1x07 The Future of the Sport

[7.5/10] I enjoyed this one because, like the episode at the nursing home, it expertly plays with your sympathies.

In the first act, Kyle Owens is the good guy. He’s an old man who wants to make his legendary father proud before he retires. But what’s preventing him from doing that is some cocky young hotshot who employs dirty tricks on the track and tears out his mailbox to add insult to injury, Kyle doesn’t seem perfect, but he’s easy to sympathize with as someone trying to have his last run while being thwarted by someone who seems disrespectful and underhanded.

But then, at the end of the act, Kyle Owens sneaks into Davis’ garage to sabotage his car, and then seems to smile when the kid crashes, which, as with the nursing home cool kids, makes you question what kind of person he is.

The second act cements that, as we get to see events from Davis’ perspective. And yeah, he is a bit overconfident, but he also has legitimate grievances with the Owenses. From his perspective, he’s the little guy, who has to scrape by to get a car on the track, in contrast to Kyle and his daughter, who have a family name to trade on and the resources that big sponsors provide. You also get the sense that he genuinely loves this, trying to live up to the standard of his own grandfather and share his minor success and celebrity with the kids.

It doesn’t hurt that Charlie’s friends with his mom either! It’s a good way to give her an in to the murder mystery, and making Davis the offspring of someone who seems genuinely kind and decent helps put the audience on his side, especially when it looks like he’s got a tragic end coming. The way he tries to show Charlie the magic of racing, and even seems to be a little sweet on her, makes him a more likable guy than the cocky upstart we thought we knew from the first act.

But then, Poker Face switches our sympathies again. You can see Kyle’s daughter, Katy, showing up Davis on the go-kart track, which chaps his hide and spurs the mailbox-ripping revenge. But the true dark side comes out when he catches Kyle sabotaging his racecar.

The reveal that Davis sabotaged it further, and then put Katy in the driver seat, is both poetic and diabolical. It makes Davis seem like an active murderer, or at least muddies the blame for the incident with Katy, especially when Davis too seems pretty cold about the whole thing. And it makes Kyle somewhat sympathetic again, both when he’s clearly devastated by the ironic twist of his actions leading to his own daughter’s accident, and eventually because he stands up to face the music when confronted about it by Charlie and his no-nonsense but loving wife.

The chase from Charlie only reinforces that. I like the fact that she outs herself as a “cancer dog” for lies with Davis pretty quickly, so he’s smart enough to evade any statements that would give her a clue that he’s not on the up-and-up. It’s nice to see the villains here being clever enough to slip through Charlie’s detection methods. And the simple fact that what cracks open the case for Charlie is him trying to reassure a kid that seatbelts are safe has a poetry to it too.

He’s also damn menacing! Both the way he threatens Charlie with a tire iron and tries to run her down on the road is some of the most scary stuff Poker Face has pulled off. This being a Rian Johnson-penned episode, I appreciate the trademark setup, payoff, and ironic echo, where the fishtail move and “trust the car” mantra Davis taught her in the video game turns out to be the technique she needs to use to evade him.

The other odds and ends of the episode are good too. Charlie’s clues are all fair play, from the seatbelt lie, to Davis knowing what type of wire Kyle used for the sabotage, to the picture of Davis’ grandfather that was missing from the dash, to his mom’s forgetfulness about her keys that allow Charlie to slip into their garage. The humor was also particularly on point here, with Natasha Lyonne being especially amusing in her line deliveries about the glory of Deliverance and her regrets at accepting the “cancer dog” metaphor.

But what I like best here is Davis’ comeuppance. Rather than turning him into the cops or otherwise getting him to incriminate himself, Charlie deliberately gives him the yips! I like that as an alternative to the usual ways she brings people down. Davis getting what he’s always wanted (something clunkily announced in dialogue), only to find that with the pressure, the likely disapproval of his dead grandfather, and Katy awake and soon to take his crown, is some nice karmic retribution. And again, as is the hallmark of a Rian Johnson script, has the bookends of Davis’ shaking hand as a parallel to Kyle’s in the beginning.

Overall, another good mystery of the week with some well-played games of sympathy switching, along with a cool and unique way for Charlie to bring down the baddie.