Poker Face Season 2, Episode 4
"The Taste of Human Blood"
Writer: Wyatt Cain
Director: Lucky McKee
Cast: Natasha Lyonne, Gaby Hoffmann, Kumail Nanjiani, Steve Buscemi
I feel like with each passing Poker Face episode, it's becoming the living embodiment of a Stefan Weekend Update segment from Saturday Night Live.
This episode had everything: Kumail Nanjiana playing a Tiger King rip-off called Gator Joe, Gaby Hoffman playing a Florida Panhandle cop getting increasingly desperate as she fails to win Cop of the Year. An alligator doing meth and fiending for the taste of human blood.
What I really love about Poker Face is the trust is has in it's guest stars. I guess that should be no surprise when you consider the level of talent willing to play ball on this show but nevertheless, the show is often willing to spend a third of its near hour-long runtime solely with the guest stars before we cut back to see how Charlie Cale is involved in the whole mess.
This week, that story revolves around Gaby Hoffman's character Fran, a decent and by-the-book cop who has been nominated for a FlopaCopa Cop of the Year Award. She doesn't even want to be nominated, but her boss convinces her it'd be good for their department's reputation, so she heads to the award ceremony. There, she's beat out by Gator Joe, played by Nanjiani, who wins the award for having rescued a baby gator.
Six years later, Joe is on a winning streak and Fran has slowly unraveled. Joe is a viral sensation on TikTok with a few sponsorship deals (gator laxatives and 24 Hour Power Juice) and catchphrases ("You have the right to shit your pants!" and "Gator done!").
Fran is frustrated that real, unglamorous police work doesn't seem to be noticed by anyone. She arrives at the awards ceremony and breaks down when she learns that she's lost yet again.
Fueled by a lethal cocktail of pride and powered by gator laxatives, Fran hatches a plan to embarrass the seven-time Cop of the Year by having him shit himself on stage. But after a mix-up in the dosage amount given to her by Rusty (Ben Marshall), she kills him. Later, gator!
She killed him by accident — but now she has to cover it all up. She tries to lead the gator into the bathroom to eat Joe but she can't get Daisy to move until she uses her favorite food: oreos. Then, when the gator is too docile to feed on her human, Fran gives her some meth from the evidence photoshoot at the convention to get it into a frenzy. It does the trick, but there are ample clues for Charlie to find.
We then flashback to figure out how Charlie fits into the equation. Free of being on the run, she's looking for a new calling in life. She gets some helpful advice from a rig driver over the radio (Steve Buscemi) who encourages her to be open and let her "highway" find her. That leads her to a gator rescue where she quickly gets roped into saving Daisy.
Charlie goes undercover at the FlopaCopa convention, hilariously unaware that the event is for cops until it's too late. She's been recruited by a pair of earnest — if slightly overzealous — animal rights activists who want her to sneak Daisy out the back door while they stage a distraction. But like most of Charlie's plans, things don't go smoothly. The cage doesn't have wheels and Charlie can't get her dollar to work in the vending machine to buy Oreos. By the time she gets back, Fran has already let the gator loose.
This is where Poker Face really excels. It somehow manages to include as many small details as possible and they all seem to matter.
Daisy's love of Oreos isn't just a charming quirk. It's the key to moving her into position for both the cover-up and Charlie's investigation, as a trail of crumbs literally leads to the truth. The gator laxatives, introduced Joe's TikTok video earlier in the episode, are used by Fran in her plan to humiliate him, but a misread dosage note from Rusty turns a prank into a fatal mistake. Joe's ever-present 2-Hour Power Juice becomes both the vehicle for the laxatives and a tool Charlie uses to catch Fran in a lie. A photoshoot for the convention includes weapons and drugs, and some of the latter disappears to be fed to Daisy to trigger the gator attack. Joe's catchphrase, "You have the right to shit your pants," is uttered by Fran as she hears him shitting his pants in the bathroom. All this to say, the episode is filled to the brim with the tiniest of details and they all matter in the most satisfying way possible.
But every superhero has a super power and Charlie's is her bullshit detector. The turning point comes when Fran insists she's a fan of 24-Hour Power Juice, the same drink she used to poison Gator Joe. Charlie clocks the lie instantly. Charlie realizes Fran had motive, access, and opportunity. She had the 24-Hour Juice in her purse, she had told Rusty she had an upset stomach, she had a reason to humiliate Joe and there was no reason for Gator Joe, knowing he was about to go on stage, to take laxatives.
Just as Fran is about to turn on Charlie, Daisy saves the day and knocks her over. Fran ultimately decides to tell the truth, though her boss isn't willing to let anybody near a story that best fits the embodiment of the "Florida Man" meme. Fran owns up to her mistakes and begins working at the gator sanctuary.
Charlie, meanwhile, decides to hit the road once again. Let's see where we end up next week.
Next: Poker Face Season 2 Episode 5 Recap: "Hometown Hero"
If you haven't already, consider supporting worker-owned media by subscribing to Pop Heist. We are ad-free and operating outside the algorithm, so all dollars go directly to paying the staff members and writers who make articles like this one possible.
