Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Poker Face.On the last episode of Poker Face, we smoked some meats in Texas and met a fascist dog. Oh, right, and there was a murder. Sleuth extraordinaire Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) made her way to The Lone Star State and solved the murder of recovering carnivore George Boyle (Larry Brown), who was killed by his brother Taffy (Lil Rel Howery) when he heard he was leaving their BBQ business. Let’s drive and see where Episode 4 takes us.
We’re Metal Gods
“Rest in Metal” centers on Ruby Ruin (Chloë Sevigny), an at-one-time massive heavy metal star who has since become a major has-been. And she knows it. She has a 9 - 5 job at a Home Depot-style store to make ends meet but still goes on tour with her band Doxxxology every once in a while, clinging to her rapidly aging fan base. She’s frequently reminded of her glory days, whether it be the tattoo on her hand or her co-workers alerting her when her hit song “Staplehead” plays on the radio, and frankly, she doesn’t want to hear your praise.
Though she acts annoyed and unphased by these things, she really misses when the band was in its prime. They still go on tour, but now they’re stuck being opening acts. Bandmate Eskie (G.K. Umeh) moved back home with his mother and is getting an online law degree. Al (John Darnielle) is going through a lousy divorce. The very excited and die-hard fan Gavin (Nicholas Cirillo) grew up loving Doxxxology and cannot believe Ruby put an ad for a drummer on Craigslist. (Honestly, neither can she.) He brings along his infectious enthusiasm on tour, and she wants none of it. She just really wants him to shower. “All we need—all we need—is to write one new song that doesn't suck,” she begs the band. She wants out of these small pub spots and back into the big spots.
What makes the entire situation worse is that the fans only want to hear “Staplehead,” their mega-hit song that they didn’t even write. Their former drummer Belinda did, but now she’s off selling leggings in the suburbs (as one does), and she gets all the money for royalties. “It’s a f*cking curse,” Eskie so simply puts it. Their new song “Merch Girl” which they whipped up on the bus and had high hopes for bombed, and they end up singing that damn hit yet again. Some in-the-zone fan throws a stapler and cuts Gavin’s forehead, but he loves the passion and does Ruby’s famous scream. No one does Ruby’s scream except Ruby, and she lets him know that when she punches him in the face.
Later, Ruby feels a little bad that Gavin was going to sleep with the equipment, so she invites him inside the (gross) motel. Over the moon, he asks if he can perform the song he wrote to see if they think it is any good. He plays it, and not only is it good, but it has serious potential to be the next “Staplehead.” The problem? Gavin would get all the monetary benefit from it, and it will be “Staplehead” all over again. But does it have to be? Doxxxology’s chemistry is electric. Quite literally. At the next gig, Ruby tells Gavin that he can take her famous scream when they wrap up “Staplehead,” and he is ecstatic. She only does this so she has an opportunity to slam on the rigged amplifier pedal that she knows will fry him. She steps on it, and he immediately gets electrocuted and collapses. The group wastes no time in moving on with their grand plan following the “freak” accident, and burn Gavin’s handwritten lyrics to the new hit in the hopes of burying any evidence that they didn’t really write it.
Meet Merch Girl
Turns out Charlie has been on tour with them this entire time. We learn that she was looking for day labor work outside Ruby’s retail job, and Ruby asked if she’d be willing to be their "merch girl" on tour. (Ah, so Charlie is the girl in that song.) Charlie’s thrilled about the opportunity and causally does a crossword puzzle at the merchandise table during all the tour stops (that we’ve already been on). Remember that stapler that the fan threw at Gavin’s forehead? He yanked it off of Charlie’s merch stand. Charlie ended up taking care of his head wound, and she told Gavin that she’s starting to think Ruby is a jerk. She agrees to give him a ride and immediately regrets it.
Gavin is a lot to deal with. He’s drumming on anything and everything and doesn’t pick up on social cues. At a restaurant, he shows Charlie a device he uses to record his footwork every performance so that he can go back and watch it. (Hmm, this will probably come in handy for Charlie.) In the car, he takes a Polaroid selfie, and after Charlie complains, he tosses it out the window. He’s kind of become the kid Charlie has to babysit. If that kid (believe it or not) went to Juilliard. Okay, okay, Charlie eventually comes around to Gavin, who she calls a “holistic Magpie motherf*cker.”
Like Kissing a Lightning Bolt
And just like that, we’re getting lined up with the present-day timeline of the episode. On the motel balcony, right before she would invite Gavin in, Ruby thanks Charlie for getting him off of their backs for the day. Charlie tries to get Ruby to ease off of Gavin and accept him into the group, but Ruby can’t take him. “He’s a vibe killer. Can’t read a room. It stresses me out.” It takes Charlie telling Ruby that she let her down with the type of person she actually is to get Ruby to invite in Gavin that night. If it wasn’t for Charlie's guilt trip, there’s a chance that Gavin wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to share his song with them in the first place.
At that infamous final set for Gavin, Charlie is excited that Ruby gave him permission to do her scream and promises to take a picture of the moment. The potentially fun night, as we know, turns out to be electric in the worst possible way when Gavin dies by electrocution because his amp "wasn’t grounded." Ruby and her band claim to be just “lucky” that no one else got hurt, but Charlie sniffs bullsh*t. Desperate to get a demo recorded, they rent out space in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and get to work. While waiting, Charlie meets Elsie (Emily Yoshida), also known as “Murder Girl” who is waiting to record her true-crime podcast.
Charlie can’t get Gavin’s song “Sucker Punch” out of her head, and, as she’s cleaning out the car of his trash, realizes that the lyrics were made using words from different bits of Gavin's garbage wrappers. Charlie confronts Ruby about stealing his song, but Ruby is very upfront about the fact that Gavin wrote it. “That song isn’t going to bring Gavin back, but it’ll change our lives,” adding, “Look, Charlie, I’m just trying to make something good out of something bad.” Charlie smells lies, and asks Doxxxology’s ex-driver Deuteronomy (Chuck Cooper) if amps exploding is really a thing. He explains that, yes, that does happen, and that old ones have cords with two prongs instead of three. “If you reverse the plug, it’s like sticking a fork in a socket.” But, a “death capacitor” will keep you safe. Gavin absolutely knew all this, as he converted his old amp to be three-prong. He shows her how they have a lot of older amps like that on eBay, and calls one up on his phone. Not only is it the bloody amp of Gavin’s, but also the bloody stapler he got hit with. And the owner of said shop? Al.
Charlie snoops around the tour bus while an oblivious Al sings about how you can’t “un-murder” someone, and Charlie locates the amp with the three-pronged cord. Charlie sees the lyrics to this song as signs of a “guilty conscience,” and says to Ruby that she thinks that Al actually did the switcheroo and killed Gavin, but Ruby shrugs it off. Ruby takes this close call out on Al by yelling at him for putting the amplifier on eBay. Charlie examines the Polaroid she took on the night of Gavin’s death, and notices how Al, who was complaining about his microphone height due to his bad back, seems to have…gotten taller? Maybe it was the shoes he was wearing? Charlie manages to snag footage from the camera Gavin kept underneath his seat, and she notices that they were all wearing thick rubber-soled boots to absorb the electricity. Things get heated (no pun intended) when Charlie explains to Ruby the “proof” she has that they murdered Gavin and is escorted out by security.
On the way out, she sees the "narc" (John Hodgman) that she saw earlier while driving through that fan event and explains her entire murder theory to him. Good news? He totally buys it, even though she feels it’s still loosely connected. Bad news? He’s not really a cop, he’s just bad at buying drugs. But, he does show her a video of her that has now gone viral (she punched a mascot in the head while moving through a music fan event) which freaks her out because that means she can be tracked…by Cliff (Benjamin Bratt). He’s actually there at the event, and they chase each other through the crowd of Doxxxology’s show. Luckily, Charlie gets away.
So, okay, Doxxxology absolutely crushed their debut of “Sucker Punch,” and is going to get super rich, right? Wrong. Right as they are about to put the pen to paper on a deal, it is brought to their attention that a YouTuber discovered that the music is actually taken from the theme song of the show Benson, the very show that Gavin couldn’t get enough of on the tour bus. The icing on the cake is when they hear the latest from Murder Girl’s podcast, as she is determined to prove that Gavin was murdered. Thankfully, she has all the wrapper evidence she needs from Charlie for Season 7, titled "Murder Girl: Rest in Metal." Where, oh where will Charlie end up next?