‘House of Lies’ season 2, episode 2 review: Games in Vegas

“House of Lies” went Las Vegas in full tilt for its second episode of season 2 on Sunday night, as we really had an opportunity to see just what happened when Marty and the rest of his team tried to take their game with Mr. Pinkus to the next level. Instead, what ended up happening was an elaborate plan featuring a new face in Tamara to try and leverage a supposed competitor in the casino business to make their client bite on their plans to take gambling online, and he refused.

Really, that’s the boring way to look at this episode. Instead, why not talk about Jeannie getting really drunk and figuring out that Marty actually told her he loved her back on that fateful night during the season 1 finale? Or, why not talk about how a certain someone else in the group was banned from the casino grounds over a counting cards scheme? The silly moments in this episode were the best, mostly because there was almost a little too much of a business overload this time versus some real comedy.

At times, we have been critical of this show for being very good rather than great, and some of that could apply here. Could they have done more with the setting this week? Probably, and we wish we saw the relationship between this new arrival Tamara and Jeannie played up more (mostly because they looked a few words away from screaming at each other, and Jeannie seemingly was inspired to drink over feeling marginalized). In the end, though, what we really took from this episode was this: there are more crazy adventures in Vegas, and like many scripted dramas, this show is actually still on its way towards reaching its payoff.

Are you enjoying season 2 thus far? If you want to watch a video from this “House of Lies” episode, be sure to head on over to the link here.

Photo: Showtime