'Poker Face' Season 2 Episode 5 Recap & Ending Explained: Was Russ Arrested For Killing Felix?

In episode 4 of Poker Face Season 2, Charlie found herself in Florida trying to save the pet alligator of Joseph “Gator Joe” Pilson, Daisy, for a ragtag group of animal rescuers. While the whole team arrived at the 2025 Florida Panhandle Cop Awards, also called the Flopa Copas, it was Charlie who had to wade into the event full of police officers to locate Daisy and get her out without raising any alarms. By the time she managed to come up with a plan, Officer Fran Lamont had used Daisy to cover up the fact that she had accidentally killed Joseph. While the rescuers gave up on Daisy, Charlie refused to do so, and she began her investigation. That’s when she learned that Lamont was jealous of Joseph’s success. So, in order to humiliate him, she’d spiked his health drinks with reptile laxative, but she put too much in it, and he died. Hence, Lamont lured Daisy to Joseph’s body and then made her go stir-crazy by sprinkling meth on her snout, and it worked. Charlie managed to set Daisy free and even got Lamont to own up to her crime. While Lamont resigned and dedicated her life to animal protection, Charlie hit the road again. In the fifth episode of Poker Face Season 2, we find the human lie detector in Montgomery solving a case centered around baseball.

Spoiler Alert

Episode 5 of Poker Face Season 2 opens with the Montgomery Cheesemongers adding yet another notch to their losing streak, largely because their best pitcher, Russ Waddell, has forgotten how to throw a fastball. But instead of tolerating his poor form, the coach, Skip Dooley, has decided to retire him at the end of the current season and make him groundskeeper of Velvety Can Cheese Park. This obviously comes as a shock to Russ, but instead of accepting the reality of the situation that his career is in, he chalks up a plan with his teammates Lew Dundee, Carl Sandberg, Goose, and Hunter to purposefully lose so that they can bet against their own team and make loads of money. I mean, the team’s fans are doing it anyway. The players will be replaced sooner or later. So, what’s the point of displaying integrity and being poor? After some minor hesitation, they decide to nosedive their team’s reputation in the hopes of winning it big at the end of the season. However, since Skip doesn’t know what his players are actually doing, and he really wants the Montgomery Cheesemongers to secure a win, he brings in a new pitcher, Felix Domingo, thereby jeopardizing Russ and friends’ scam. 

After one little chat with Felix, Russ realizes that he is incorruptible. He is too good, efficient, and motivated to win to go along with what his seniors have been doing all this time. That’s why Goose decides to spike Felix’s chewing gum (apparently, it’s a long-running tradition for baseball players to chew while playing) with acid so that all his intricate strategies go out of the window. Hilariously, though, the drugged gum actually helps Felix to focus and throw one fastball after another. Frustrated with this turn of events, Lew tells the batter of the opponent team to simply bunt the ball so that the fate of the innings is in the hands of the fielders instead of Felix, thereby allowing the team to misfield so much that they lose the game. Later on, after everyone’s gone off to digest the abysmal season the Montgomery Cheesemongers have had, Russ, Lew, Carl, Goose, and Hunter throw a party to celebrate all the money they’ve won in the process. But that’s when Russ remembers that Goose hasn’t replaced the rest of Felix’s spiked chewing gum with normal chewing gum to avoid any suspicion of foul play and rushes to the locker room and then the batting practice room to make the switch. 

Unfortunately, he is cornered by Felix, who, despite being in a drug-induced state, has managed to notice that Carl has done some math in his notebook on how to split the profits between Russ, Goose, Hunter, Lew, and himself (he has written down the names in the notebook as well) after purposefully going on a historic losing streak. Russ, knowing that his game is up, is willing to pay Felix whatever he wants if he keeps his mouth shut. Felix realizes that, given the circumstances, the sky’s the limit for the amount he can ask for and ends up demanding all the money, $3 million, that the infamous five have netted by betting against their own team. On his way out of the batting practice room, Felix taunts Russ for his poor form and how he has resorted to such cheap tactics to make money. This gets on Russ’ nerves, and he chucks the ball in his hand at Felix’s head, and it seemingly knocks the young kid out. The speed gun in the room shows that Russ’ fastball technique has made a comeback, but it’s not a triumphant one, because that means that Felix hasn’t simply been knocked out. He is actually dead. Now, in order to cover up the crime, Russ makes it look like the faulty pitching machine, Rambo (it’s Rainbow or Rambo, but it’s difficult to make out without the aid of subtitles), present in the practice room has malfunctioned and killed Felix. He finally switches out the acid-spiked chewing gum with a normal packet. And he takes Felix’s notebook as well.

As is customary, the clock is turned back by a few hours to reveal Charlie’s factors into this whole story. After her stint as an animal rescuer, Charlie apparently binge-watched The Office and decided to, well, work at an office. She takes pointers from her “good buddy” on the radio (voiced by Steve Buscemi) and yet struggles with her professional chores. While slaving away at a malfunctioning printer, a baseball hits her on the head because her current workplace is right beside the local baseball stadium. To address this situation, she meets up with Lucille Lubinski, the owner of the Montgomery Cheesemongers and Velvety Can Cheese Park. But since Charlie is in such a nice frame of mind, she refuses to sue her or settle for some kind of compensation and instead becomes the stadium’s ball girl. While showing her the ropes, Lucille “introduces” Charlie to Rambo and tells her why she should be careful of the faulty machine when she is in the room with other players for practice. And eventually she becomes acquainted with the star of the show, Russ, how he is failing to throw his iconic fastball, and why that’s the reason behind the Cheesemongers’ losing streak. 

Charlie meets Russ at the bar, right before he pitches the idea of covertly betting against the Cheesemongers, while also making sure that they keep losing, to his teammates. After Felix’s debut game, she has a chat with the drugged-up kid and even consumes some of his acid-spiked gum. After leaving Felix to his devices, Charlie has a beautifully animated and pretty hilarious psychedelic experience, where she imagines talking to the founder of Velvety Can Cheese, Hiram Lubinski, who is played by The Office’s B.J. Novak. When she comes to her senses the following day, Lucille informs Charlie that Rambo has “taken the life of” Felix with a fastball. Benny Caudill, a superfan of the Montgomery Cheesemongers, tells Lucille that this doesn’t bode well for her and the club, because it looks like her professional negligence has led to a young player’s death. The fear of a lawsuit gets Lucille emotional because it’d be the final nail in the coffin of everything that Hiram had built. 

Although Charlie hasn’t worked as a ball girl there for very long, she has developed a soft spot for Lucille and is sad to see her so tense. So, she starts racking her brains to see if she can get Lucille and the club out of this pickle. The first thing that she brings up is Felix’s chewing gum. Since she has first-hand experience of its psychedelic qualities, she wonders if that excuses Lucille of any wrongdoing. Unfortunately, since Russ had switched the packets, a simple chemical experiment shows that the chewing gum that was found on Felix’s dead body isn’t laced with drugs. Lucille says that she doesn’t want to save her club at the cost of Felix’s reputation. Hence, even though she understands that Charlie means well, she dissuades her from taking that route. However, Charlie is too sure that some kind of villainy has happened, and she promises to not stop looking until she is absolutely sure that Felix’s death was an accident, not a murder. Once she hears about the $3 million prize that somebody has won by betting against the Cheesemongers, she realizes that she is on the right path. By the way, since I don’t know much about baseball, can somebody tell me if people can actually win that much money by betting against a minor league team? Because if that’s the state of betting in matches between such small teams, I wonder what’s going on in Major League Baseball.

At the end of Poker Face Season 2, Episode 5, Charlie notices that Carl and Hunter are “pimping out,” even though the Montgomery Cheesemongers have been on the greatest losing streak of all time. Next, while reading Felix’s autopsy report, Charlie observes that it says Felix must’ve been hit by a projectile that was moving at least 100 mph. She immediately puts Rambo to the test and sees that it doesn’t go above 80 mph, which means that Rambo is innocent. Once that’s out of the way, she brings in Russ and talks to him about his inability to throw a fastball. As soon as Russ says that it is unfortunate that his skills aren’t what they used to be, Charlie’s BS-meter goes off. So, before match day, Charlie corners Russ, and after confirming that he and his friends have indeed betted against their own team, she begins badgering him about being a loser for not honing his God-given gift properly and playing honestly. This causes Russ to chuck the ball pretty hard, and Charlie puts two and two together. She says that Felix must’ve talked to Russ in the same way that Charlie has, triggering Russ to such an extent that his fastball technique made a comeback. 

Instead of admitting his fault, Russ says that he is going to go out into the field in a few minutes and prove that he can’t throw a fastball. In order to trick Russ, Charlie says that there’s a scout for Major League teams in the stands. This puts Russ in a corner: if he fails to throw a fastball, he risks losing out on the chance to level up; if he does prove that his fastball powers have returned, he can go to jail because he is the only thing in Montgomery that can throw any ball at over 100 mph. Charlie’s trickery works beautifully, as Russ does end up chucking the ball at 101 mph, and the “scout” reveals himself to be Officer Brito, who immediately calls in the cavalry to arrest Russ under suspicion of murder. And on that note, the episode comes to an end. 

I’m going to be honest, folks, this season of Poker Face isn’t doing it for me. I like the concept of the episode. The performances are great. However, there’s something off about the writing. There’s no sense of intrigue. There’s no thrill to it. It’s just not funny. On top of all that, all of these episodes are really non-conclusive. Did Russ get arrested? Did his cohorts get arrested? Was the Velvety Cheese Can Park saved? Was the commentator whose health kept deteriorating after eating Montgomery Cheesemongers’ signature cheese alive or dead? I don’t know, and it seems like the creators don’t care to shed any light on it either. I understand that the showrunners have tried to make this season a little more laid-back than the last one by not having an overarching plot where Charlie is being chased by somebody, which is fine. That said, they’ve seemingly lost everything that made the first season so darn interesting. If this display of lackluster storytelling keeps happening every week till the month of July, be prepared for an epic meltdown on my end. Anyway, those are my thoughts on episode 5 of Poker Face Season 2. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.