The popular show Poker Face on Peacock (NBC) follows the character Charlie Cale who has the special talent of knowing when someone is lying. But that’s not the most interesting aspect of her life. Charlie somehow stumbles across people who commit the worst of crimes as she makes her way across the country fleeing her own demons.
The show was created by Rian Johnson, a filmmaker known for murder mysteries with intricate details and plots that take interesting twists. But at the end of the day, even award-winning directors aren’t death care experts.
With death being a constant theme on the show it was only a matter of time before the post mortem world of funeral services was explored. In the second season there are already not one but three episodes that explore death care from different angles, but how accurate are they?
Warning: Spoiler Alerts Ahead
Season 1 Episode 2: Identifying Bodies (Including Identicals)
Poker Face started with a unique twist this season – having one actress play five sisters who are identical. True to the show’s theme, the worst characteristics come out in one of the sisters, which leads to sibling murder that’s made to look like her own suicide so that she could take on the dead sister’s identity and not get thrown in prison.
But getting away with murder isn’t easy on Poker Face. It turns out the murdered sister had a prosthetic leg. The murdering sister accounts for that by placing the body on some train tracks to make it look like her leg was severed during the “suicide” then taken by an animal.
In the show the police officers spent a lot of time looking for the missing prosthetic leg, when in actuality it didn’t matter at all. If someone is an identical twin, triplet or quintuplet, there are ways to verify the identity beyond prosthetic limbs. AND anyone who’s used our blog as a resource will know that any suicide is going to be investigated by a medical examiner. Part of that process is verifying the identification of the body. That’s done with:
- Physical Appearance
- Fingerprints
- Dental Records
- Tattoos
- Scars
- Birthmarks
It’s also worth noting that the medical examiner would be prioritizing identification in this situation given that there were five identical sisters – all of which stood to gain a huge inheritance from their recently deceased mother.
Death Care Depiction For Poker Face S2 S1: This episode takes some liberties with the body identification process so that the final scenes have time to play out and the main character can catch the murderer. In doing so, the show fails to note a revealing autopsy would be performed because the death appeared to be by suicide.
Season 2 Episode 2: Last Looks Gives an Inside Look at a Funeral Home
Let’s start by saying that an operable funeral home should never double as a movie set. There’s too many violations to count. It’s episodes like these that can create misconceptions about funeral homes and the cremation process.
The episode takes place at a funeral home that is being used as the setting for a horror movie. The wife of the funeral home director and owner arranged the shoot, and she’s clearly enthralled at getting to be part of the movie making. Her husband is far from happy about the sanctity of his funeral home being compromised by the filming as he continues to try to work.
During the show, viewers are given a behind the scenes look at the funeral director working on a body. You also get a look at the cremation chamber. It’s here behind closed doors that the wife reveals she’s decided to leave her husband, will go with the movie crew to be a makeup artist and she plans to cash out her half of the funeral home business his family has operated for generations. Given that the funeral home is his life, the only conclusion he can come to is that his wife needs to die.
The funeral home director murders his wife, cremates her body and then tells the remaining crew members the following morning that she left him. But one of those crew members is the main character who can tell he’s lying.
After inquiring and snooping around a bit she discovers the funeral director murdered his wife. But he’s onto her too, and attempts to cremate her alive. The situation seems pretty desperate until Charlie remembers her e-cigarette vape cartridge is in her pocket.
Something else we’ve discussed here is that there are certain electronic devices that can cause an explosion if they are accidentally cremated. Lithium batteries are on that list of explosives. When Charlie throws the battery-operated cartridge in the retort, it could certainly cause a big boom, but how quickly it happens is questionable. In the show the explosion is almost instantaneous, which helps Charlie escape. In reality, it would probably take a bit longer for the cartridge to heat up to the point of exploding.
Death Care Depiction For Poker Face S2 S2: The accuracy in this episode is mixed. Some aspects of funeral home operations and cremation are accurate, while others are far from it.
Season 2 Episode 5: Hometown Hero Has Questionable Autopsy Timelines
The timing for the episode Hometown Hero is great since we’re deep into the baseball season, but what about the autopsy timeline in the show. Most notably, the main character and a fan/former cop were wanting toxicology report results.
Anyone who has dealt with that type of testing before knows that toxicology reports take time. It will take weeks at best to get the results back. And even then only the immediate family will be given the results.
Would an autopsy be ready in a matter of a day or two? And would a former police officer have easy access to the medical examiner’s results? No and no.
Death Care Depiction For Poker Face S2 S5: This episode isn‘t accurate in terms of death care. Could someone die by being hit in the head by a 101 mile per hour pitch? Yes. Would a retired police officer have access to the autopsy in a matter of a day or two – definitely not. The depiction of autopsies simply isn’t accurate. If it would have been on a real time line the autopsy report would have been publicly available weeks or months later – after the baseball season was over and the murderer was long gone.
If you want accurate information about cremation and death care services in Texas, give our team a call, text or email whenever it’s most convenient for you. One of our knowledgeable experts can answer your questions and provide additional resources if needed.
