“If any one of those things hadn’t happened, you and me would be outside by the dumpsters ranking Christopher Nolan movies right now.”
Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Episode 6 of Poker Face. In last week’s episode of Poker Face, our lovable and mischievous sleuth Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) got familiar with Joyce (S. Epatha Merkerson) and Irene (Judith Light), two retirement home rebels who never forgive and definitely never forget. Charlie also got offered a job by FBI agent Luca (Simon Helberg), but decides it’s not in the cards for her right now. After nearly dying from an exploding golf cart, Charlie’s just happy to be alive. Let’s drive and see where Episode 6 takes us.
RELATED: 'Poker Face' Episode 6 Clip: Natasha Lyonne Confronts Ellen Barkin [Exclusive]
In “Exit Stage Death,” we get to know Kathleen Townsend (Ellen Barkin), a former television star from the 1990s best known for her long-running and campy series Spooky and the Cop with actor Michael Graves (Tim Meadows), who, similar to Kathleen, is out of work. But, you wouldn’t be able to tell that he was struggling because his mansion would say otherwise. His new wife Ava (Jameela Jamil) is self-made thanks to She Trade, her online brokerage company for women. Though it pains Kathleen to do this, she decides, after years of not speaking to him, to show up at Michael’s home and ask him a favor.
Kathleen asks Michael to star in a play with her, and he immediately laughs in the face of her absurd request. She really thinks, after the way she’s treated him, that he will come to her rescue? She explains how it’s one-night-only and that the people behind the show have deep pockets and are fans of their series. The play is Ghosts of Pensacola, which Michael argues “even 30 years ago, that mope-fest sucked.” Kathleen reminds him that those were quite possibly the best reviews of their career, but he doesn’t want to hear it. It’s hard for him to be persuaded to work with the woman who accused him of being illiterate and dragged him into the feud-filled tabloid headlines. Kathleen is just about to get on her knees and beg, but Michael won’t budge. He offers her his wife’s money, which detonates a series of F-bombs from his former co-star as she stomps away. Ava’s a little worried about Michael. He forgets about his pills and relies too much on her success. Plus, maybe he misses fame?
Three weeks later, we find ourselves at the first theater rehearsal, and tensions are at an all-time high. Michael agreed to do the play but is furious when he discovers that Kathleen will also be the show’s director. She wants everything to be exactly like it was when they first did the play in 1991. This includes, and is not limited to, having the timing on her character’s trapdoor exit at the finale be exactly the same. The stage manager, Phil (Chris McKinney) tells her that they can no longer do that stunt because the drop is now deemed unsafe. Kathleen thinks this is pure malarkey, as she did the drop every night for an entire year. Terrified of the actress’s wrath, Phil agrees to figure the stunt out. The last thing anyone needs is a furious Kathleen.
In case things weren’t stressful enough, they only have four rehearsals to pull this show off. Kathleen explodes at any tiny distraction, even if it’s crew members doing their job. During the madness, Michael falls through the trap door, but thankfully, the mats were there to catch him. Yes, it was ultimately a safe landing, but he almost broke his neck! He tries to quit, but she reminds him that that means he would have to pay a $200,000 kill fee for leaving his contract. Michael doesn’t mind using his wife’s money for the fee, but Kathleen threatens him with blackmail. He isn’t too worried, though, because he has a lot of dirt on her, too. He agrees to do her “damn play,” but not without saying, “the doomsday clock is ticking. And when the curtains drop on this play tonight, you can kiss your career goodbye.”
Ah, opening night. Michael and Kathleen are angry and bitter but are determined to get the show right. Kathleen thanks Ava for convincing him to do the show, but Ava says she only told him to do it because she knew that if he could survive doing a play with her, then his jitters would disappear. Cast member Rebecca (Audrey Corsa) reminds Michael to be careful with his script because if Kathleen saw him with it, that means he wasn’t “off book.” The show goes on, and from the audience, Ava is painfully bored. During Rebecca’s moment, Michael and Kathleen get ready backstage for their next scene and mumble curses about the other to themselves. The stage manager who is responsible for the big stunt is asleep. Michael shoves a stick of dry ice in the hinges of the trap door and removes the mats.
A massive light drops from overhead, narrowly missing Michael, much to Kathleen’s frustration. Michael has a heart attack and Ava runs over to him from the crowd with his medication. She accidentally falls through the trap door, smacking her head on the ground before landing on the cement and instantly dying. Backstage, after speaking with the police, the unimaginable happens. Kathleen and Michael celebrate their “performance of a lifetime” and kiss! Yes, really. This entire “I hate you!” behavior was entirely performative, and really just a ruse to get Ava out of the picture.
About halfway through the episode, we are reunited with Charlie, who is getting fired in an alley from her waitressing job. She shares a smoke with the stage manager who witnessed her firing and offers her a job at the dinner theater that’ll be showing Ghosts of Pensacola. The night of the rehearsal, the dinner party chef was going over specific instructions (one being that one of the actors has a nut allergy), but Charlie tunes him out. He says something to her, but she just nods without knowing what he is saying. She’s too caught up in the rain sound effects in her headphones. Charlie unknowingly interrupts rehearsal by refilling a big container with ice, which causes Kathleen to freak.
She busts through the kitchen and screams at Charlie as she drops her headphone in a boiling pot. “Now you listen to me! When an actor is performing, you don’t sneeze, you don’t breathe. You don’t dump f*cking ice in a f*cking frozé dispenser!” Kathleen proceeds to berate Charlie about how the stage is an altar that must be revered and barks about how Charlie is the lowest person on the totem pole. Charlie couldn’t care less and actually tells off the actress for being a far cry from actual actors in actually great movies like Roadhouse and True Romance. Charlie is about to quit to get ahead of her inevitable firing, but Kathleen tells her that she hasn’t been talked down to this way in thirty years, and could use this belittlement as “fuel” for her performance.
During the performance, Ava whispers to Charlie and asks her if she can keep refilling her drinks because she wants to get “absolutely sh*t faced.” Back in the kitchen, the entire staff is caught up in Michael and Kathleen’s argument that they overhear through the speakers since they “forgot” to turn their mics off. If the kitchen staff can hear this, then the audience, who is made up of older people who are wearing headphones, can also hear it. The audience members are understandably quite confused as they listen to the competing conversations.
Charlie clocks Kathleen’s extra attentive expression as Michael circles his mark on the stage. She seems genuinely fearful and anxious over what’s to come (which she obviously is). The light dropping on the stage wakes up Phil, who notices the missing bar in the trap door hinge. Before he has time to put the mat back in place, Ava falls through to her death. Phil is consumed with guilt, but Charlie tries to explain that he wasn't responsible and that it was a “crazy accident.” She insists that it was a series of things that happened that he couldn’t have predicted. He’s just glad they didn’t check his thermos because it’s filled with Jack Daniels. He remembers making sure that the mat and bolt were in place, but then he passed out on the desk. Kathleen is thrilled that this entire saga is trending, and wants to take advantage of it by having one last show. Michael wants to go through with their initial plan: hide out overseas for a year and emerge confessing their love. Now, she wants to spin it as Ava’s death is what drew them together, but Michael thinks it is too risky.
Charlie does what Charlie does best: investigates. “A woman dies right in our faces, and instead of giving us grief counseling, we have to work?” Something smells fishy to Charlie, and it isn’t the halibut that they are serving. Michael had a heart attack and then his wife died, so how is everything operating like nothing happened? The head chef tells them to find a seat for Sheriff Ed (William Hill), who is a big fan of Spooky and the Cop. Rebecca walks into Kathleen and Michael’s dressing room and admits she found it incredibly strange that Michael was reading his script before the show considering he was off-book in rehearsal. She went through his pocket to look for the script and found a different script. “This is the fight that the two of you had during my monologue. The fight that you used to cover up Ava’s murder.” Gulp.
Kathleen tries to double down on the lie, but Rebecca doesn’t buy it. She’s been watching a lot of Spooky and the Cop and said that this exact thing happened in an episode of the show. They didn’t even change the dialogue! Rebecca demands money in exchange for not turning them in, but Kathleen has a more sinister idea. Charlie brings over the prop food and notices the pre-show checklist. She sees that Phil did secure the trapdoor after all. If that is the case, then someone unsecured it on purpose. Charlie thinks that someone was trying to kill Kathleen.
Charlie tries to tell Kathleen her theory, but Kathleen has a weird reaction. Instead of being appreciative of Charlie wanting to stop the person out to get her, she explains how things go wrong in the theater all the time and that the show must go on. Charlie watches the tape from the previous night and notices dry ice smoke coming through the top of the trapdoor. Charlie tries to get Kathleen off stage to prevent another accident and, after noticing red marks on Michael’s hands similar to her hand after touching the dry ice, she tries to tell Kathleen that Michael is the culprit. Charlie notices pink fuzz from Kathleen’s slipper up by the light’s rafters and starts to connect the dots. Then, when Kathleen tells Michael in character that she loves him, Charlie is able to tell that she is telling the truth. She tells Rebecca her new theory that they were out to kill Ava, but Rebecca wanting the blackmail money, shoots down the theory. Charlie, of course, knows she is lying.
Charlie finds pieces of the fight script in the dressing room and Michael’s coat, along with Rebecca’s blackmail note. She also makes the connection that Kathleen was trying to kill Rebecca by putting peanut treats that Rebecca is allergic to in the prop bowl. Charlie interrupts the show to slap away the food, and Kathleen and Michael exit to their dressing room during Rebecca’s monologue. As they talk in the dressing room about Ava’s murder, the Sheriff in the crowd is eavesdropping thanks to headphones Charlie gave him that are connected to their dressing room. They find the recording device and realize they are busted, but decide to use this adrenaline rush to give their best performance yet.
Emily Bernard is a NJ based writer for Collider. Tig Notaro and Cheryl Hines referenced an article of hers on their podcast, Tig & Cheryl: True Story. Hearing them talk about it was an out-of-body experience of which Emily is still recovering. She is also a screenwriter and playwright, and her scripts have placed in several festivals, including the Nashville Film Festival and Houston Comedy Film Festival for Best Comedy Feature Screenplay. She hopes that one day a fancy producer person will be interested in her work. When she’s not writing her own stuff, she’s working as a Script Competitions Analyst & Copyeditor for the Austin Film Festival, overthinking her coffee order, catching up on movies and TV, and feeling guilty she’s not writing. Some of Emily's favorite shows include Succession, Severance, Hacks, A League of Their Own, What We Do in the Shadows, Stranger Things, and anything Kristen Wiig does, really. She's not totally sure how she feels about this whole "writing in the third person" thing, but it sounds more professional, so she's going to stick with it.