The seventh episode of Peacock’s first season of “Poker Face” was released today, and the accidental detective Charlie Cale was once again present on the scene to solve a crime, as we’ve come to expect of her by now. While on the run from the henchmen of casino tycoon Sterling Frost Sr., Charlie has been using her gift of detecting lies and her insane observation skills to catch criminals and hand them over to the law. This episode is no different, and we find Charlie putting on her lie-detecting cap yet again, this time to find out the truth behind an accident at the racetrack.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In ‘Poker Face’ Episode 7?
“Poker Face” Episode 7 opens on a gritty racetrack with race cars gearing up, and we’re introduced to the generational veteran driver Keith Owens, whose days on the track are numbered, and his toughest rival, Davis McDowell, the young and arrogant newcomer who has been blazing the track. In the winter years of his racing career, Owens seemed to have lost his focus, and his hands would shake before he could grip the steering.
The race begins, and it’s neck-to-neck until the very end, when McDowell plays dirty and knocks Owens’ car, sending him spinning into the sidelines while he wins the race. However, the interviewers choose to have Owens as the first guest, and he announces that he won’t be retiring anytime soon, now that he’s lost the race, and calls McDowell an idiot and says he’s ruining the race. The young blood arrives, a scuffle ensues, and Owens is seen being driven home by his wife Donna, with their daughter Katy furious that she’ll have to wait even longer to get into the family business. On their porch, Katy has an argument with her dad and drives away, and Owens tells his wife how his hand starts shaking before the race has even begun. A while later, McDowell brings his tow truck to the Owens residence while doing a live video and trashes the garden and carries away their letterbox. Donna tells her husband to take care of this maniacal nemesis.
Keith formulates a plan upon looking at his fishing lines, creates a contraption, and heads over to a forested area. Once there, he makes a prank call asking for a tow truck, and moments after the McDowell family’s tow truck leaves, Keith sneaks in and tinkers with Davis’s race car, leaving a fish hook inside the engine. The next morning, Keith and Davis look at each other before starting the race, and once underway, Davis’s car is unable to slow down and hits the wall and catches fire. Keith watches from afar with a smile on his face.
Enter Charlie, who’s now conveniently working at Kamelot Karts, an arcade center with go-kart racing and other arcade games. In there, she finds Davis’s mother, Jean, intently listening to the commentary of the race that her son ends up winning. Davis comes in to meet his young fans and instantly strikes up a friendship with Charlie; he even shows her how to race properly on an arcade machine. He then tries kissing her, but she chooses to pass on that. Their bonding is interrupted when Katy Owens barges into the arcade and challenges Davis to a race on the go-kart track. Despite his noisy claims, Katy soundly beats him several times. This angers the arrogant man even further, and he arrives at the Owens residence to trash their garden, giving Keith the final push he needs to seek retribution.
When Davis drives the tow truck back home with the Owens post box still dragging behind, Jean gives him an earful and reminds him that his grandfather, “Big Ed’ – Davis’s guru, whose picture he keeps in the car—put all that fire into the track. The tow truck call comes, but Jean asks her son to stay home while she heads out to attend to it. Davis hears a noise coming from his garage and spots Keith tinkering with the car. Davis heads into the garage, opens up the engine, and finds the fish hook, but instead of removing it, he places everything back and proceeds to further mess with the seatbelts before placing the damaged ones back into the car. The next morning, after meeting Keith’s eyes, Davis eggs Katy into driving in his car under the pretext of beating Davis’s previous day’s record, and Katy accepts. The driver we see crash the car is none other than Katy, and when Keith learns the truth, his smile turns into a look of horror.
At the arcade, Jean, Charlie, and Davis’s friend Randy are watching the news where Katy is said to be in a coma when the driver arrives and says that Katy’s crash was because of her incompetence, and now he’s facing the repercussions of that. Charlie immediately detects a lie in the sentence and has to begrudgingly explain that since Davis didn’t believe in the fact that it was her fault, she could detect a lie. Charlie, Davis, and Randy watch the footage of Katy’s driving, and they notice that the turn she makes screams that there’s some problem with the car. Davis suggests taking a look at his car back in the garage, and while perusing through it, he finds the fishhook, which had escaped the others. Randy explains that if the car was at top speed, the open carburetor would be caught by the hook in case it was connected with a gear tie, which would mean the speed wouldn’t go down, and hence the car would crash. Davis immediately calls foul and says Keith sabotaged his car and wants to go down to his place with Randy and cave his face in, but Charlie stops them. She promises to go in beforehand and find out if Keith was indeed responsible or not, and soon after, she arrives at the Owens garage and quickly catches a lie when the veteran says that he didn’t touch Davis’s car.
Charlie returns to break the news to Davis and Randy, but right then, a commotion breaks out, and everyone rushes to the TV, where Keith confesses to reporters that he had sabotaged Davis’s car the previous night, but he didn’t want anyone to be injured, let alone his own daughter. Immediately, Davis’s phone starts ringing, and he’s asked to meet with a sponsor, and Charlie congratulates him on the way things turned out. While she’s leaving, a kid approaches Davis, saying he’s afraid of racing because Katy’s seatbelt malfunctioned. The young driver consoles the kid by saying Katy suffered a freak accident, and Charlie immediately spots a lie and later learns from Randy that handling seatbelts isn’t easy and they need a garage to be worked/operated on. She then uses the keys Jean had left behind and heads to the McDowell garage, and starts looking around. When she finds Big Ed’s photograph, something clicks in her head, but just then, Davis is heard coming into the garage. Charlie tries to hide but is quickly caught by Davis, and so she asks him frankly if he tampered with the seatbelt and provides her theory. She details exactly how Davis was aware of the fish hook and deliberately sent Katy to drive the car after messing with the seatbelt, which would guarantee a probably fatal accident, and Charlie calls him out on that as a psychopath. Davis approaches her menacingly with a rod in hand, but Charlie brings Jean in, making him stay his hand for the moment.
While Charlie is driving back, Davis pursues her in his tow truck, and she barely escapes using the race car driving skills she learned at the arcade. The next morning, Davis has been signed on as the newest ambassador for a brand named Lucas Oil, and he even dedicates the race to Katy Owens. Just as he has entered the car and is about to get ready, Charlie arrives and informs him that she has quit her job and is leaving, but before that, she tells Davis the fact that his grandfather’s photo was in the garage the previous day meant that he knew the car would crash and was more concerned about the photo than a girl’s life. She calls him a monster and also informs him that his diabolical plan has failed because Katy is out of her coma and because Charlie met her and her mother. While Donna talked about how Keith’s flow got messed up and his hands started shaking, Katy said that she was gearing up to come back in a year and own the tracks. Charlie warns Davis that he needs to watch out because he’ll be smoked once Katy steps in, as both he and Charlie know that Katy is a much better racer than he could ever be. She leaves after telling him to be ready for what comes next, and Davis’s hands start shaking before the race starts.
‘Poker Face’ Episode 7: Ending Explained
For the first time in “Poker Face” Season 1, no one dies, and hence there are no arrests made or criminals facing justice. But given how much of a diabolical scumbag Davis was, we’re almost upset that he doesn’t face any consequences for being a soulless psychopath. Davis knew that his car had been sabotaged, so he chose to mess with the seatbelts before letting Katy drive, knowing she’d crash and that’d be the punishment he planned for Keith. He wanted the man to suffer the worst way possible – by being the reason his daughter died – which would kill him every day. However, she goes into a coma instead, and even then, Davis has something to celebrate because he’ll be getting the sponsorship deals with Katy forced into a vegetative state owing to Davis’s malicious plan. Yet, karma seems to find a way to punish the evildoers because Katy springs out of her coma within a day, and Charlie plants the seeds of fear in Davis’s head so that his hands start shaking before the race starts. There’s now a ticking time bomb in the shape of Katy, who will be coming back to claim the track in a year or so, and Davis can’t even guarantee if he’ll be winning every race till then, what with his hands shaking and everything. Although it’d be divine justice if his own seatbelts faltered mid-race, Davis will now always have a target on his back and rue the day Katy returns to the track.
