruit, calling her “an eagle-eyed Jim” and “an honest Thomas” and offering to “buy you a pasta dinner.” Charlie flees as fast as she can.)
The other problem is Anne, who is so smitten with Kate—or at least with Kate’s oral-sex skills—that she refuses to see any warning signs. She’s not even dissuaded when Kate calls Michael Clayton “dumb” because “all they do is talk.” (“It’s just a movie,” Anne shrugs.)
In the end, Charlie bests Kate because Kate is just not a good person. She’s bad at being disarming. (When Maddy tries to send Kate packing with a file covering Amelia Peek’s misdeeds, Kate asks, “Do you think it’s wise to threaten the person in this packet?”) She’s bad at crime. (A big part of her murder-trap involves secretly installing a laundry room lock that locks Maddy inside; but then she leaves a telltale price tag on the new lock.) And she’s ultimately pretty bad at being a gold-digger, because by killing Maddy, she drives a heartbroken Anne to vacate her apartment.
Charlie, on the other hand, has friends everywhere. She gets to know Micky (Paul Douglas Anderson), the fireman and aspiring tap dancer who lives one floor above Good Buddy’s apartment. She chats up a neighbor, Noreen (Myra Lucretia Taylor), who used to be an investigative reporter for The New York Observer (“until I got fired for sucker-punching Rex Reed”). She at first has trouble breaking through with Abdul (Pej Vahdat), the face-blind guy who runs the bodega, until she reminds him of her regular chopped-cheese order and he warms to her.
The point is, all of these people help Charlie with her investigation into Kate/Amelia, and then they help her prove Kate’s a murderer by creating a scenario wherein Kate pushes Charlie off the penthouse balcony—and into the fireman’s big inflatable cushion—so Anne will see how terrible her lover actually is. Charlie then consoles Anne, commiserating that it “really sucks when you find out that someone isn’t who you thought they were.” Those are the kind of moments that keep this Poker Face episode from feeling too rote.
I confess that part of the reason “A New Lease On Death” never fully sparked for me is that I’m not that keenly interested in or amused by New Yorkers’ real-estate woes. I get that it’s a reliable source for drama, comedy and satire; it just strikes me as a rather insular subject, aimed at New Yorkers only.
A much more fertile subject for Poker Face is how living in New York affects Charlie. She confides in Good Buddy that her bullshit detector is starting to bum her out and that she hopes being in NYC will help because “the sheer amount of bullshit might work like a white-noise machine.” In that context, the New York real-estate milieu works a little like a metaphor. Charlie is becoming increasingly anxious about finding a place where she can fit in, be productive, and be content, without getting dragged into yet another liar’s major crime. But always—always—the price is so high.
Stray observations
- • Unsurprisingly, given her cultural background (New Yorker, Jewish, an indie-film stalwart), Lyonne has been in a Woody Allen film: the 1996 musical Everyone Says I Love You.
- • Jeopardy! nerds like myself should appreciate the tournament showing on Anne’s TV, which includes recent star players Andrew He and Matt Amodio. Also, one of the snappier lines of dialogue comes when Maddy asks Charlie if she likes Jeopardy! and she answers, “It sure has a way of finding me.”
- • When Anne first meets Kate, Kate’s eating a plum with the price tag on it, foreshadowing her price-tag sloppiness with the lock. Kate also raves about the movie Anatomy Of A Fall (“great dog performance”), foreshadowing the way she tries to kill Charlie.
- • Good Buddy has a “Home Is Where The Mustard Is” welcome mat. Inside the apartment: VHS copies of Nashville and Two-Lane Blacktop, the book Bertolt Brecht’s Berlin (plus a collection of Brecht plays), an encyclopedia of wines and spirits, The Complete Tales Of Henry James, and 8-track tapes featuring the music of Floyd Cramer, Linda Ronstadt, Elvis Presley, Flatt & Scruggs, and Marty Robbins (oh, and a fridge full of mustard).
- • Per usual, I wish some of the minor guest stars were used more, although Grier does leave an impression as Otto, always lurking around the corner, trying to catch Charlie living in Good Buddy’s place. I like that the first time we meet him, he’s scrubbing “OTTO SUX” graffiti off the wall.
- • Angel Rosario Jr. also gives a memorable performance as Maddy’s friend Ricardo Alvarez, a passionate librarian who digs the photography of William Eggleston. Kate—before stealing his Eggleston print—assumes Ricardo has “been inside” because of all of his tattoos. But no. “I just love the art of visual storytelling,” he says.
- • Trying to remember Ricardo’s name, Charlie mutters, “Ricky…Ricardo,” which is a callback to another New York-set show with a kooky redhead in the lead.
- • After Anne leaves her apartment, Otto rents it out to a guy (played by Kareem Rahma) with terrible taste, who plans to fill the place with “ironic” taxidermy, says things like, “What’s your poly on renos?” and likes to take ice plunges so he can reach his “opty tempy.”
- • Charlie finds a highly appropriate job as “a bona fide captcha technician,” spending her days looking at a computer screen and clicking on stop signs or fire trucks or whatever. Who better than Charlie to decide whether or not a picture depicts what it says it does?
- • Good advice: “You really should’ve paid attention during Michael Clayton.”
