Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Peacock’s ‘Poker Face’ opens with a woman committing two murders in a row. The murderer in question is Amber (Cynthia Erivo), who gave the best years of her life to her ailing mother. She hoped that she would love and admiration, and maybe even the inheritance, in return, but her mother turns out to be just as vitriolic as she had been her entire life. When Amber discovers that the old woman has thrown her and her three identical sisters out of the will and left everything to a woman they have never heard of before, she decides to do something about it. When Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) comes into the picture, she discovers that all the bloodshed can be traced to an old TV show, ‘Kid Cop Nights.’ SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Fictional Kid Cop Nights Sets the Stage for Murder
Just like every other part of ‘Poker Face,’ ‘Kid Cop Nights’ is a fictional TV show that serves as a major plot point for Amber and her sisters. Charlie discovers that the quadruplets (Amber, Bebe, Delia, and Cece) played the lead role in the show. Because they were kids at the time, their work hours were regulated by child labor laws. This created a conflict with the filming schedule, and their mother and the show’s creators found a way around it by getting the four sisters to play the same role at different working hours. This way, they could have their long shoots, and the girls would be working within the confines of the law.
Amber and her sisters were so good at the job that no one ever discovered that it was four of them playing the same person over the course of several seasons. This trick is not unheard of in Hollywood, especially when it comes to TV shows. Some famous examples can be found in Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen sharing the role of Michelle Tanner in ABC’s ‘Full House,’ over the course of eight seasons. Similarly, twins Fox and Dashiell Messitt played the role of Tommy Fuller in ‘Fuller House,’ while Dylan and Cole Sprouse shared the role of Julian McGrath in Adam Sandler’s 1999 movie, ‘Big Daddy.’ In Netflix’s ‘Orange is the New Black,’ Laverne Cox’s twin brother, M. Lamar, played her in two episodes of the show.
‘Poker Face’ focuses on the dark side of this practice by showing the exploitation of Amber and her sisters by their mother, who forces them to work but never lets them see a penny of their hard work. It is this inheritance that the women vie for while their mother is on her deathbed, and when they discover that someone else has been named as the heir, they lose their minds, especially Amber. The desire to get the money that she and her sisters had worked hard for their entire childhood leads mild-mannered Amber to commit murder and become someone she was never meant to be.
