In AC, they go their separate ways, though not before Cliff instructs Charlie to clean herself up and put on a cute lil’ sequin number Senior picked out for her. The real low points are Cliff forcing Charlie to hold the gun he used to kill Natalie (some weird mind game) and when he does a protracted dramatic interpretation of “The Hook” by Blues Traveller in the style of those embarrassing W Magazine videos of celebs reading the inane lyrics to pop songs (some weirder mind game). This road trip is long but relatively painless. And I can personally attest that it does not matter how long and far you roam from your home break, a Jersey girl’s hair will always look a little salty.īut I digress. The listlessness has been accounted for, as has the bad attitude that papers over a tender heart. I’ve long sensed Charlie was a Jersey girl, but a Jersey Shore girl specifically? This is perhaps the single greatest insight Rian Johnson provided into Charlie’s frazzled psyche. Still in disguise as Sterling’s loyal soldier, Cliff retrieves Charlie from the hospital on discharge day and drives hers all the way to beautiful Atlantic City, New Jersey, which just so happens to be her hometown. Sterling will never sell his Nevada business to Hasp as his son intended, so Hasp - voiced by Rhea Perlman (no relation) - needs Cliff to kill Sterling. The day he finds Chuck is the same day he gets in bed with the improbably named Beatrix Hasp, the aforementioned owner of a rival casino, not to mention the head of a rival crime syndicate called The Five Families. Maybe he loved Sterling Senior once, but Cliff’s grown to despise his boss. So when Sterling tells him to camp out for two additional months while she heals up from her stab wounds, it’s the last straw. And as taxing as it was for Charlie - she calls finally getting tagged at the Denver Hospital “a relief, in a sick way” - it was even more mentally erosive for B. In the end, rooting her out takes Sterling & Co. Senior’s need to find Charlie remained, but his intentions for her changed. And Senior - a perfectly cast Ron Perlman despite looking nothing like a man who would have sired Adrien Brody - really does growl for vengeance in the aftermath of his son’s death: “And when I do kill you, you’re going to thank me.” (Sidenote: Ron Perlman is a national treasure possibly the single most under-utilized American actor who can credibly call another adult “kid” and pull off a bolo tie.) Anyway, I guess Senior’s murderous resolve waned the more he learned about Junior’s plan to betray him in favor of his business rivals, information he gleaned from the bug he planted in his own son’s office. At the beginning of the season finale, “The Hook,” the show runs back to the episode one phone call from Sterling Senior that kicked off this chase. Of course, Charlie wasn’t wrong to think her life was in jeopardy. And while each episode of Poker Face built its own internal suspense, this big reveal left me feeling a little hollow. For example, if henchman Cliff had just nabbed Charlie after the Doxxology show in episode four, she might already be rich. ![]() All these weeks, we’ve not been watching the show we thought we were watching - the one about a woman so good to the bone she can’t help herself, she’s compelled to right wrongs at great risk to her personal safety. ![]() ![]() But when we find out that Charlie was not on the run for her life but - unbeknownst to her - on the run from a lucrative business opportunity, North immediately sprang forth from the recesses of my bewildered mind. Poker Face is a good, fun show, and putting Janicza Bravo ( Zola) in the director’s chair for the finale was a good, fun choice. I wasn’t even watching the bad movie I thought I had been watching. That premise is terrible, but it gets even worse. But they all suck, I guess, because all parents suck a little, so he ends up going home. (Spoilers ahead for the movie North, or at least what I remember of it.) Wood plays North, a kid who divorces his neglectful parents and travels the U.S. Does anyone remember the Rob Reiner movie North? It starred a teenage Elijah Wood, cost millions to make, and was so bad that even I, a child at the time, believed viewing it to be a waste of my time, which, as a child, was worth nothing.
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