Poker Face – Season 2 Episode 9 'A New Lease on Death' Recap & Review
Episode 9
The Murder
Episode 9 of Poker Face Season 2 begins with an old woman named Anne and her granddaughter Madeline speaking with a lawyer. They live in a comfortable apartment in NYC, which is affordable due to rent control. Anne tells the lawyer she wants to adopt her granddaughter as her daughter. He quickly realises this is to maintain the rent control, which can only be passed down to a spouse or child.
Later, when they're leaving the house, Anne stops by a fruit cart where she meets a woman named Kate. Two weeks later, Maddy comes home and walks in on her grandma having sex with Kate. Anne reveals that they are dating and that she's even asked Kate to move in with them.
Kate and Maddy don't get on well, and eventually, the latter pays a tattooed man to find more information on Kate. Sometime later, Maddy confronts Kate with proof that she's faking her identity. Her real name is Amelia, she's been to prison, and even has a few warrants out for her arrest. Maddy accuses Kate of simply being after the rent-controlled apartment. She threatens to tell the authorities if Kate doesn't leave Anne immediately. She allows Kate one day to say goodbye to Anne.
They have this argument in the laundry room where Kate notices the washing machine shakes during the spin cycle, enough to drop a can of coke sitting on top of it. The next day, she spills some descaler on the floor below the machine and places a bottle of bleach on top of it. She also messes with the lock on the laundry room door.
She then tells Maddy to get her laundry while she 'breaks up' with Anne. Maddy goes down and as the spill cycle hits, the washing machine knocks the bleach to the floor. Mixed with the descaler, it creates a gas that ends up killing Maddy.
The Investigation
Charlie arrives in New York City, telling her radio friend Good Buddy that she's hoping all the lies will become white noise in the city. He tells her to use his NYC apartment in Brooklyn and she heads to the same building where Anne and Maddy stay.
The landlord, Otto, catches her but she claims she's here just to water Good Buddy's cactus plants. She then goes to a nearby store run by a man named Abdul. There, she bumps into Kate, who is trying to scam her way into getting free fruit.
Back at the apartment, Charlie is forced to hide from Otto and runs into the laundry room, where she meets Maddy. The laundry door locks them inside and Maddy complains that the landlord never fixes it. She uses her bike tools to break them out. Maddy invites her to watch Jeopardy with her grandmother. The tattooed man from earlier joins them and Charlie learns that he's Ricardo, a librarian who is good at research.
Charlie then takes up a remote job as a captcha technician. When she returns to the apartment, she sees the place crawling with firefighters. One of them, a fellow resident in the building named Mickey, tells Charlie about the accident in the laundry room. A woman sitting nearby tells Charlie that the descaler and bleach reacted to produce chlorine gas, which killed Maddy.
Charlie goes upstairs to give her condolences and is surprised to see Kate open the door to Anne's house. Kate doesn't let her meet Anne. Charlie then comes across Otto, who insists he had fixed the lock on the door. Charlie knows he's telling the truth and they go to the laundry room where Otto points out the door has a new handle, a different model from the one he'd bought.
While cleaning Maddy's things, Kate finds the paper with her real identity on it. She notices Ricardo's name, since he accessed the information, and threatens him to keep quiet. Meanwhile, Charlie tries to find out from Abdul if anyone bought the new door handle. He has face blindness, so it takes a while but Charlie eventually realises it was Kate.
Charlie heads back to the building and tries to speak to Ricardo about her suspicions about Kate. Before he can say anything, Kate (who was eavesdropping) pulls the fire alarm which forces them all to leave the building.
Afterwards, Kate returns and is happy that the apartment is basically hers now. But her bubble bursts when she sees Otto showing a new tenant around. Anne reveals that she's too upset because of losing Maddy and wants to move out of the apartment. Kate is frustrated and tries to pressure Anne into marrying her immediately.
She runs out to get the forms and when she's back, Charlie is waiting with Anne. She's told her everything. Anne asks Charlie to step into another room and confronts Kate. Kate tells Anne it's all a lie and asks her to go get her laundry while she deals with Charlie. After Anne leaves, Kate pushes Charlie off the balcony.
But thanks to Charlie's good friend Mickey — who had laid out an inflatable platform to catch her — Charlie's absolutely fine. In fact, Anne has seen the whole thing and her lawyer, who was hiding in the apartment, has recorded Kate's attempted murder. In Charlie's words, she's cooked.
Poker Face Season 2 Episode 9 ends with Charlie helping Anne pack up her things as the new tenant makes plans for redoing the apartment.
The Episode Review
Poker Face Season 2 Episode 9 is a fun ride, even if it is a bit more straightforward than some of Poker Face's other episodes. This one has fewer twists and turns compared to even last week's episode, which offers a solid plot twist and unexpected reveal at the end. And there are a few details, like the woman who gives Charlie a free coffee, that aren't tied up in the larger plot. Awkwafina feels a bit underused as well.
It's still quite an enjoyable episode, though, particularly with that New York aesthetic and how Charlie meets a firefighter who wanted to be a tap dancer and a woman who used to be a journalist but now peels potatoes outside the building. It's also nice to see that Charlie and Good Buddy are still in touch, although we could use some more information about him. The humour is pretty on brand as well and that one joke about Vague magazine will stay with me for a while. All in all, another solid Charlie Cale adventure.
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Betancourt believes Brokeback Mountain was able to provide a watershed moment in LGBTQ+ representation precisely because it was rooted in proven Hollywood tropes. "As a Western and a melodrama, it played within two well-worn genres and infused them both with new vibrancy – mainly due to the fact it's a love story between two men," he says. At the same time, Brokeback Mountain also adheres to another Hollywood trope: what Teeman describes as depicting "queer love as beautiful but doomed", a narrative that plays out in the likes of The Children's Hour (1961) and Philadelphia (1993). The two men's flickering romance is finally extinguished when Jack dies in ambiguous circumstances. Lureen tells Ennis over the phone that Jack was killed by an exploding tyre – though at the same time, we see images of Jack being viciously beaten by a group of men. Ennis is envisioning, all too believably, his lover being killed in a homophobic hate crime. Its debatable legacy Perhaps because it played by the rules while challenging them at the same time, Brokeback Mountain's place in film history is assured. In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, which recognises works that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It occupies an equally integral, though more complicated place, in the queer film pantheon. "As a piece of cinema, it remains as ravishing and disarming as ever," Betancourt argues, "but as a pivot point for queer representation, it remains as singular but limiting as it was then." It is, after all, the story of two closeted gay or possibly bisexual men who "pass" as straight in their everyday lives. More like this:• Why Requiem for a Dream still divides• The darkest children's film ever made?• The horror that traumatised millennials Though Brokeback Mountain remains important and influential, it's difficult to quantify its long-term impact on LGBTQ+ representation. Teeman notes that Hollywood gave a green light to several "mainstream queer-themed films" in its wake, notably Milk (2008) and The Kids Are All Right (2010); these were followed in turn by Carol (2014), Moonlight (2016) and Call Me by Your Name (2017). But he also believes "there's little consistency and regularity in the flow of queer-themed stories and lead characters to the screen". For Teeman, "TV and theatre are [still] more radical than film when it comes to queer representation." Brokeback Mountain also retains a unique relevance because of its place in the ongoing debate about whether straight actors should play gay roles. Both Gyllenhaal and Ledger, who died in 2008, are widely presumed to be heterosexual, though Ossana says it was "none of my business" as a producer to ask questions about their sexual orientation. "It's the old chestnut, and Brokeback Mountain is the ultimate exemplar," Teeman says. But even with these caveats, it remains a stunning and heartbreaking piece of cinema that strikes a particular chord with LGBTQ+ viewers. Brokeback Mountain offers a stark reminder that denying your true identity is a tragedy that can derail several lives at once. Brokeback Mountain is being re-released in US cinemas, beginning with special showings on June 22 and 25. -- If you liked this story sign up for The Essential List newsletter, a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
