**Score: 6/10 A Good Premise Buried Under Convoluted Execution** *Poker Face* arrives with an irresistible pedigree. Created by Rian Johnson, fresh off the success of *Knives Out* and *Glass Onion*, and starring Natasha Lyonne, an actress whose entire persona seems purpose-built for a scruffy, wisecracking detective. The premise is genuinely good: Charlie Cale (Lyonne) has an uncanny ability to tell when someone is lying, and she drifts across America in her Plymouth Barracuda, stumbling into murders in a classic "case-of-the-week" structure. It's *Columbo* meets *The Fugitive*, and on paper, it should be a knockout. In practice, it's a frustrating watch. **The Problem: Overcomplicated Setups** Each new story starts with a way too complicated setup before the actual episode kicks into gear. The show adopts a "howcatchem" structure, showing the audience the murder and the killer in the opening act, then letting Charlie unravel the mystery. In theory, this is a clever inversion of the whodunit formula. In practice, the setups are so convoluted, so packed with unnecessary characters and red herrings, that by the time Charlie arrives on the scene, you're already exhausted. The show seems to mistake complexity for cleverness. A great mystery doesn't need a dozen moving parts; it needs a compelling puzzle and a satisfying solution. *Poker Face* too often delivers the former wi…

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