The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Poker Face' Episode 5 Recap

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Jo and Rob are back to assess monkey pre-cogs and talk about the latest episode of 'Poker Face.' Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, I'm Mallory Rubin. And I'm Van Laithen. Check out the Ringerverse podcast from The Ringer. For all things, superhero movies, nerd culture, and fandom entertainment. We have instant reviews and fun takes on all the latest news and more. Available now on Spotify. 2, 2, 3. Whoa, whoa, dude, that's the time of the monkey.

What? Of the what? Oh, the monkey. The zoo, the show, you know? It tells time. Melanie, Melanie, she's amazing. And when I saw the show, the time the monkey told was 223. That's a weird coincidence, huh?

I mean, do you think that maybe she's, you think she's some kind of a monkey precoc? Precoc, like, minority report with monkeys? No, I do not. I would watch that movie, though. For a prestige TV podcast feed, I'm Joyner Robinson. Joining me today to talk, I guess, about sexual zapping. It's Rob Mahoney. Hi, Rob.

You know, it's what we do around here, where we're fresh off the bourgeois pig shit list. We're here to talk sexual zapping. do it, Joe. Do you have your own personal bourgeois pig shit list? Who among us does not? Is that what your closet is? Like a little shrine to the bourgeois pigs in your life? Yeah, it's just like full

wall-length corkboards with various photographs pinned to it. We're here to talk about episode five of Poker Face, Time of the Monkey. An excellent episode of television. Had a great time with it.

This episode was written by Joe Lawson from story by Joe Lawson and C.S. Fisher and directed by Lucky McKee. And Jill Lawson, this is an especially sharp and funny episode of Poker Face. And Lawson is a BoJack Horseman writer.

So I'm like, deeply unsurprised. But also a Geico Caveman commercial writer. So, you know, the full gamut of humor possibilities. We all contain multitudes, you know? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And we were talking last week

When we were talking about like the first four episodes that dropped together We're talking about how highly stylized Ryan's episodes felt And then like thinking about the directorial styles of the ensuing episodes Something I liked in this episode a lot was some of the lighting and Joyce and Irene's You know from the grow lights I think and maybe some like stained glass items in there There was just like cool throwing of greens on people's faces and stuff like that sort of visually, did this episode stand out to you at all? Absolutely.

I mean, I think the lighting choices, as you described, like, as the tone of the episode shifts, in our opinion of Joyce and Irene shift, it goes very quickly from, like, warm to ominous in terms of how that lighting is hitting. And also, I thought the way the flashbacks were shot and edited and put together was amazing in which basically all the dialogue is muted.

It's this very, like, hazy filter, this kind of, like, crackling record soundtrack. And then the only time you really hear sound, in the flashbacks is when a character is shot through the spine and paralyzed and like snap back to reality in that way. There's just so many little choices like that I thought really worked in addition to as you laid out. It's just being a really funny episode of television. Lucky is, Lucky Mickey is a horror director as far as I can tell from his CV. So I think when the angles get more ominous, the lighting gets creepier.

That's where he shines. When the bedpans come out, you know, that's when it really gets scary. When the telk is flying. So I was curious, I don't really have a full metric because Peacock hasn't released any stats that I could find of sort of like how the first four episodes hit because we recorded our last episode before those first episodes dropped. But I was looking at Rotten Tomatoes, which I always consider sort of an imperfect metric. But I was looking at the sort of gap between the 98% from critics and the 78% from audiences. 78% isn't like terrible on Rotten Tomatoes. but, you know, there's like a 20% get there.

I'm not wholly surprised because critics are just like generally so high on Ryan Johnson and that's not always the case with the general, the gen pop. Just anecdotally, what have you heard from people watching Booker Face after the drop? The people who I've heard from who are watching it are digging it. But I'm sure there's a barrier to entry, whether it's a peacock subscription, whether it's your interest in this kind of show, whether it is your way or the broader Ryan Johnson universe, whatever that may be. But I think this episode is a great test case

for what you're talking about because from a TV nut perspective, this is a hat on a hat on a hat. You know, it's people from previous murder-solving shows cast in a show featuring murder-solving detectives watching their own TV shows. It's like it's so meta-textual about the murder-she-wrote SVU elements of this that I think critics are going to love an episode like this.

We are going to love an episode like this. If you're not neck deep in this stuff, I'm very curious to know if it's just like, oh, that was really funny. And some of the stuff is just kind of flying over your head in a way that's not uncomfortable or doesn't make you feel left out. But maybe you're not getting quite the same experience that we are. You're not getting the Scars Guard jokes or the Who Died Norway jokes. I haven't heard that much from people like sort of who casually watch television in my life that they have been watching So I think this is a thing that is like, it's a show that is very much a thing in the critical community. Yes.

All the TV critics are raving about it. And maybe a slower burn or a slower spread into the larger populace. And we'll see how the week-to-week building a buzz, perhaps, you know, people might just catch onto it late. Like, that's what happened with like yellow jackets and some other shows. So or, you know, the bear, et cetera, where it might like take a couple weeks to catch on. We'll see. I want to hit a couple emails we got again, since this is a superhero genre show's exemption last week. You can email us at Hobbits and Dragons, which is the ringerverse email, but we got some pokerface emails at Hobbits and Dragons at Gmail.com.

Just shameless. Deeply happy about this. And it's definitely not put me on his bourgeois pig shit list for doing this. But you got an email from Daniel who observes in episode one, Adrian Brody's character says, quote unquote, three things that his father told him his rules, then conspicuously doesn't say the third, which goes against everything this show sets up about paying off every inch of dialogue, and that bothered me so much at first.

But does that perhaps suggest it'll circle back in the bookend at the end of the season you alluded to, wanted to plant that seed with you and call my shot? Rob, thoughts of feelings. Excellent, pull, you know? Really great identification. And obviously we're on board as far as this being a show that uses the whole Buffalo. in that way, so to speak. So I would be shocked at this point

if we didn't circle back to it. Ron Perlman over on the old Wikipedia, which is always accurate, obviously. But Ron Perlman has moved from down the cast list as casino enforcer up to the top in the recurring slot, which is only Benjamin Brat and Ron Perlman as, you know, the potential big bad of the season.

We had another email from Aaron. And you and I were, I identified the casino in episode one is Las Vegas. You were like, surely it says Reno. We got an email from Aaron who says, wanted to direct your attention to Laughlin, Nevada, across the river from Bullhead City, Arizona, where the first episode was filmed, if possible, less Las Vegas than even Reno.

So, Loflin, I mean, whomst among us does not remember the Hugh Jackman Viva Loflin show. So, oh, only TV nuts? Okay, cool. Yeah, this episode of television did a bunch of things that really excited me. I think it complicated some of the formulaic elements of some of the other episodes we saw, and we'll talk about that. But first, I want to talk about the casting. This, you know, each week we're getting a fun, exciting cast list.

But this week you've got Judith Light, Esseapatha Merkerson, Reed Bernie, Kay Callan, Simon Hellberg. These are our heavy hitters this week. Judith Light and Reed Bernie in particular and Mercosin as well are like stage legends in addition to their film and television work. So it just felt like there was an extra level of like dramatic prestige. And we get that in like sort of the confrontation scene when they're all like teary-eyed. I was like they didn't, they really committed to this. It made me think of that moment in Wayne's World when they swap Charlton-

and that's where the mind goes. Yeah. Obviously to Wayne's World, where they swapped Charlton nested in for the gas station intended to be like, can we just like up the ante on this moment and make it more impactful? Like you didn't have, Reapurdy did not have to go so hard on an episode of poker face and yet he decided to. K. Callan, I know from playing Martha Kent on Lois and Clark, the event, of Superman, but she was also in the first Knives Out film as like the grandma figure, right?

And then Simon Helberg, you know, is a big, big theory guy. What did you think of the casting? I mean, in particular, the idea that you're going to cast to Law and Order alum in these roles as the murderers effectively, and in an inversion of what we've seen so far, have them basically be Charlie's friends in this episode. You know, like she is befriending them off the top versus coming to them in the opposite direction from someone she knows being murdered, which I think is a great inversion of that formula.

But the casting really works for me. Like, I thought they did an incredible job. As Irene and Joyce, I thought the way this episode on Spools really gives them a lot of time and space and we get enough of their background, but still not enough that we're able to twist it in the middle by finding out that they're going to bomb a United Nation of Babies effectively,

as the lion alludes to, in the show. But Kay Callan, too, I think is, like, she might be the secret star of this episode as Betty, aka What a Fucking cop, aka, again, as in Knives Out, a character who sees a lot and no one really cares and no one is really listening to, which I think goes to the theme you were hammering on the last pod, Joe, which is like this idea of who are we focusing on in these episodes and they're consistently pockets of overlooked people, pockets of people that no one is listening to and paying attention to. And a senior heart is, you know, home is case and point of great place to focus on that idea.

Yeah, I love that. And, you know, I mean, there's humor associated with it. We already talked, we already alluded to bedpans and talc, right? So there's just sort of like they lean into that a bit. There's the physical performance of Judith Light hauling herself off the side of a building and crawling into the window in order to commit the murder. I mean, just incredible, incredible stuff. But, yeah, I want to talk about that.

we talked a lot about this idea that Ryan Johnson loves to do like a mid-episode or mid-film twist, right? This is even twistier than anything we've seen on this show so far, and I really, and it just, like, it just added that extra complication that I would really love to see more of from this show because, as always, we know from the beginning, who did the murder, but I don't know if this says something about me. I was just like decided I was on their side I was like these these chicks are cool and again like the use of Betty around that like the way in which Betty is harping on them and so

we're on their side or I was on their side I was like these chicks are cool Charlie likes them, they grow weed they swear they seem really cool okay they killed a guy but like probably yeah coming like all this stuff my only question about that is like

do you feel tricked at all by the in a bad way or a good way or whoever, by the visual in the flashback of the flowers that later turns into the pressure cookers filled with like nails and screws. Like first time we see the flashback, they're getting like flowers together for a mart. Like basically we weren't given all the information. How did you feel about that?

I'm cool with it, especially in that context, right? Like I feel like flashback is always a great place to take some artistic license to the point that I'm very curious to get your take on this. When they initially show the very hazy, smoky flashbacks and we see Gabriel, who's the love interest question mark of these two women for the first time, certainly involved with them. The first time we see him in those flashbacks,

he's looking really hot, I got to say. And then as soon as he comes out into the light of day, I would swear to you they did an actor switch. I would swear to you it is a different man. That's so interesting. But maybe that's just the way it's, Maybe that's just what a rat looks like in the light of day. Once he turns state's witness, maybe that's just what he looks like now.

The wig was really bad in the light of day. When he gets into the back of the van, I was like, that's a bad wig. So maybe it's like, maybe they just didn't like fluff the wig enough or something like that. I was like, this looks like a dime star version of a hippie right now. That is funny. Yes, definitely love interest. Dick like a fire hydrant. Oh, sure.

Of course. I'm just saying love question mark. I mean, certainly interested in lots of ways. At least interesting. Yeah, the way that memory works. I mean, I guess what we're seeing is, like, Charlie's idea of what they're talking about. And to go to the point of, like, the lie detector stuff, right? So she, like, the lie detector element is actually not necessarily applied to Joyce and Irene.

It's more applied to Simon Helberg's character, special agent Luca Clark, where she was like, okay, fake nephew. You know, bullshit. Like, he gets the bullshit from her. When she asked Joyce and Irene point blank if they killed Ben slash Gabriel, they hit her with a question. You know, we're talking about, like, how do you beat the lie detector that is Charlie? They ask her, you're wearing a wire, right?

So it's not an answer. But so then we're seeing that initial flashback. They're not lying. They're sort of telling the story. and so Charlie is filling in the blanks and has decided that it's like a march and they've got flowers and sorts of like that. So I like that it introduces

this fallibility in Charlie. She's not always right about everything, you know? Well, it also goes back to a line in that first set of episodes that I think is going to become increasingly important, which is that the real key to Charlie using her power is not figuring out who's lying. Is her superpower?

Her natural aptitude to detect who is lying. and who is not, that is within the range of human experience. It's about filtering out all the lies that are happening. Like, she's detecting lies constantly, including from the two murderers in this episode. Like, they're saying that one of them is shitting in the bathroom. It's clearly a lie. She knows it. But she just thinks it's two old ladies who are, like, trying to get high off to the side most of the time.

They're just looking for a good time in the aviary at the zoo. Right. What's so wrong with that? And so increasingly, it's becoming about how do you, given that, is lying all the time about things small and big. What are the lies that matter? Which are the ones that she actually needs to pay attention to? Because otherwise, you're just going to go crazy with that stuff.

I feel like it's a trope in, like, superhero properties or other genre properties where, like, what it makes me think of is, is if someone gets the power to be able to hear what other people are thinking. Yeah. There's a famous episode of Buffy about this, but like, if someone gets the power to hear what other. And then, like, all, but you can hear, how do you focus on one thing when you hear everything all the time, you know? So yeah, how do you isolate which lie is related to a murder? The murders that keep happening about Charlie and how is it just in our daily, our little white lies that we tell all the time.

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include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-9-9 or visit zepbounce.lily.com. But in this idea that, like, Charlie is wrong, really wrong about them, and I was too, which is fun. Like, Ben, that puts us in with Charlie, right? But I think it also, you know, there was that whole conversation around the premise of the show that there is a light arc in that we expect Ron Perlman to maybe bookend or occasionally

Benjamin Bratt shows up. But otherwise, these are self-contained episodes and you could just pick up any one of them, watch them out of orders. They run and reruns. That doesn't happen anymore. But if they did, and you could drop in and it didn't matter because Charlie's character is not necessarily on an arc. Like, again, my understanding of Columbo or my better understanding of Speaking of the Fletcher's that are in this episode of Murder, she wrote, is like, it's not about how Jessica Fletcher grows and changes as a character. It's not about how Colombo grows and changes as a character. That element stays static, and that's part of the formula of this kind of show.

I was a little not sure if that's what I wanted from Natasha Leon, who's capable of so much dimensionality. And I feel like she learns and grows something in this. episode, which felt really enriching to me. It absolutely does. I mean, I think we're going to see that in subtle ways, right? Where it's like you don't necessarily have to have this episode to inform future episodes. You could see them out of order.

But that doesn't mean it's not going to expand your experience if you know that this is where she's been. If you know that this is the writing order, I'm sure, even as we can see from episode to episode in these first five, just little twinges of things that you're going to look at differently or interpret differently. even as a viewer, even from like a, you know, zooming way out and looking at the structure of these episodes or the nature of the way the crimes are committed,

I mean, just from the fact that we're getting the full range from pushing a guy off the roof because he just won, you know, just wanting the jackpot on a scratch off to, in this episode, basically like a how to commit a perfect murder kind of scenario in which every possibility is gamed out, every option, every contingency is taken care of, and then we're going to solve it that way. I think getting that whole range of experience

is going to give an actor like Natasha Leon lots of room to show different sides of herself, lots of room to grow in certain ways, if not in the kind of traditional, archy ways that we're accustomed to. Something I love that Natasha Leon talked about a lot with this character is like her genuine love of people.

You see, I mean, like, the way that she falls in love with Joyce and Irene like starts living her best life at this home, you know, to the point where, she's wearing clothing. She's embraced senior home core, you know what I mean, with the visors and the sunglasses and the cardigans that she dug out of dead people's lost and found, etc.

It just smells like icy hot and a life well lived, Joe. Listen, waste not whatnot, okay? But her empathy, her empathy is part of what helps crack the case here because, like, she just met. Ben slash Gabriel, right? And when he says, I got no one, and she knows that he's telling the truth, she goes, you know, she gives a little like, oh, you know, like, that's, that's not, that hurts, you know. And then she goes to his funeral and she has no reason.

She didn't know this guy. She had no reason to go to his funeral. But that's where she sees the photo that exposes Joyce and Irene, et cetera, et cetera. And so, like, without that super-sized empathy, without that, like, big bleeding heart of hers, she doesn't solve the case. And I think that that is – I think it's so smart to tie in the clue gathering to a core emotional aspect of your character, you know? So the real superpower is love. And the friends we made along the way. Of course.

You're absolutely right, though. I think what's critical about her role in this show and who that character is and the fact that it's not a law enforcement official, it's not a private detective. Like, it is coming from empathy and not expertise. And as a result of that, she spends the majority of these episodes trying to figure out, like, how would you even go about killing a person? She's interviewing the Fletchers about, like, what are some non-detectable poisons that I could even look into to understand how this works? Yeah. Like, she doesn't know the mechanics of this stuff. So every time she shows up, it is just.

just coming from a place of, this guy seemed lonely and I want to be a person at his funeral because no one else might be there. As opposed to, I know all the ins and outs of this stuff. Like, the big reveals come from characters like Purvy Pete and not from Charlie having this,

like, encyclopedic knowledge of crime and how it's committed. As opposed to, like, a Benoit Blanc who has seen it all and, like, knows every untraceable poison or whatever, presumably. I do want to, speaking of friends, my friends we made along the way. I want to talk about the Simon Helberg character, Special Agent Luca Clark,

because, again, talking about the serialized versus long arc of the show, this did for some reason, strike me as a character. We might see again. I also felt like almost vibes between the two of them or these like vibes from his side.

Yes. That he like quite liked her. She also, like she hates cops. So like maybe she doesn't like the FBI. Didn't want to take his car, but she took his card and she has it. So, like, could you see a future where Simon Helberg shows up from time to time on the show as a recurring character?

Absolutely. And he, too, kind of speaks to something we've already seen from the show in terms of the way that law enforcement is portrayed here, which I think is kind of well-meaning, but also pretty incompetent. Like, he doesn't even bother vetting the retirement home that he's sending the witness he's supposed to be protecting to. Like, that is kind of what the ranges that we're talking about. And so often it's Charlie who's compensating for that incompetence in a lot of these cases so far, which I think is a great place to put her as like a fake detective in these premises. And that's like, that's a classic mystery novel, you know, if you think about like Stephen Fry and Gosford Park or whatever. Like it's always the like private detective, amateur sleuth, whatever, who solves the case and the cops like are just bungling around.

I love that reveal when he's talking to Charlie on the speakerphone in his car. Like, do you know the bull the other, like, Witsack guy that he's driving around is like, your other guy got killed Maron. Like, this is not inspiring a lot of confidence for me. Like, it's great. It also led to one of the best bits of this episode, which I have to ask you as a Spielberg scholar yourself.

Oh, okay. Would you indeed watch Minority Report but with monkeys? That's so funny. I 100% would. Thank you for calling me a Spielberg scholar. I have done exactly one. episode of the Blank Check podcast, and it was for Minority Report on Spielberg, because I love that movie so much.

Fucking great movie. It's such a good movie. But yeah, when she says monkey precog, and he's like, like, she's some kind of monkey precog. Like Minority Report? Holy shit this show. And I would be there opening weekend to watch Monkey Minority Report, 100%. There's no question.

Euphorica? The Fletcher's. Did you have like a favorite, I mean, we've already talked about like a ton of. like a ton of jokes in this episode. Did you have any others that you wanted to hit? I mean, the euphoric a bit was great. I appreciated the hippa puns in this episode as well. There's some good warplay going on with that.

It's hard to pick a favorite. I really did think this was the sharpest, funniest episode just from a line delivery perspective. And some of it is just all the leads, all of the old ladies in this episode are just on fucking fire the whole time, just really, really giving it. The Fletcher's, the Scars Guard, bit and the payoff of the Scarsgar bit with the title card Wolf and Scarsguard, which is not a real

Scars card, but there are like eight Scarsars. If people are listening and they think it's like only Bill and Alex and so there's like five or ten more, honestly, go to Steld Scarsarsars Wikipedia page and look under the children and they're all like blue. They're all actors. They're around. They're in Vikings. They're around. They're in Fjord of Blood, clearly. Obviously. Another thing that I definitely would watch. I really loved Betty calling their radio the ghetto blaster, because that is what my parents used to call about Mox is the ghetto blaster. And I'm like, I haven't heard that since 1993. Like, that's incredible. It's awful. But I mean, like, it's just little moments like that

or like Betty's ostrich hat, or, you know, again, using the, like, bedpan and the talc and the fight, or actually possibly my favorite line is when they call Charlie a fucking millennial and she says, I'm a cusp. You psycho. As a cusp for myself, I really appreciated that. Such a good episode of television. And, like, this is what I hope poker fervies. will continue to be like,

I've liked all the episodes we've watched so far, but I, you know, there's, there's, feels like there's a huge gulf between, let's say the dialogue in the last episode versus the dialogue in this episode. And so just like a sharper, a sharpness polish on every episode. It would really do a lot to elevate me because like I can,

I can hang in this procedural atmosphere if we continue to get incredible guest stars, which they have in every episode. But then if you give those guest stars, this episode's material to work with, you know, that's a banger. It doesn't always have to be this tonality, too. Like, it's great that this episode is as funny

and is like almost pure comedy for a lot of it as it is. Yeah. But the beauty of the format is, as long as it's this sharp, it could be anything. It could be any combination of people. It could be any setting.

It could be any tonality. It can really work because Natasha Leone really works. Like, she can liven up and connect dots and bring this thing to life just by the nature of how she performs. Yeah, if you think about episode two, which we both really, really liked, and the sort of like almost, I don't know, I want to call it noir, but maybe that's incorrect. But like, you know, and even like if you look at episode one and two, we talked about this last week,

but if you look at episode one and two and the opening credits sequence of each of those, both directed by Ryan Johnson. And then the first one, he's giving us like sort of almost like a jaunty Ocean's 11, you know, we're in like a casino sort of heisty vibe to. the opening. And then that like, you know, cool blurring stop motion, I don't know exactly on filmmaking terms, what's exactly to call the opening of episode two. But like, that sets a markedly different tone. And so you could almost do what Ryan Johnson has done his whole career is like, yeah, play around in different genres in every single episode. And, you know, like this is the

wacky, if you want to call Exploding Golf Carts wacky, which I do, like wacky, you know, comedy episode and you know who and and and what's exciting is we don't know at all what we're going to get next week in terms of tone or location etc so and we get you know in this episode we do get all these allusions to other murder solving properties now in the show of we've we've had murder podcasts we've got this long running uh nods to some of our longest running procedurals we have this very murder she wrote cast of people who are explicitly basically carving out like the who done it format and then and Natasha Leon going sideways and saying,

we're going to do kind of this other thing. Parallel to this, like related to this, certainly there's some overlap, but there's enough room to do some new and interesting things too. I love that. We still get the standard, like, what we're observing as the standard elements of an episode of poker face,

which is the like, where is Natasha Leon going to be this week? It's pretty easy to pick this one up. We're like, she has to be working there. I was positive she was going to be running the monkey show. I would have bet any amount of money that she was leading the monkey show. I was a little disappointed. She was just at the senior living facility. But, you know, we can't have, we can't win them all.

I thought she might have been, I don't know that I pegged like exactly what she went, which like her job was very ill-defined, the bellhop, whatever you want to call what her job was. I thought maybe she might be on the gardening crew since we got that shot at the gardener. but then that paid off different in a different way, right? Because that was involved like in the murder. Or like Betty nattering on about her instapot from the beginning of the episode and that paying off as like, you know, the thing that killed her. Again, there's just like always, always something to look out for, always something to be

paying attention to. And so that like keeps you, again, like, as I've mentioned, like, I will enjoy an episode of psych or there's like, you know, various procedural that I know people enjoy because there's like a coziness, a cozy consistency to it. But like the point of those shows is to lull you with familiarity and just sort of like feel comforted and all that sort of stuff. And the way in which this does that on one hand, but is also constantly zapping your brain because there's just like constantly things to be paying attention to and clues to be collecting and stuff like that is sexually zapping your brain, you mean? Just really giving you that charge. Yes. Consensually and

sexually zapping my brain. So, you know, thanks. Thanks, uh, poker face for that. On the gardener element, I do have a question, which is, you know, we see Irene, as you mentioned, pulling herself up this, you know, what does that call? Like the scaffolding on the side of the house with all that? The trellis, thank you. The trellis with, I mean, just Olympic gymnast strength, incredible stuff. But wearing very notably, like this delightful floral romper, basically, do you think that was a choice? Do you think she's thinking that morning, I got to put on the florals to blend in with the trellis as I climbed this thing? And surely the gardener who's standing right here won't notice me.

He'll be like, wow, the begonia is like beautiful. That's amazing. But again, like, in order for us to buy into that incredible climb, the episode starts with her doing, you know, like pushups on her chair. You know what I mean? Like, this is what she does. Those ladies seemed so cool. All I wanted to do was hang out with them.

But now I know that I would probably, they would probably do. a murder and probably in my direction. Multiple murder. Well, do you have an Instapot? I am actually genuinely terrified of the Instant Pot. Rightly so, it turns out. I think it's so, do you have an Instapot? No, I'm sure not getting one now.

No, yeah, maybe Instapot will not appreciate this advertising, but I am so, like, I actually someone bought me an Instapot, and they were like, oh, it's great, you can use it to cook a rice, you could do whatever, and I tried to use it once, and I got, there's a part of the process with an instant pot or any pressure cooker where you have to like open this valve and let all the steam out of me. Honestly, it scared the shit out of me. Like, I did it and I was just like, this is, I'm going to steam burn myself. I know I am. So I gave it away because I was just like, I can't, I, I'm sorry, I have a rice cooker. I can just use that. I don't know why I would do this. So no Denver omelets for you. No cheesecake. Was that the other thing you could make in an

instant pot? I can't even remember. I mean, you can't genuinely make anything. I mean, I believe in the power of the instant pot, I'm just too scared to use it. I also believe in the power of the air fryer. I also don't have one. But yeah, and our producer Steve was just telling us that he has had an incident with a golf cart. So, you know,

have you had an incident with someone crawling in your window and tried to stab you with fertilizer? No, raw? Not yet, but you know, life is long. We'll see. Anything else you want to talk about in this episode? It probably does need to be noted, unfortunately. And this is the reality

of television. The explosion budget over at Peacock. Oh, you know. It's not the best. It's not the best. No. Not the best we've ever seen. No.

I don't know what I would expect of an Instapod or a golf cart, but I would expect something a little different maybe. Yeah. I'm hoping that Monkey Minority Report has a bigger VFX explosion budget. The poker face on top. So do we want a shot for shot? Minority Report Remake with Monkeys, or do we want a whole reboot for the next generation?

Okay, no, here's what we're going to do. We're going to get Cruz and Farrell back. Farrell fresh off of his Oscar win. No question. He's a minisharian, right? Steals that movie, by the way. We're going to get them all back, and they're going to do mocap,

like Planet of the A, Sandy Circus, mocap. Yes. And so we'll just have them do the whole film again. but this time they're monkeys. Samantha Borton might be trickier to get back. I feel like she's not necessarily wanting to be in the mocap dots, but listen, I'm willing to put all of my life savings into this project.

Let's get it off the ground. I just have the visual of monkey Tom Cruise sprinting, and I have to see it. Like, I just have to have this come to life. I also need to see, like, monkey Colin Farrell and or Tom Cruise doing the, like, pinch and zoom on the, like, Minority Report long before Tony Stark ever did this. This was a minority report move.

So, yeah. I'm devastated now that we're not going to get a monkey chasing after an eyeball. Come on. Tim Blake Nelson. What a dream. For sure. Yeah, Minority Report. Watch it if you have it.

It's a great film. I'm sure Minority Report needs my help. All right. Well, I think that does it for this episode of Poker Face. It's just going to be like light. delightful little cutie bits of podcasting around these very delightful episodes of television. We'll be back next week to talk about at a new location with an all new guest cast cast. We don't know who it will be.

And if you have ideas for Monkey Minority Report or anything else. No, strictly Monkey Minority Report this week. Okay, only Monkey Minority. Like, well, okay, follow-up pitch for Monkey Minority Report. Okay. Andy's circus plays every single role and we finally get him that Oscar.

I can't pretend I'm not into it. Why would I not watch that? Yeah, exactly. Follow question. Are they all the same species of monkey or is it like Planned of the Apes where we get like a few, you know, should there be orangutan?

Should there be like, you know, what do you think? You got to have a variety. You got to have like, I don't know what subspecies of monkey or ape or chimp speaks like or, you know, projects cop. But you need that for Colin Farrell. You need that investigator's sensibility. coming in just to differentiate,

change up the energy a little bit. Okay. I expect a ton of email from listeners, hobbits and dragons at DMHatcom, to identify which chip or ape for monkey is most cop-like and also your ideal cast for monkey one hour to report and anything else you might have to say.

Again, Hobbes and Dragons at DML.com. Thanks as always to our favorite monkey cop, Steve Holman for his production work on this. episode and we'll see you next. Bye.