I fell in love with "Poker Face" almost immediately, which is why it's so weird that I haven't gotten around to watch the finale before now. This sort of "howcatchem" is a great twist on the classic procedural murder mystery, and it seems like Rian Johnson has found a real love for this style of entertainment, because now only has made a lot of it, he's really good at it. So with this final episode, he wrote the script for Janicza Bravo to direct it. And the season ends on top, with an episode that utilizes the tropes of the genre in a clever way.
The gimmick of this show has always been Charlie's ability to spot when people are lying, so in an effort to make the finale more interesting, they largely do away with this. Not in a weird plot holy-kind of way, but in a tightly structured way that owes a lot to Johnson's writing. He knows his audience so well, and with the last few episodes, the show has fallen into its own tropes a lot - which is completely understandable. Most shows do that. This and the previous episode set up challenges for Charlie, though, and in this, she is faced with the consequences of the plot she uncovered in the first episode in a wildly entertaining final rump that finally brings Charlie face-to-face with a surprisingly subtle Ron Perlman and Benjamin Bratt's cool hitman who has been on his trail for the entire show. For most of the show, we all understood that she would eventually get caught, but like the rest of the show, it's not about any of that, it's about how she'll find the murder, or in this case, get out of a very bad situation. Some aspects about the episode's climax felt a little easy to accomplish for Johnson on a script level, but the episode's overall genius, plus Janicza Bravo's brilliant direction of the piece, is enough to make those small bumps feel like nothing. The show has been picked up for a second season, and with the stakes constantly rising for Charlie, I, for one, can't wait to see what happens next.
"The Hook" brings this show to a satisfying finish in an episode that subverts its own tropes and relies mostly on clever writing. The results are stunning and brings it all to an end that certainly leaves the door open for the second season, and I can't wait to see more of Natasha Lyonne's incredible lead character very soon.