TV Recap: Killing Eve – An Unofficial Official Tap On the Shoulder …

Killing Eve
“I’ll Deal with Him Later” (Episode 102)
April 15, 2018

Lots of forward momentum on plot in this second episode as Eve settles into a new life and Villanelle … well, she is pretty much the same old Villanelle but we do get some new questions on what makes her tick and who she is killing for?!?

Photo Credit: BBC AMERICA

Our Deep Dive Recap and Review … after the jump!  (Spoilers Warning!)

Photo Credit: BBC AMERICA

We open in Bulgaria where Villanelle is employing her quirky murder skill set. This time, the unlucky victim is a businessman of sorts; why is she killing him? She has no idea.  The why isn’t so important for our favorite girl assassin.  What is important is that she doesn’t appreciate a phone being thrown at her head and she has made this uber-messy.  The office cleaning staff is going to have a helluva time getting all the flood out of … everywhere.

Title Card.

Photo Credit: BBC AMERICA

London.   Eve meets Carolyn for their breakfast date which was set in last week’s episode.  After some awkward small talk, neither of these intelligence officers are good at conversating.  We do get some exposition as to why Eve has no British accent – she was born in London, raised in Connecticut and then returned to London after her father died.  Tada.

Anyway, detailed files on a female assassin were found on Eve’s computer after she was fired. Carolyn asks for Eve’s theory and she word vomits that she’s been tracking what she believes to be a highly intelligent female killing machine across the Continent. But, seeing as she’s fired, Eve no longer cares who she kills, you know, as long as its not Eve herself.

Photo Credit: BBC AMERICA

This is apparently the correct answer because Carolyn takes Eve to a super secret spy hidey-hole, from which Carolyn and a very small team (i.e., one man, Kenny) have been tracking and compiling information on the same female assassin.  Eve is understandably flabbergasted at … well everything really and asks why this isn’t being done on an official basis?  Carolyn relates that she tried but there is no appetite for an official look into a would-be female assassin so she is using some of her Master Spy slush fund budget to explore this side project.

This is a convoluted way of Carolyn offering Eve a job, an “unofficial official tap on the shoulder” as she puts it. And yes, to Eve’s question, there are people better qualified than Eve to handle this work but none so as expendable and invisible as a recently fired MI-5 employee.  “Its like I’ve walked into the inside of my brain” Eve says so we already know she’s going to take the job.  Bad money and total deniability – no discussion of benefits.  Carolyn tells Eve she can bring on two people to work with her (and with young Kenny who has stumbled into the room by this point).  And just like, Eve is working her dream job.

Paris.  Villanelle is returning to her apartment when she’s waylaid by a young man, Sebastian, who is clearly a smitten kitten for our sexy psychopath.  Waiting for her in the apartment is Konstantin – just rude, Konstantin.  He’s here because he wants her to be “assessed” again; the messy London murder has made him uneasy and she doesn’t get the next target until she’s checked out.  Villanelle is particularly bummed at this because the new target has asthma and Konstantin knows how she likes “the breathy ones.”  Her joyful murderous glee is just demented. No! Konstantin stands firm.

Photo Credit: BBC AMERICA

The Assessment.  A Russian therapist-type person begins the assessment in Russian but Villanelle balks — Konstantin explains that she won’t speak Russian anymore.  Anyway, he gets on to asking her some questions about her state of mind and last job.  Then he holds up some pictures for her reaction. She’s just fucking around with these guys.  That is until Konstantin produces a picture of an “Anna.”  Villanelle gets very serious and says that its not Anna, its her mother.  But then smiles and says she’s joking but this is the least “joking” we’ve seen her.  The therapist refuses to sign off on her.

Outside, Villanelle pleads with Konstantin who stands firm that she needs a break. Even after she tries to pick pocket him for the target info, he tells her No.  Go home and do something normal.

Villanelle’s Apartment.  Sebastian swings by while Villanelle is working out and she asks to go out with him and do something “normal.”  Which is a totally normal thing to say.

When we return from Commercials, Villanelle and Seb are eating ice cream and taking a stroll.  Hes advising her to not be sidelined by her job – show her passion … to sell perfume.  Enough of this. Let’s bone in your apartment Sebastian.  Cut to the boning where Villanelle rides Sebastian into early “submission”. He promises to never hurt her before falling asleep.

The next day, she gets up and returns to her apartment to ready herself for “work”. She is taking Sebastian’s advice and seizing the initiative … which involves mixing chemicals while wearing a gas mask, apparently.

Photo Credit: BBC AMERICA

London. Eve’s two people are Bill (you’ll recall newly fired with Eve) and Elena (newly quit from MI-5).  In the hidey-hole, Eve is walking the now larger team through her “multiple murders, single assassin” theory all the while, Bill sits there poking holes in their alleged connections.  Eve finally asks him what his deal is and he tells her that she can’t lead a team with assumptions; once they are hoping for a connection, they’ll be going down a bad road of guess work.

Eve excuses herself to the loo, more for a break from Bill than anything else.  While fixing her hair in the mirror, she has an epiphany that the “nurse” she ran into in the bathroom the night of Kasia’s murder might have seen something (“or been someone” she leaves unsaid but that’s totally what her face is conveying). She puts Kenny on the case of gathering all the nurses names when she realizes Bill has gone.

Outside, she runs him down and berates him for being a “monkey-dick” because she’s in charge and he says he was just going for chocolate.  He was also being a bit of a monkey-dick but he is trying to adapt.  Also, he’s not wrong on his opinion that she’s being too narrow in her focus.  Bill thinks they need to find who is controlling the assassin but she retorts that whomever is controlling her is so good, there is no trail, so they have to focus on the assassin as the only thread to pull it.  She also posits that this killer has a flair for it and probably killed before she was being paid to do so.  Bill suggests that THAT is the place to start on her thread.

Back in the hidey-hole, Eve tells Elena to get Frank in a pub and get the CCTV footage from him, and for Kenny to get her the hospital nurse records as soon as possible.  Commercials.

Paris.  Villanelle’s Apartment.  Villanelle gets dressed in a catering waitress outfit and heads to an affair.  Seems like she’s going for her target with or without Konstantin’s blessing.  Villanelle follows her target, Carla De Mann – a high power investor in the pharmaceutical business, into the bathroom. After a convincing story about trying to make it in the perfume business, she gets Carla to spray the poisonous “perfume” on herself.  De Mann goes into anaphylactic shock almost immediately and indeed, Villanelle really does seem to appreciate Carla’s breathiness as life leaves her body.  No one appreciates a good kill more than Villanelle.  Commercials.

Photo Credit: BBC AMERICA

London Pub.  Eve and Bill ambush Frank at the pub where Elena has him drinking.  There are some awkward conversations about whether Frank thought Elena was or was not asking out Frank for a drink.  Long story short (too late), Frank admits that he made up the CCTV footage – he just wanted Eve to mind her business, he did not appreciate her sticking her nose in business that wasn’t hers.  Frank IS a dick-swab.  Elena walks drunk Frank out of the pub and Eve and Bill have a good laugh at the unfortunate state of Frank’s life.  I don’t blame them.

Polastri Home.  Niko notes that Eve is in a particularly cheery mood.  She quickly cops to working for MI-6 and his reaction is that it sounds dangerous.  She doesn’t disagree but its what she wants to be doing – this killer is dangerous. Niko did not give her the reaction I think she expected so she sends him to bed.

Paris.  Villanelle’s Apartment.  Konstantin chokes Villanelle as he tells her he’s halving her allowance for disobeying him.  Sebastian interrupts this awkward interaction and Konstantin, “her brother”,  quickly makes it known he’d like him to leave.  Sebastian says enough things about perfume and her work for Konstantin to realize Seb’s going to have to die.  Once alone, Villanelle and Konstantin draw knives on each other and then make peace. Peace for them anyway.  Konstantin also tells Villanelle about Eve Polastri and her dedicated department to find Villanelle. Uh Oh.

In the hallway, Sebastian has dropped dead (from the deadly perfume poison). “Dealt with” Villanelle tells Konstantin.  Whelp.

Wrap-Ups.  Cue up “La Marseillaise”, the national anthem of France (we learned earlier that Villanelle’s favorite music is “National Anthems”), as we enter the wrap-up. In London at the hidey-hole, Eve searches through head-shots of all of the nurses in the hospital where Kasia was killed. While in Paris, Villanelle, internets for an “Eve Polastri”, eventually finding her through pictures of Niko at this Bridge Club (there is a picture of the club in which Eve appears). Eve zooms in on Eve in the picture and freaks out a bit when she realizes she is the woman from the bathroom in Kasia’s hospital.

Back in London, Bill comes to hidey-hole as Eve realizes she must have met their target because she doesn’t appear in any of the photos.  “I think I’ve met her.”  Cue credits.

Thoughts.  The game of cat  and mouse begins in earnest in this episode with Eve finally being put on official “catch the killer” duty.  That both women are wickedly intelligent and fast on their feet has already been demonstrated through these first two episodes; the question remains though, how long before they find each other?

Some interesting personality developments for both of our leads with Eve figuratively if not literally glowing at getting the type of job she thinks she should have always had. Meanwhile in Paris, Villanelle is dragged through the ringer a bit by Konstantin – who is this Anna and why did this, above all things, seem to actually sincerely affect Villanelle? This is the first chink we see in her armor of psychopathic bloodlust. We see a second at the very end of the episode when she seems genuinely startled to realize that she’s already met Eve Polastri (and kind of hit on her?).  Villanelle has demonstrated a tremendous skill for deception in murder and she is a textbook case psychopath but, fairly focused on her task at hand.  How does an unstable Villanelle look? Will this put her off her game? And, if so, how many bodies will fall as a result of her lack of focus.

RIP Sebastian. You just wanted to date a pretty girl and get laid; sorry you had to pay the price for that.   Until next time moppets.

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