Poker Face & Spoiler Culture
I, like much of the country, have been watching Rian Johnson’s excellent Poker Face and it’s led me to contemplate a few different things. Would it be a gift or a curse to know if people are lying? How would I use this skill? Why does someone who hates sand live in a dessert? And, of course, what defines Natasha Lyonne’s distinct and inescapable charm?
But these aren’t the questions that drove me to write this, my inaugural blog post. That question is more to do with the modern state of pop culture discourse.
It was during the, then still excellent, run of Game of Thrones that I began to notice it. I’d wait all week not only to watch, but to discuss that show. And those discussions, which had once stretched on for the entire week, had become compressed, stilted, one note.
“It’s just not surprising anymore,” one of my friends would say, and everyone would agree.
“No one dies,” someone else would say. More agreement.
No discussion of the acting or the set or the biting dialogue. No comments on the interpersonal relationships that spawned complex webs of chaos and deceit. No belief that television was about the journey and not the destination alone.
And yet, even as so many people began to bemoan the seeming boredom of that show, one truism remained. Someone in the room wouldn’t have seen the episode, and would quickly, and aggressively, shout, “I haven’t watched yet, no spoilers.”
Sometimes they were seasons behind. Sometimes they hadn’t even begun the series. But it wouldn’t matter. Spoiler sanctity had to be observed. And with that sanctity, I watched as conversations died.
It started before Thrones. Maybe it was Breaking Bad, maybe The Sopranos. Maybe people were shouting at each other not to spoil NYPD Blue back in the 90s and Dallas in the 80s. I don’t know. I can’t say when it began, but it’s infected us. And it’s an epidemic.
People shout about spoilers for films from the 70s. People get angry when you let a minor plot point slip from a show that aired a decade ago. People put their fingers in their ears when you mention how a book they were never going to read ends. Our discourse has been so strangled by this spoiler culture that conversations die on the vine.
Combine that with the new model where in shows release entire seasons at once, thus nullifying any shared ground for viewers, and we never talk about television.
Yes, I understand that we talk about it constantly. It’s one of the go-to topics at social gatherings. But the conversations are short, surface level. You ask the other person where they’re at in the show, you try to remember what was happening then, and, when you can’t pinpoint it, you give up and say you like the lead. Then you move on, unsatisfied.
No one learns anything, no one puts forth an interesting idea that changes the way you viewed the show. People simply say if they liked or disliked it, as if that is all there is to discourse.
Then, just when I thought spoiler culture had won, along came Poker Face. A throw back to a bygone age of bumbling, trenchcoated, detectives and a land devoid of spoilers. Because how can you spoil a show that spoils itself?
Poker Face opens every episode with a well-crafted scene in which the killer is revealed. You learn the players, you see the motive, and the air from that spoiler balloon leaks out.
Does this diminish the tension of the show? No. At least not in my opinion. Instead, it focuses the viewer. You’re not sitting there, as my father does with everything he watches, trying to guess the end. You already know it. So, you just sit back and enjoy the ride. Enjoy the aforementioned Natasha Lyonne’s charm, the elegant camera work, the litany of well-cast guest stars, the settings – throwbacks to classic Hollywood genres. You get to focus on world being built instead of the action to come.
And you still get to revel in her both solving and proving the case.
It’s a simple formula. As so many have pointed out, it’s Columbo. It’s Law and Order with the reveal at the beginning. It’s episodic, procedural. It’s the very thing that the golden age of television taught us to revile. And it’s exactly what we need. Spoiler proof television for an age infected with spoiler culture.
Next week, I’ll have another post on this show (sorry for being so one note here at the beginning). Moving forward I will discuss other films, television, books, and, of course, my own writing. I might even talk about cooking or baking or, if you’re lucky, my cat. I don’t really know yet. But I hope you keep reading.
Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any thoughts and thank you for taking the time to read this.