Warning: This review contains spoilers for Poker Face season 2, episode 5.Charlie Cale takes on a has-been small-town baseball pitcher with a deadly fastball in a fun but predictable (and ultimately disappointing) episode of Poker Face. Poker Face season 2, episode 5, “Hometown Hero,” is the first major let-down of the season. It’s not a bad episode — it has a handful of laughs and some terrific guest stars — but it falls short of the high standard the series has set for itself.

Simon Rex, best known for his leading role in Sean Baker’s Red Rocket, guest-stars as washed-up Minor League pitcher “Rocket” Russ Waddell. After losing his legendary fastball, Rocket is about to be demoted to groundskeeper, so he comes up with a scheme to bet against his own failing team, the Cheesemongers, in the few games he has left. A spanner is thrown in the works when a young up-and-comer is brought in to replace him on the mound in his last game, threatening his $3.1 million gambling yield.

Losing baseball games on purpose is a great setup for comedy, and Rex has a lot of fun with it. It was used to hilarious effect in the endlessly rewatchable South Park episode “The Losing Edge.” The way the game is set up, it takes just as much strategy and effort to lose as it does to win. After a lucrative five-game losing streak, when his newfound rival catches on to the scheme and demands all the winnings, Rocket kills him with a fastball to the back of the head and stages it as a batting-cage accident.

"Hometown Hero" Is Poker Face Season 2's Weakest Episode So Far

It Doesn't Do Enough With The Great Carol Kane

It’s always fun to see how Charlie gets tangled up in these murders, especially when it reveals that she was around for most of the first act and we just didn’t see her. In “Hometown Hero,” she’s hired as a ball girl after getting knocked down by a fly ball. It’s a joy to see Natasha Lyonne share the screen with fellow icon Carol Kane, who plays the owner of the team, Lucille, but the episode doesn’t do enough with that promising comic pairing.

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Charlie’s animated acid trip is similar to the cosmic voyage through the eyes of the meth gator in last week’s Poker Face episode. The series shouldn’t overdo these moments of surrealism, because they detract from the dark mysteries that make this show so compelling and threaten to turn it into a cartoon. The extended trip sequence goes on for way too long, it’s not very funny, and worst of all, it doesn’t add anything substantial to the story.

Poker Face Season 2, Episode 5 Doesn't Have Enough Twists

It's Disappointingly Straightforward In Its Execution

As soon as the coroner’s report comes in with the revelation that the deadly fastball was going over 100mph, much faster than the clunky old pitching machine can throw them out, Charlie instantly deduces that Rocket is the killer. Then, when she confronts him, she gets in his head a little too easily. When she tells him there’s a big-league scout in the stands, he laughs because he knows she’s lying to trick him into demonstrating his fastball and revealing himself as the murderer. But he still goes out there and throws a 101mph pitch, attracting the cops’ attention.

There are none of the extra twists and turns that usually make these shows so thrillingly unpredictable.

Most Poker Face episodes continually escalate their mysteries with new twists to keep us engaged, even after Charlie is onto the killer. But in “Hometown Hero,” once she determines that Rocket is the killer, the rest of the episode plays out in a very straightforward, unsurprising way. There are none of the extra twists and turns that usually make these shows so thrillingly unpredictable. I usually have no idea where each Poker Face episode is going — it’s why I love this series — but when Charlie read that coroner’s report, I knew exactly how it was going to shake out.