Every Mystery-Of-The-Week In Poker Face Ranked

The premiere episode of "Poker Face," written and directed by Rian Johnson, feels like the first two-thirds of a Rian Johnson movie. Like most of Johnson's work, "Dead Man's Hand" is witty and tense, with flawless production design and a story that goes off like clockwork. We don't meet our protagonist, Charlie Cale, until we've already seen the first murder occur, which establishes what will be the structure of the show. Casino employee Natalie (Lyonne's "Orange Is the New Black" co-star Dascha Polanco) witnesses something disturbing on the laptop of a high roller, and she and her abusive boyfriend are silenced with bullets when she goes to her bosses with photographic evidence. 

The pilot then introduces us to Charlie, a drifter with the ability to sense whether or not someone is lying. She's currently working as a cocktail server at the casino, as she's indebted to its magnate, Sterling Frost Sr. (Ron Perlman), who caught her using her innate ability. Frost's son (Adrien Brody) enlists Charlie to game the system and fleece his "whales" for all they're worth after discovering they're holding private high-stakes games from which his business doesn't profit. She agrees, but she can't let go of her friend Natalie's murder (which cops and casino brass insist was a murder-suicide), which means she's simultaneously aiding and investigating the enemy. 

"Dead Man's Hand" is a solid 67 minutes of television that puts Benjamin Bratt's Cliff LeGrand on a fleeing Charlie's tail. Because it has the burden of exposition and a murder that means more to our main character, it doesn't get to be as free-wheeling as other episodes.