Quarantine Control #154: Rabbit Poker on the Edge
We’ve arrived at the United States anniversary of COVID-19, the time when people realized the pandemic threat was serious and would be here to stay for a little while three years ago. The question now is whether people remember just how dire things were with such a deadly virus, or want to. The chorus of people discussing how sick they are of COVID is rising, like actress Tilda Swinton (we’re all sick of it, and you’re not special). This kind of talk has been accompanied by people saying the threat was never serious in the first place. It’s a ridiculous point that’s unsurprisingly emerged given the trajectory of inanity we were already on.
Geoffrey Barnes
Poker Face — Season 1 (2023)
Source: Peacock
Episodes: 10
It’s a well-trodden story that director and screenwriter Rian Johnson received far too much hate from Star Wars fans, one of the most deranged fanbases on the planet, for The Last Jedi. There’s nothing wrong with criticizing a film, but excess hyperbole has become the de facto way to address everything in our social media-driven world.
The story not well-trodden enough, though, is that Johnson has since found his footing as one hell of a mystery director. This started in earnest with Knives Out, the superlative detective mystery film starring an ensemble cast that included Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc, and an accompanying cast that included Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Chris Evans, which continued with sequel Glass Onion. The newest one is Poker Face, which found its way to Peacock thanks to essentially being Columbo for a new generation. It’s very much a worthy successor, with a little room for improvement.
Poker Face primarily focuses on Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne), a Las Vegas casino worker intentionally mis-blamed for a key death (I’m keeping the spoilers very light here) at the start. She goes on the run across the country, encountering several colorful characters enwrapped in their own mysteries that happen to involve recent murders. The mysterious occur in locations across multiple states like New Mexico, Colorado, and New York, with Charlie using her keen instinct as a human lie detector to survive and solve the mysteries and pinpoint the murderers. Charlie’s abilities would truly impress the great Lieutenant Columbo, considering how good she (and Lyonne to Columbo actor Peter Falk, by extension) is at mimicking his mannerisms and solves murders.
The aforementioned colorful characters are played by a wide variety of actors, the kind Johnson has developed a knack for attracting. They include the likes of recent Academy Award nominee Hong Chau, fellow recent Academy Award nominee Stephanie Hsu, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Adrian Brody, Ron Perlman, and… look, there are a lot of them. Like its spiritual predecessor, most of them only appear for one episode, but most don’t feel wasted thanks to their placements in the story. It’s a mystery-solving show at its heart, but the overarching story and Charlie not being part of any law enforcement agency lends the show its own voice instead of it being a Columbo retread. It’s nearly as clever as that show.
There honestly wouldn’t have been a problem with this show simply being Columbo again. No other production company or network has done it since the original show ended, and the more official Columbo reboot has been in production limbo for years. This show’s existence is appreciated for that alone, and Mark Ruffalo isn’t getting any younger. Fortunately, the female equivalent was casted.
Poker Face also looks beautiful. The locations are shown in faux-retro 1970s-style lighting with an accompanying typeface, indicative of how inspired this is by mystery shows of that bygone era that will hopefully bloom again. (Yes, the 1970s are also when the first Columbo series aired.) The cinematography techniques work extremely well for the daytime and nighttime locations, though I preferred the former compared to the latter. Johnson’s usual photography director, Steve Yeldin, only worked on two episodes of the series, but it’s a testament of how strongly all the directors and writers worked together to ensure that its look and presentation style were cohesive across all ten of them.
My biggest overarching issue with Poker Face involved the episode length. One of Columbo’s biggest benefits was the episode length, each one essentially being a made-for-TV movie. The 70 to 90-minute episode length allowed for plenty of time to develop the characters and their motivations, to show why one character would go as far as to kill another and give Columbo time to solve each murder (or screw with the murderer if he realized their identities early). Poker Face’s episodes are typical for a direct-to-streaming TV series with only a couple of episodes going over an hour, thus leading to less time for character development and worldbuilding.
This even ends up harming Cale herself, with the eighth episode giving her minimal screentime. Sure, Lyonne directing and co-writing the episode herself was part of the reason for that, but a longer length would have allowed for more opportunity to give her screentime and ensure that she didn’t feel like a tertiary figure throughout. I hope they’ll consider this for the next season, even if they have to slightly reduce the episode count.
It’s a testament to how much I enjoyed Poker Face that I’m going to miss having a new episode to watch every Thursday. The show is one of the best reasons to have access to Peacock, and Universal wisely renewed it for a second season. It’s tough to determine how long it will take to arrive considering Johnson plans to work on the third Benoit Blanc story. In the meantime, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this show really will spark a revival of mystery drama shows.
Angela Moseley
I honestly thought this week would be another video game update, but lo and behold, I finished an anime. It was a long anticipated series on my end, and I’m glad I was finally able to take it out of my backlog. Even better, this show more than lived up to the hype.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 10
I’ve watched cyberpunk genre shows and I haven’t given them much thought. Overall, I prefer more straightforward sci-fi, but cyberpunk is also a huge part of sci-fi. My husband absolutely adores the genre. So when Cyberpunk 2077 was announced, he was completely on board. He even purchased the Cyberpunk 2077 themed Xbox One X. The tragedy was the game didn’t live up to its hype and was plagued with issues from day one. After suffering a huge hit to their reputation, CD Projekt Red eventually addressed many of the issues with the game, and it was playable– at least on PC and newer consoles. However, my husband continues to own an Xbox themed around a game the system itself can’t run very well. It is a hilarious example of an oxymoron.
I personally thought I’d have nothing to do with Cyberpunk 2077. I was fairly indifferent about the game other than learning that it is loosely based on the Cyberpunk tabletop game created by Mike Pondsmith in 1988. Then Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was announced, and I knew I had to check out this Studio Trigger production. It also helped that Edgerunners receive so much positive reception. All of it is well-earned.
David Martinez is the son of Gloria Martinez, a working class single mother who’s doing everything in her power to put her son through an expensive corporate academy. She has dreams of seeing her son live a better life by working for Arasaka Corporation. Unfortunately, they live in Night City, a massive metropolis plagued by rampant inequality and crime. David has the intelligence to go far in life, but his classmates at Arasaka Academy look down on him because of his poverty. Worse, his mother is suddenly gravely injured after being caught in the violent crossfire of gang members attacking corporate targets. Unable to afford good health insurance, she’s left to die of her injuries.
Grieving the death of his mother, facing an eviction notice, and reeling from being attacked by one of his school bullies, David is pushed to desperation. He finds a Sandevistan cybernetic spinal implant among his mother’s possessions. She was an EMT and took the implant from a recently deceased criminal. David originally tries to sell the implant, but later has it installed. It gives him a tremendous boost in speed, not unlike The Flash. (Except the visual effects representing his super speed are almost psychedelic to watch.) Using it, he takes revenge on his bully and is expelled from school as a result. While wandering around aimlessly, he meets a woman named Lucy who tries to steal from him. Noticing David’s abilities, she offers him a job helping her to steal data chips from others. Needing the money, he accepts.
From there it becomes clear that she was stalling the teenager for time, as a group of mercenary cyberpunks catch up with him. Their leader, Maine, attacks him and notes that David’s Sandevistan was supposed to be his. In fact, it was already paid for. Instead of killing the boy, the group realizes he’s Gloria’s child. She pilfered parts from dead clients as an EMT and sold them to the cyberpunk gang for extra money. Maine takes pity on David after learning his mother died and allows him to join the mercenaries. Having nowhere else to go and in crushing debt, David becomes an Edgerunner for the group. At the same time, his relationship with Lucy becomes more than friendly. The specter of death constantly haunts the group as the mercenary life is a brutal life.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is Studio Trigger’s latest anime since 2021’s SSSS.Dynazenon. What’s notable about Edgerunners is Trigger was given a spectacular budget for the ten episode series. The animation is some of the finest work I’ve seen since 2019’s Promare. While every episode is well animated, episodes six and seven look especially amazing. The story itself is short, but impactful. This is definitely a show that will stay with me for years. Despite the animation having some of the coolest, newest effects, it actually reminded me of older series at times. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex comes to mind. It also reminds other hyper-violent cyberpunk anime from the late 1980s to the 1990s.
Edgerunners serves as both a prequel and side story to Cyberpunk 2077, but it makes elements from the game its own. While doing so, it also tells a cautionary tale on several levels. The first being a warning about losing yourself to addictions and obsessions. This is relayed in many characters’ uses of cybernetic enhancements. Too many enhancements put a massive strain on the body and mind, and lead to a condition called “cyberpsychosis.” The victim starts to hallucinate and eventually is unable to tell the difference between memories and reality. The effect is not unlike a bad drug trip combined with a tendency towards extreme violence. Many characters warn about the dangers of those who dive headfirst into cybernetics without regard to their bodies suffering this fate, or they die young. To put it into popular lingo, people in Edgerunners fuck around and they find out. It’s heart-breaking to see characters who should know better rush toward their own destruction.
The second big cautionary tale revolves around the dangers of unbridled late-stage capitalism. In Night City corporations rule everything and everyone. All aspects of life are highly monetized and those who can’t pay are out of luck. There is no social safety net for anyone. Victims are left to die on the side of roads if they don’t have insurance. If they or someone else can’t pay, life-saving surgeries are ignored, and people are instead sold on funeral plans. The wealthy enjoy ultra-expensive care that is partially militarized. But even they live in a corporate dog-eat-dog world where they can be backstabbed, sacrificed, or outright murdered at any time. I can easily imagine some tech bro watching this series, completely missing the cautionary tales and wanting to create real aspects from cyberpunk, but that’s another topic for another article.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an exceptional show, and some of the best work Studio Trigger has ever put out. Considering how anime adaptations of video games tend to be hit or miss, this side story is very much a hit. So much that it actually boosted sales of Cyberpunk 2077. The best part is that you don’t need knowledge of CD Projekt Red’s game or the original tabletop RPG to enjoy this anime. It’s a short, violent, and bittersweet run. It’s also a series that will stay with me for a long time. My only hope is that despite being on Netflix, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners eventually sees a physical release. (My hopes aren’t high as 2018’s Devilman Crybaby never received a blu-ray release outside of Japan.)
Joseph Daniels
I suggested last week that there might be legitimate reasons to avoid Crunchyroll for a bit, so I’ve decided to put off my promised discussion of The Eccentric Family for a few more weeks. Besides, I have some other things I’ve been meaning to talk about in Quarantine Control.
Just like last year when the Year of the Tiger started, I wanted to highlight some rabbit-based media that’s available on various streaming platforms which I haven’t yet discussed in this column. This week, I’ll briefly mention a few movies you could watch on Disney+ to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit. I feel like everyone should be familiar with these already, so I won’t waste too much time talking about them.
Of course, we’ll start with the big one. One which I’m honestly surprised I haven’t highlighted before.
Zootopia (2016)
Rabbits?: Judy Hopps and her family, mainly
Tigers, too?: Gazelle’s back-up dancers; miscellaneous background characters
I’ve talked about the Zootopia+ six episode series, but I never actually discussed the originating movie, and that’s weird for me to realize. You’d think I would’ve talked about this for the Year of the Tiger, but I guess I forgot to.
Zootopia just recently had a sequel announced, and it makes me wonder what direction they’re going to take it. It’s one of the last buddy cop movies released before the Black Lives Matter protests began, which helped call attention to the sheer number of times the police shoot unarmed black people and which also shed some light on a few uncomfortable truths about the role of the police in our society. Unfortunately, this makes Zootopia a tough sell these days, and it makes a sequel an even tougher sell. Zootopia earned a billion dollars at the box office, and it’s possible Disney has found themselves in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. I’m sure they want another billion dollars, but do they keep the focus on Judy and Nick? Do they focus on a brand new character and not tell a police story? I guess these are questions that deserve to be addressed somewhere other than Quarantine Control.
The biggest downside to Zootopia, in my opinion, is the whole surprise villain aspect of the story, something which worked a few times but quickly gets old if you keep doing it. It’s my hope that Disney starts to focus more on classic-style villains again rather than pulling the wool over our eyes like they did with the villain of this movie.
Bambi (1942)
Rabbits?: Thumper and his family, mainly
For one of Disney’s most classic rabbits, look no further than Bambi’s friend Thumper. It might be strange going from the tightly plotted modern day to the more loosely plotted early days of Disney, but I think the movie is worth a watch. I also find it interesting that everyone considers man to be the villain of the movie, but I don’t think there is an actual villain. The hunter just is. It’s like how Sabor isn’t really a villain in Tarzan, since you can’t call someone a villain who is trying to eat to survive. We don’t even know the intention of the hunter who shoots Bambi’s mother. Is her head going to be mounted on the wall and her body left to rot, or is the hunter looking to feed his family? Maybe the hunter would starve and die if not for Bambi’s mother.
It’s just unfortunate that Bambi can’t understand the motivations of humans. It is a sad fact of life that a carnivore must kill to eat. The movie also seems to suggest that when you fall in love, you’ll abandon your friends and give your attention exclusively to your new mate. I wonder how long that’ll last before Bambi, Thumper and Flower miss each other and find a way to still hang out together.
Robin Hood (1973)
Rabbits?: Skippy and his family, mainly
Have you noticed that in these movies, no matter how little you see of everyone else’s families, there’s always a family of rabbits? Robin Hood features one as well, and this time features several on screen villains, although you can’t really claim Prince John is a true villain. He’s mainly dragged along by the plot and his own greed and doesn’t do much. I guess you could suggest the nobility in general are the true villains, but Richard the Lion Heart is depicted as a kind and benevolent ruler.
This is one of those movies that I would love to discuss in deeper detail. Well, that and Zootopia. Maybe in the future, I’ll do a Disney retrospective series.
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Rabbits?: The March Hare, The White Rabbit
There are so many versions of this that I would be surprised if there’s anyone out there who isn’t familiar with the movie. Released just nine years after Bambi, it sits firmly in that classic Disney era where things just happen to characters and that’s the story, so your mileage may vary when it comes to how much or how little you’d enjoy watching this film.
These are, of course, not all of the rabbits that can be seen on Disney+, but I’ll stop here. Next week, I’ll cover a few on Netflix and I’ll probably have more to say about them.
This Week’s Short Film
Flower in the Subway (2020)
The number of people no longer taking COVID-19 seriously despite it still swirling around has become so prominent that merely acknowledging how it’s still okay to mask up takes guts. We are not prepared for the next pandemic that’s sure to arrive sometime in the future. Some humans learn and adapt, but certainly not all of them.
About The Author
dcstaff
The collective will of the Damage Control staff combined into a single article.
