Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / Fictional Women Around the World: Charlie Cale
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: Hey, this is Sanny and Smitha and welcome to stuff
- 0:07Speaker 1: I never told you a protection of iHeartRadio, and welcome
- 0:19Speaker 1: to another edition of Fictional Women Around the World. Spoilers,
- 0:26Speaker 1: but nothing too major. I'm trying to avoid it. The
- 0:30Speaker 1: season finale for season two of poker Face just came
- 0:34Speaker 1: out this very morning, and I'm still processing somethings, so
- 0:40Speaker 1: I'm trying not just boil it majorly. But it did
- 0:44Speaker 1: just happen. So if you want to avoid it completely,
- 0:47Speaker 1: then I recommend the show. It's on Peacock, which is
- 0:51Speaker 1: not a sponsor. But anyway, all right, today we are
- 0:55Speaker 1: talking about Charlie Cale from the television show poker Face,
- 1:00Speaker 1: who I would argue is neurodivergent, and I'm going to
- 1:03Speaker 1: get into that more later. So poker Face is a
- 1:07Speaker 1: mystery comedy drama show that debuted on Peacock, again not
- 1:11Speaker 1: a sponsor, in twenty twenty three. It currently has two seasons,
- 1:15Speaker 1: the second one just wrapped. It was created by Ryan
- 1:18Speaker 1: Johnson of Knives Out and The Last Jedi Fame and
- 1:22Speaker 1: features just a plethora of guest stars. I'm always shocked
- 1:27Speaker 1: who shows up on there. Guest writers and guest directors,
- 1:31Speaker 1: including Natasha Leone, who plays the main character. She actually
- 1:35Speaker 1: directed the finale of season two. It is highly influenced
- 1:40Speaker 1: by the show Colombo, which I have never seen. Oh
- 1:43Speaker 1: you haven't, No, have you seen it?
- 1:45Speaker 2: Yes, I grew up with very Matt Locke Colombo, not
- 1:50Speaker 2: much of murder.
- 1:51Speaker 1: She wrote that might be a ho misogynistic thing.
- 1:53Speaker 2: I don't know, because my family, my grandfather specifically watched those,
- 1:57Speaker 2: but my dad loved Colombo.
- 2:00Speaker 1: I looked it up because of this, because I was
- 2:03Speaker 1: missing so many references. I was like, oh, really, m
- 2:08Speaker 1: a lot.
- 2:08Speaker 2: He was kind of the not the original, but he
- 2:11Speaker 2: was definitely a big icon in that he was goofy
- 2:15Speaker 2: and seemingly like you're unsuspecting of his genius, but he
- 2:18Speaker 2: actually is a genius, and he's not your normal looking detective.
- 2:23Speaker 1: Yes. Well, in the last episode, which was directed by
- 2:29Speaker 1: Ty West and was pretty scary for what is the
- 2:32Speaker 1: usual of this series, they're the character in there who
- 2:37Speaker 1: was an assassin did a Colombo impression and I had
- 2:43Speaker 1: That's when I was like, who is this? I had
- 2:44Speaker 1: to look it up, and so I watched a bunch
- 2:46Speaker 1: of clips and I was like, Okay, I see I
- 2:48Speaker 1: see the icon yeah, the influence, yes, and okay. So
- 2:54Speaker 1: the show's protagonist, Charlie Kale, frequently smokes or vapes as
- 3:00Speaker 1: an homage to a Colombo character, and it's also how
- 3:06Speaker 1: can you catch them? And not who done it? So
- 3:08Speaker 1: the way the show is structured is you already, as
- 3:11Speaker 1: the viewer, know usually who did it, it's how is
- 3:16Speaker 1: she going to figure it out? So here's a basic
- 3:20Speaker 1: rundown of the premise. Charlie Cale, played by Natasha Leone,
- 3:23Speaker 1: is a woman in her mid thirties who has this
- 3:26Speaker 1: ability to detect when people are lying. A human light
- 3:30Speaker 1: detector is how she often describes herself. She's sort of
- 3:34Speaker 1: the antithesis to Anna de Armis's character and knives Out
- 3:39Speaker 1: because she couldn't lie. The thing is, she can't tell
- 3:45Speaker 1: why people are lying, because people why for all sorts
- 3:47Speaker 1: of reasons. Because of her ability and just her overall personality.
- 3:53Speaker 1: This means she gets sucked into so Manie Shenanigan's especially
- 3:59Speaker 1: murders kids obviously obviously, and just to mention, Natasha Leone
- 4:05Speaker 1: had a cameo in Ria Johnson's Knives Out sequel Glass
- 4:09Speaker 1: Onion when there was a bunch of detectives that Blanc's
- 4:15Speaker 1: character was playing. What was that game that was so
- 4:18Speaker 1: popular for who?
- 4:21Speaker 2: I don't I don't remember this Mafia, but it wasn't.
- 4:24Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it wasn't Mafia, but it was. It was
- 4:28Speaker 1: the game where, like you, there's a trader in the
- 4:30Speaker 1: group and they're trying to sabotage you. We were going
- 4:34Speaker 1: to play it with our listeners, are we so long ago?
- 4:40Speaker 1: She was one of the when Blanc was playing among us,
- 4:45Speaker 1: She was one of the people. It was during pandemic,
- 4:48Speaker 1: so they were all kind of locked down. She was
- 4:50Speaker 1: one of the people that was playing with him virtually
- 4:54Speaker 1: all right. So generally this show is a murder of
- 4:57Speaker 1: the week show, though there are some exceptions and definitely
- 5:01Speaker 1: times they play on the audience's expectation of what that
- 5:05Speaker 1: is for a surprise factor, But generally the episodes are
- 5:10Speaker 1: structured like this. We see the story of someone we
- 5:13Speaker 1: don't know play out, and in one way or another,
- 5:16Speaker 1: it leads to a murder and usually an attempt to
- 5:20Speaker 1: cover it up. Then the second half of the show
- 5:23Speaker 1: reveals how Charlie was off to the side the whole time,
- 5:26Speaker 1: sometimes just out of frame, and typically friends with the
- 5:31Speaker 1: person who got murdered or has some kind of stake
- 5:34Speaker 1: with the person who got murdered, so she goes on
- 5:38Speaker 1: to try to solve the murder. Notably, this does not
- 5:41Speaker 1: usually involve cops, but typically at the end there is
- 5:46Speaker 1: some sort of revolution that isn't death, but sometimes it
- 5:50Speaker 1: is death. Sometimes. It's also very much a road trip story,
- 5:56Speaker 1: since she's traveling across the US and she's always looking
- 5:59Speaker 1: for odd jobs to make money, which in part explains
- 6:01Speaker 1: how she runs into just all of these situations. One
- 6:07Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of recontextualizing Charlie's involvement in the
- 6:12Speaker 1: story when you get the second half is from season one,
- 6:15Speaker 1: an episode called The Stall. This one is about like
- 6:19Speaker 1: a really renowned, dedicated barbecue pit master who suddenly decided
- 6:25Speaker 1: to retire, saying he can't he just can't do it anymore,
- 6:28Speaker 1: he can't slaughter animals anymore, and his brother and his
- 6:32Speaker 1: brother's wife are really against this because they can't afford
- 6:36Speaker 1: to buy him out and it's a really profitable business,
- 6:40Speaker 1: so they come up with this elaborate plan to murder him,
- 6:44Speaker 1: which they do. Then, when we get back to Charlie's
- 6:48Speaker 1: side of it, it turns out that she had basically
- 6:52Speaker 1: had to work there because a dog she didn't even
- 6:55Speaker 1: want to adopt ruined their restaurant ate a bunch of meats.
- 7:01Speaker 1: So she was working to pay off her debt and
- 7:04Speaker 1: she befriends the pitmaster and she gave him I don't
- 7:10Speaker 1: know why, I can't remember exactly why, but she gave
- 7:12Speaker 1: him all these movies about animals as the protagonist, like
- 7:16Speaker 1: Babe and Autia, and he was so moved by them.
- 7:22Speaker 1: That's why he decided to quit.
- 7:24Speaker 2: So she's the reason exactly essentially.
- 7:29Speaker 1: But it was so funny because you know, you're just
- 7:31Speaker 1: watching it and it's it's it's a fun recontextualizing of like, oh,
- 7:39Speaker 1: don't be friends with Unfortunately she yeah, has a bad
- 7:45Speaker 1: track record with that, which we'll talk about more in
- 7:47Speaker 1: a second. Another thing that they love to play with
- 8:01Speaker 1: is the like you know, they have the classic here's
- 8:04Speaker 1: how I figured it out monologue. A lot of times
- 8:08Speaker 1: that does not go down as expected in this show.
- 8:12Speaker 1: Another fun example of how they mess with the formula,
- 8:15Speaker 1: And actually I watched this episode at your house when
- 8:17Speaker 1: I was dog sitting Peaches, And another fun example of
- 8:22Speaker 1: how they mess with this formula is in the season
- 8:24Speaker 1: two episode Sloppy Joseph, which is one of my favorites.
- 8:28Speaker 1: A young girl murders a gerbil and a young boy's
- 8:32Speaker 1: self esteem, so not always murder, sometimes suicide, but generally
- 8:38Speaker 1: it's murder. Okay, but let us show I love that episode. Okay,
- 8:48Speaker 1: but let's talk about this character. When we first meet
- 8:51Speaker 1: Charlie Kele, she is working at Frost Casino and Las Vegas,
- 8:55Speaker 1: which has just been handed down to the boss's son,
- 8:58Speaker 1: Sterling Frost Junior. Basically, she had been using her ability
- 9:03Speaker 1: to fleece people in poker and make money, but she
- 9:07Speaker 1: got caught and is now sort of trapped in this
- 9:10Speaker 1: job because Frost Senior he had there had been rumors
- 9:14Speaker 1: about her gamblers talk, as they say, and he had
- 9:18Speaker 1: studied her for hours from this like crows ness that
- 9:21Speaker 1: he had in his casino, and he figured out what
- 9:24Speaker 1: she could do and told her, you know, you have
- 9:29Speaker 1: to otherwise people are going to punish you. You have
- 9:31Speaker 1: to work with me and you have to help me
- 9:34Speaker 1: detect these lies. And he also told everybody that she's dirty,
- 9:39Speaker 1: and so she couldn't gamble anymore. If you name, if
- 9:42Speaker 1: word gets out that you're dirty, I guess in the
- 9:45Speaker 1: gambling world that's it. So she works with her best
- 9:48Speaker 1: friend Natalie, who makes a pointed remark about why Charlie
- 9:52Speaker 1: complains about things but doesn't do anything about them. Natalie
- 9:57Speaker 1: discovers child pornography on the lapto of one of their
- 10:01Speaker 1: top gamblers, which she reports to Frost Junior. He promises
- 10:05Speaker 1: to investigate it, but instead has his right hand the
- 10:08Speaker 1: man Cliff, murder her and frame her abusive husband. However,
- 10:14Speaker 1: Charlie has her whole bull thing and knows that the
- 10:18Speaker 1: official story isn't true. She eventually finds a way to
- 10:22Speaker 1: record the failures of Frost Junior and pass them on
- 10:28Speaker 1: to his father because she says basically like, there are
- 10:31Speaker 1: other ways to punish people than the police. Junior kills
- 10:35Speaker 1: himself and Charlie is playing for it and forced to
- 10:39Speaker 1: flee in her sixty nine Barracuda that she pretty much
- 10:43Speaker 1: lives out of her car. When it comes to why
- 10:47Speaker 1: I would characterize her ability as neurodivergent, it seems that
- 10:51Speaker 1: she has a compulsion to call bolt like sometimes she
- 10:54Speaker 1: just says it because that's what she says, bull It's
- 10:58Speaker 1: and she can't stop herself. It gets her into trouble,
- 11:01Speaker 1: and there are multiple instances in the show when she
- 11:05Speaker 1: maligns how much this ability has and continues to impact
- 11:10Speaker 1: her life, whether it's family members cutting her out, her
- 11:15Speaker 1: constantly moving to try to find places with nobles are
- 11:20Speaker 1: so much be that it's white noise, which she did try,
- 11:25Speaker 1: developing an eye twitch or headaches because of how much
- 11:29Speaker 1: people lie. It completely impacts her life. And this is
- 11:36Speaker 1: interesting because people like to try to dissect how her
- 11:42Speaker 1: ability works. So it's not her reading tells. It is
- 11:47Speaker 1: a physical thing she experiences where she just knows something
- 11:52Speaker 1: is off, and it seems she can tell how big
- 11:55Speaker 1: the lie is. All right, So this is where we
- 11:57Speaker 1: get to the murder of the Weak plot, with the
- 12:01Speaker 1: overarching plot that Charlie has to continually move and stay
- 12:05Speaker 1: off the grid to avoid Cliff, who has been dispatched
- 12:08Speaker 1: to bring her back to Sterling Senior. She solves all
- 12:12Speaker 1: kinds of murders and all kinds of settings. There's a
- 12:15Speaker 1: metal band, there's race tracks, there's a special effects warehouse.
- 12:21Speaker 1: But eventually Cliff recaptures her after she's been nearly murdered
- 12:27Speaker 1: and hospitalized. And I have to say that episode was
- 12:29Speaker 1: a good twist on the whole thing too. Turns out
- 12:32Speaker 1: Sterling Senior knew that she hadn't murdered his son. Also,
- 12:37Speaker 1: he's a mafia boss, which we all suspected, and wants
- 12:40Speaker 1: to offer Charlie a legit job. However, he is murdered
- 12:45Speaker 1: and Charlie is framed for his death, so she flees
- 12:51Speaker 1: once again while in contact with her FBI friend Luca Clark,
- 12:56Speaker 1: and she retreats to her sister's house, who's played by
- 12:58Speaker 1: Claya Duval, and the two of them have been estrange
- 13:03Speaker 1: because Charlie was blamed in their family for causing their
- 13:07Speaker 1: parents to divorce because she knew they were lying about stuff.
- 13:12Speaker 1: They sort of makeup and Charlie gets the keys to
- 13:16Speaker 1: the family boat, only to learn that the boat doesn't function.
- 13:20Speaker 1: So desperate, she calls Cliff for help, but then discovers
- 13:23Speaker 1: he was the one who killed FROs Senior and attacks
- 13:27Speaker 1: him before jumping in the water and making her escape.
- 13:31Speaker 1: She then gets a call from the Consortium of mafia's
- 13:35Speaker 1: in the Eastern United States. The five families of their
- 13:38Speaker 1: called in, particularly Beatrix Hasp played by Ray Pearlman. They're
- 13:44Speaker 1: mad because she calls all this chaos and a power vacuum,
- 13:48Speaker 1: but Hasp offers her protection if she comes to work
- 13:51Speaker 1: for her. Charlie declines, Beatrix puts a hit out on her,
- 13:56Speaker 1: and Charlie is on the road fleeing once again. Then
- 14:00Speaker 1: this is when you get into season two. That was
- 14:02Speaker 1: all season one, And I'm only gonna quickly summarize season
- 14:06Speaker 1: two because it did just happen. But okay, more murders
- 14:10Speaker 1: solved across the US, more dodging a hitman, until Charlie
- 14:14Speaker 1: and Beatrix come to a truce and Beatrix agrees to
- 14:17Speaker 1: testify and exchange for witness protection. Charlie then finds her
- 14:21Speaker 1: way to an apartment in New York with the help
- 14:23Speaker 1: of Good Buddy, a person she communicates with on the radio.
- 14:28Speaker 1: More murders occur, and then assassins, and then she meets
- 14:32Speaker 1: a person who can lie to her. Oh, she meets
- 14:37Speaker 1: her Moriarty. And that's what I will leave it at all, right,
- 14:52Speaker 1: So I really enjoy it. I love a good puzzle,
- 14:56Speaker 1: Samantha nos I was nerding out about Dames, trying to
- 15:00Speaker 1: guess all the things that were going to happen. I
- 15:03Speaker 1: really enjoy it. But I also really enjoy the character
- 15:05Speaker 1: and actually She reminds me of you, Samantha Me yes,
- 15:09Speaker 1: because she is somebody who's really curious and does it
- 15:15Speaker 1: like back away from a tough conversation, Like she's somebody
- 15:18Speaker 1: who legitimately is like, no, tell me about this, I
- 15:23Speaker 1: want to know. I'm not just it's not a superficial
- 15:26Speaker 1: conversation with her. So when I think of traits that
- 15:31Speaker 1: this character displays, curiosity and cleverness, she's very very curious.
- 15:36Speaker 1: She cannot let things go. But she's also really smart.
- 15:41Speaker 1: She picks up on things so quickly. And I read
- 15:46Speaker 1: an article about how these kinds of shows work and
- 15:49Speaker 1: how like a couple of seconds matter because as the audience,
- 15:53Speaker 1: we're figuring it out as we're watching it, so they
- 15:56Speaker 1: have to be really tight with the editing, and they're
- 15:58Speaker 1: really good with that. But it feels like she's always
- 16:01Speaker 1: kind of a little even if you know who it is,
- 16:04Speaker 1: she's kind of ahead. She's very kind hearted. In this
- 16:10Speaker 1: most recent episode, her Moriarty called her compulsive do gooder.
- 16:15Speaker 1: But she is somebody who sees people for who they
- 16:20Speaker 1: are and wants to help them legitimately, and that's nice.
- 16:24Speaker 1: She isn't a bad place. Now I gotta tell you
- 16:26Speaker 1: that that season finale.
- 16:28Speaker 2: Was like.
- 16:30Speaker 1: But she still was helping somebody at the end. And
- 16:35Speaker 1: also perhaps obviously honesty. She is honest and she values honesty.
- 16:43Speaker 1: There are ways people can get around her bullet detector,
- 16:48Speaker 1: like if you always kind of I don't know, answer
- 16:52Speaker 1: a question with the question. Are certain ways she can
- 16:55Speaker 1: phrase things. That is not what was going on with
- 16:57Speaker 1: the Moriarty though, but there are ways people can get
- 17:02Speaker 1: around it. And now I'm like, now that she's met
- 17:05Speaker 1: this person, I can imagine how terrifying that would be,
- 17:10Speaker 1: because you're so confident in this ability and then you
- 17:12Speaker 1: had someone come in and now can you trust it.
- 17:17Speaker 1: She's also pretty much a loner. She always makes friends.
- 17:22Speaker 1: She's very friendly, but she moves on like it's always
- 17:25Speaker 1: like I made this friend and then I move on,
- 17:27Speaker 1: and she's pretty she's a loner because of this ability.
- 17:32Speaker 1: It is sad too, Like I texted a friend after
- 17:36Speaker 1: I watched the finale today and I was like, I
- 17:39Speaker 1: didn't expect it. This is what I thought was going
- 17:41Speaker 1: to happen, and I didn't expect it to be this sad.
- 17:44Speaker 1: But she she thought she'd found somebody who always told
- 17:48Speaker 1: the truth, and she was so relieved. Oh jeez, but
- 17:55Speaker 1: she values that so much. She was so relieved that
- 17:59Speaker 1: somebody was just being honest with her. Oh gosh. Anyway,
- 18:04Speaker 1: she also she has spoken about how she kind of
- 18:09Speaker 1: she doesn't seek out danger or jeopardy, but she finds
- 18:12Speaker 1: it kind of exhilarating. Uh. And one of the things
- 18:16Speaker 1: that I there's a lot of suspension of disbelief, perhaps
- 18:20Speaker 1: obviously with the show, but one of the things that
- 18:23Speaker 1: I'm always like, why are you confronting these people alone?
- 18:27Speaker 1: What do you know that she does it all the
- 18:31Speaker 1: time though she confronts them alone, And I'm like, you're
- 18:34Speaker 1: a small lady and nobody knows where who you are.
- 18:38Speaker 2: You make a lot of people mad. Why would you
- 18:40Speaker 2: do this?
- 18:41Speaker 1: Yes, I will say a lot of the murders are
- 18:44Speaker 1: kind of like crimes of passion. Sure, yeah, yeah, so
- 18:50Speaker 1: it's not like they're serial killers until recently. But still
- 18:56Speaker 1: I'm always like, my goodness. Also, the phone thing, they
- 19:01Speaker 1: haven't really figured that out, or she hasn't figured it out.
- 19:03Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'm always like, where is your phone?
- 19:08Speaker 1: But I do love the show, but those are my
- 19:12Speaker 1: things that I sometimes I'm like, what, so there actually
- 19:19Speaker 1: has been a lot of stuff written about poker face
- 19:22Speaker 1: and feminism. There are a lot of plotlines that condemn
- 19:26Speaker 1: particular types misogyny. I have to say, the show really
- 19:29Speaker 1: comes for certain types of misogynist dude bros a lot,
- 19:37Speaker 1: and when you look at who the victims are sometimes
- 19:42Speaker 1: it'll hit you over the head with like, yeah, this
- 19:44Speaker 1: dude is absolutely a misogynist. So I mean, even at
- 19:49Speaker 1: the start, Natalie with her abusive husband as the scapegoat,
- 19:53Speaker 1: there was this whole thing where he sent dick pics
- 19:56Speaker 1: to like everybody, or he showed up on their cloud
- 19:59Speaker 1: or something, and that was a part of the plot
- 20:01Speaker 1: and that was how they framed him. In a recent episode,
- 20:07Speaker 1: there was this whole thing with breast milk and guys
- 20:10Speaker 1: working out and drinking the breast milk, and it was
- 20:15Speaker 1: very like, these dudes are babies. These dudes are babies.
- 20:20Speaker 1: They're crying when they're not getting the muscles they want.
- 20:23Speaker 1: Tech bros galore, Wow, and then kind of just the
- 20:27Speaker 1: whole idea. One of the recent episodes is a really
- 20:34Speaker 1: good example of this. But like they were filming a
- 20:38Speaker 1: TV episode and it was very misogynistic. And then the
- 20:43Speaker 1: man who killed his wife used what was happening in
- 20:46Speaker 1: the TV episode to murder his wife because they were
- 20:48Speaker 1: filming it in his funeral home. He owned a funeral home,
- 20:52Speaker 1: and he killed her because she wanted to leave divorce him,
- 20:58Speaker 1: and then he burned her body and pressed her into
- 21:03Speaker 1: a vinyl of a song she hated. And it was
- 21:08Speaker 1: very much like this is a guy who just can't
- 21:10Speaker 1: even handle his wife. Lee. There's a lot of examples
- 21:18Speaker 1: of that. I would go into it, and actually I
- 21:20Speaker 1: would like to come back and talk about it, but
- 21:22Speaker 1: I already knew this one was going to be long,
- 21:24Speaker 1: so that's for a future episode. But for now, listeners,
- 21:32Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for the segments or any
- 21:34Speaker 1: thoughts about this at all, please let me know because
- 21:37Speaker 1: I still have questions. I have one main question remaining
- 21:40Speaker 1: after the season. Finally, you can email us at Hello
- 21:45Speaker 1: at Stuffannever Told You dot com. You can find us
- 21:47Speaker 1: on Blue Sky at Molsta Podcasts, or on Instagram and
- 21:49Speaker 1: TikTok at stuff One Never Told You for us on YouTube,
- 21:51Speaker 1: and we have a book you can get bad to
- 21:53Speaker 1: Get Her Rex. Thanks as aways too, our super Discristina,
- 21:55Speaker 1: our executive pridusder Mya, and our conturcor Joey, thank you
- 21:58Speaker 1: and thanks to you for listening. Steffan Never Told You
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