Part of the appeal of a series like Poker Face, which delivers new characters, settings, and stories each week, is the way it gets to dabble in different genres. But “One Last Job” is the first time I can remember the show so consciously embracing the tropes of two genres at once: the heist movie and the rom-com. It’s not a pairing that necessarily seems natural until you consider that the episode is heavily indebted to the work of Michael Mann — and that Mann, for all his apparent macho trappings, is secretly our most romantic filmmaker. The crime-romance mash-up results in the best episode of the season so far, one that embraces heightened self-awareness without ever losing its grounded emotional core.

This week’s setting is an unlikely place for a heist or love story: fictional big-box store SuperSave. Kendall (Sam Richardson) spends his days trying to extol the virtues of physical media to disinterested customers while showing them the crime movies he loves on 4K TVs. His real passion, however, is writing screenplays. His boss and childhood friend, Bill (Corey Hawkins), extols the virtues of Kendall’s latest script, One Last Job, which has shades of Heat, Inside Job, and Ocean’s 11. But no matter how many great screenplays Kendall churns out, he refuses to make the move to Hollywood to follow his dreams. Even though Kendall’s right that breaking into the entertainment industry is easier said than done, Bill knows his friend will never try without the push. He needs to make cuts anyway, so he fires Kendall, who does not take the news well. At least he doesn’t have to work Black Friday, a not-so-small consolation.

On the way out of the SuperSave, Kendall bumps into Juice (James Ransone), a very conspicuous thief in a dreadful bleached blond wig. With no loyalty left to his former employer, Kendall helps him steal some TVs, and the two later meet up at a bar. Kendall shares some intel about his latest script, which is (funnily enough!) about a guy who gets fired from SuperSave and uses his inside knowledge to rob the store’s safe as revenge. Without even realizing it, he’s now pitched a heist to Juice, who is even more interested when Kendall reveals that there will be $200,000 to plunder post-Black Friday weekend. After watching Heat together — one of the purest forms of heterosexual male bonding — they agree to go through with it and split the take 50-50. In Kendall’s One Last Job screenplay, the thieves eventually turn on each other, but surely that won’t happen here.

To Kendall’s credit — episode writer Taofik Kolade deserves some credit here, too — the heist is well orchestrated. Kendall and Juice have 30 minutes to access the safe and make their sizable withdrawal. My favorite detail is how Kendall finds the combination. Bill is a sour cream and onion chip obsessive, so his fingers are always covered in canola oil when he punches the code in. Using a blacklight, Kendall is able to see the four numbers that have been pressed, and can then try the various combinations until he gets a match. While Juice is investigating a noise in the other room, Kendall cracks the code and discovers there’s way more than $200,000 in the safe. He decides to get greedy and puts the extra money in a separate bag that he leaves in his employee locker, a shockingly foolhardy move for someone who’s seen every heist movie. Just as he’s ready to regroup with Juice, Bill walks in. Kendall tries to explain, but he doesn’t have much time to — Juice shoots Bill from behind as Kendall looks on in horror. This is a good thing, Juice insists after hiding Bill’s body: The cops will assume the missing store manager emptied the safe and made a run for it.

The plot-heavy opening act of “One Last Job” means I haven’t gotten to Charlie yet, and that’s unfortunate because I love her storyline in this episode. After her brief foray into the education sector, she’s gotten a job as a delivery driver for Tandoor Indian Restaurant. Her coworker Jenny (Geraldine Viswanathan) has no real interest in making conversation — that is, until Charlie finds herself in a rom-com, Jenny’s favorite genre. When Charlie makes a fateful late-night delivery to SuperSave, she and Bill have an instant connection, the kind where Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” starts playing. The whole thing is obviously pretty rushed, but Natasha Lyonne’s easy rapport with Poker Face’s barrage of guest stars has been one of the show’s greatest assets, and she has real chemistry with the very charming Hawkins. Bill starts making nightly delivery orders, which Jenny obviously loves. “SuperSave stud is trying to rizz you up, Charlie,” she gushes. “This is your love story.” And while we know this particular love story has a tragic ending, it’s nice to see Charlie (and Lyonne) in a rom-com for once.

Their first real date is on Bill’s birthday, which feels like a lot of pressure. Charlie gets an assist from Kendall, who quizzes her on her favorite Mission: Impossible and then points her to the perfect gift for Bill: a skull-shaped guardian bell for his motorcycle. As Charlie learns on her date, Bill has been living in the SuperSave since his recent breakup — Hawkins is suave enough to sell this, but it would be a real red flag for anyone else — so he sets up a romantic dinner in the store. I am very impressed by the effort Bill put into this, and thankfully so is Charlie. We get more background on his friendship with Kendall, learning that they met in fourth grade after getting into a fight about whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Bill said it isn’t because a Christmas movie needs Santa, which feels needlessly prescriptive to me. Regardless, this must be a Christmas episode because there is a creepy Santa mannequin watching Charlie and Bill make out, which inspires them to relocate to the “bedroom.” (A display in the bedding department. I do hope Bill washed those sheets.) It’s a cute date overall, and when Bill promises to call Charlie after the Black Friday weekend, I found myself desperately wishing that were possible.

Alas, Bill never calls, and though Jenny spins it as the part of the rom-com where there’s a mix-up before true love prevails, that’s clearly not the case. When Charlie arrives at SuperSave with food delivery, it turns out not to be for Bill but for the cops investigating the overnight robbery of $400,000 from the safe. While Bill is, as predicted, the prime suspect, Charlie doesn’t believe he could have done it, so she decides to investigate. Inside the store, she bumps into a very sus Kendall. He’s there to pick up the rest of the money he’s stashed, and he’s not much help to Charlie, though he does (truthfully) tell her he left something in his locker. As Kendall is thwarted by the heavy police presence, Charlie makes a gruesome discovery when she notes that the store Santa is oddly slumped over in his sleigh. Yes, Juice’s brilliant plan was to dress up Bill’s corpse in a Santa suit. Charlie is appropriately horrified, and even more so when she learns the police still think Bill was responsible for the heist. Their theory is that his accomplice must have turned on him, but Charlie knows better — the Polaroid blocking the security cameras is a nod to Mission: Impossible III and not something Bill (who knew how to loop the cameras) would have done.

Now Kendall has two problems: Charlie is onto him, and so is Juice. The latter is waiting in Kendall’s apartment, with the TV news queued up to a news report that a full $400,000 was stolen from the SuperSave. At gunpoint, Kendall spills the truth about the additional $200,000 he squirreled away, along with where it’s hidden. Juice tries to shoot him, but the gun won’t fire, so he comes at him with a bat. Kendall isn’t really thinking when he grabs the Hattori Hanzō sword under his Kill Bill poster, but he points it in the right direction and makes contact, leaving Juice impaled and bleeding on the floor. Now he just needs to get that bag of cash in his locker so he can make a clean getaway. (There are about a million loose ends here, but I can’t imagine Kendall’s thinking clearly at this point.)

Meanwhile, Charlie has hidden herself in a display tent at SuperSave so she can continue her investigation after hours. She knows that Kendall left something in his locker, and that it’s likely the stolen money. She’s even able to use his “What Would Ethan Hunt Do?” sticker to figure out that his combination is his ranking of the top four movies in the series. (I’ll just suspend disbelief that anyone could immediately arrive at 4-6-1-3. Are you nuts?) Before Charlie can get out of there, Kendall shows up with Juice’s gun. He tells Charlie that he didn’t kill Bill (true!), but he’ll kill her if he has to. Unfortunately for Kendall, Charlie’s already pushed the button that alerts the cops to trouble at the store. “This isn’t some dumb fucking action movie,” she insists — just as Juice arrives firing a semi-automatic. Charlie and Kendall are able to evade him (it helps that he’s still bleeding out), and Juice collapses from his wounds. It’s timed perfectly to McCauley killing Waingro in Heat, playing on the bullet hole-ridden TVs surrounding him. When Charlie chases after Kendall, those same screens show the big finale of Heat with Hanna going after McCauley at the airport. In both scenes, Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” plays, a brilliant touch. Kendall nearly escapes with the cash, but the cops arrive just in time to apprehend him. If only he’d ditched the bag when he felt the heat around the corner.

Just One More Thing

• No chit-chat with Good Buddy in this episode, but Charlie does offer a little more insight into why she’s still on the move. As much as she’s been thinking about settling down, she tells Bill, “When I picture it in my head, I can’t really see it.”

• Dating must be extra challenging for someone who can tell when other people are lying. I don’t think Poker Face needs to be a romance, but I’d love to see more of Charlie in being-courted mode — especially with scene partners like Hawkins.

• Kudos to the set decorator for the posters in Kendall’s apartment: Inside Man, Out of Sight, Miami Vice, Baby Driver, Wolf of Wall Street, Casino, 12 Monkeys, and, of course, Kill Bill Vol. 1.

• I’m embarrassed about how long it took me to realize the prominently displayed Kill Bill poster was foreshadowing for how the heist would go wrong.

• While I remain baffled by Kendall’s choice to rank Mission: Impossible III as the best film in the series, I did get a kick out of Charlie’s summary of 4, 6, 1, and 3: “Giant skyscraper, Superman power arms, classic original, and, I don’t know, Philip Seymour Hoffman bad guy?”

• I know Charlie will be in a new location next week, but can she take Jenny with her? I need more Geraldine Viswanathan on this show!

 This week’s crime-romance mash-up results in the best episode of the season so far.