Killing Eve – A Rainbow in Beige Boots

By starrymag | March 19, 2022

By: Kelly Kearney

 

 

Last week Eve tracked down Hélène and the two had a fiery exchange. Both women are hinting down The Twelve and so Carolyn who is newly defected to Russia. The three women have their work cut out for them because while they are searching for the group, someone else is knocking them off one by one. A dead group of assassins leaves them all with plenty of unanswered questions, so the race is on. It’s too bad Villanelle is busy psychoanalyzing herself to help out.

Villanelle

We begin with Villanelle (Jodie Comer), fresh off her recent double kill and delusional Jesus, who is now undercover as a maid so she can sneak into Eve’s hotel room for a lie down. When Eve (Sandra Oh) returns home to find the woman whom she both seems to love and simultaneously want to kill sitting in her bathrobe while her bloody clothes litter the hotel room’s floor, she’s hardly shocked. In fact, she’s so casual about the pop-in she changes her clothes and tells Villanelle she can do as she pleases in the room, but she must be gone by the time she comes back. Her casualness comes off as cruel when Villanelle lets her know things are bad. When are they not? With her backpack in hand and fresh undies on, Eve bails on a confused Villanelle and heads towards an even more confused Yusuf (Robert Gilbert). She barges her way inside his workspace filling him in on her visitor and the hops right onto his computer, sensitive files be damned! She hands Yusuf that car registration from Hélène’s (Camille Cottin) and asks him to track it down while she rambles off her theories about the woman’s ties to The Twelve. She doesn’t think Hélène knows who the leader of the secret group of assassins is and she’s torturing and killing the others to sniff that boss out. She’s basically cutting off the many tentacles until she can chop the monster’s head off and Eve, with her burnt hand, almost seems impressed. Yusuf agrees because apparently torture “is one of my strong suits.” The two decide to go on a stake out but wind-up wrestling for dibs on who gets to go and who gets to do the grub work for their security company. Eve tops him.

Pam

The life of a mortician is never dull. They spend all day plunging, flushing and powdering the dead and then their co-worker/ungrateful bully of a brother can’t even show them respect. In fact, as Pam tries to get through her work he calls her creepy and makes a crack about why everyone avoids her; like death is contagious. Pam (Anjana Vasan) is an emotional desert, tapped dry and just trying to make it to the end of her shift without ending her hateful brother, who treats her like a verbal punching bag instead of a sister.

Carolyn

Over in Moscow we see Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) is still flitting around in some Russian attic like a treasonous little secret-demanding her corner office while getting ignored by her pal, Vlad (Laurentiu Possa). He brings news that three out of The Twelve are now dead from sadistic torture, with one having a very unusual “licked to death by salty goats” end. Vlad laughs it off and tells her to take the day off and get out of this rat-infested hovel she’s calling home.

Meanwhile, her friend and psychoanalyst to the psychopaths, Martin (Adeel Akhtar), gets a surprise when Villanelle decides she needs therapy and it must be true because she has accessorized a deliciously form fitting three-piece suit with a pair of socks and sandals. She’s all over the place and it’s why she barges in demanding he fix her. All roads lead back to Eve and Martin knows that better than anyone because he seen Eve at her Villanelle-obsessed worse. She’s got it bad and that isn’t good for Martin. She asks the psychopath expert to shrink her brain into a more congenial attitude. For Martin’s part, he manages to curb his terror long enough to have the assassin hit the couch and spill her tea. What he knows of her is what he found in her file and, of course, what Eve mentioned. He knows she is a skilled assassin who also smirks at him in a way that says she isn’t so sure she’s “skilled” anymore. “I don’t like the way I feel,” she says and Martin better figure out why or else.

Fernanda

Eve tracks down Helene’s wife Fernanda (Monica Lopera) and it seems there’s trouble brewing in equal marriage paradise. She’s been served divorce papers and that’s Eve’s cue. She uses the woman’s emotional state against her by accidentally bumping into her and playing the distraught and lonely woman act. She tells the woman her girlfriend is breaking up with her and she doesn’t know anyone in the city; she moved there for this imaginary woman. Fernanda sympathizes and Eve invites her for coffee to commiserate over the cruelty of women and lost loves. Eve has her in.

Elliot

Over at the funeral parlor we get a deeper look into what Pam has been dealing with when we meet her brother, who we now know is named Elliot (Manpreet Bachu). He shows some serious sibling animosity towards his sister. The bullying from earlier only intensifies when he threatens to send her to foster care if she doesn’t stay in the backroom and quit scaring the guests. He blames her for his bland life; forced to manage their father’s business instead of attending university. She is a heavy stone tied around his neck and he never misses a chance to let her know it. After she makes a crack about their father being embarrassed of his managerial skills, he kicks the door shut, hits the lights and locks his sister in with the dead. When we next see her she’s hanging out with Hélène, eating ice cream and no doubt dreaming up creative ways to end her brother. She lets Hélène know she feels ready to get to work, but Hélène turns her down since her carelessness brought Eve to her doorstep. When Pam is ready, Hélène will let her know. From the moment she saw that quiet little nobody she knew she was destined to be great, but all in due time.

In the meantime, Eve is in London getting Hélène’s heartbroken ex sloshed, hoping something useful falls out of her loose lips. The two commiserate over falling for dangerous women, of which Eve has plenty of real-life experience to make this undercover thing authentic. Pretending she’s “Nicole,“ Eve describes her lover as controlling, selfish and delusional (with a smile) and we know her mind is focusing on a certain blonde.

Speaking of Eve’s girlfriend, Villanelle is kicked back on Martin’s couch twirling her hair and confessing to her latest crimes. For his part, the infamous woman’s charm seems to have lulled him into a familiar patient/doctor relationship, as he listens intently Villanelle talk about life as a rainbow amongst all the beige Martins of the world. She’s having an existential crisis with a heavy dose of insecurities, but when it all comes down to it she doesn’t really know what she wants, or who, and for her that’s new and unsettling. Martin zeroes in on that reminding her how change can be uncomfortable but maybe how she feels is a sign that she has already made a metamorphosis? Maybe Eve has too?

Speaking of coming out of her cocoon and spreading her wings, Pam finally had enough of her bullying brother and when he tries to drown her in a vat of embalming fluid, she stabs him to death with a scalpel and finally takes her first, maybe ever, sigh of relief. There is just one problem: Hélène told her she wasn’t ready and that woman doesn’t appear to be the type that likes to be rushed.

Maybe She’s Born With It?

Back to Eve who, after listening to her friend, realizes Fernanda might be the key to The Twelve – maybe even the leader. With a few cocktails under her belt, Fernanda admits to being married to a wealthy business man before she met Hélène. Her husband’s work was secret, but the money was good, so she never bothered to ask questions. After finding a stack of letters from a woman she assumed was sleeping with her husband, she left and never heard from him again. It wasn’t long after that she met Hélène. As she tells the story she munches on chips, and they must be dry because she starts to choke. Excusing herself for the bathroom, Eve is left stunned and marinating in the “what ifs?” While the woman is in the bathroom Eve takes photos of her credit cards and finds a newspaper clipping in her purse with a picture Villanelle listed as the prime suspect in a double murder of a vicar and his daughter. She pockets takes the clipping, crumples it up, pays the bill and leaves Fernanda before she returns to the table.

Meanwhile, at Martin’s we see he and Villanelle share a Lunchable or maybe it’s more like force-fed because Martin doesn’t eat dairy, but his new patient isn’t taking no for an answer. She poses the question about how she became who she is, wondering if she was genetically predisposed to psychopathy? He doesn’t believe so. Many are trained into it, but in his professional experience he has never met a psychopath who wants to change. He finds it hopeful that she does. Good work! She’s practically cured!

Who isn’t cured is Elliot who is now sitting on the autopsy table of his sister and assassin in training. She meets up with Hélène to tell her what happened. Her response is predictable; she is not happy Pam disobeyed her and took matters into her own hands. She orders Pam to leave while she cleans up her mess but reminds her that she’s indispensable if she goes rogue again. That is when Hélène gets a call from Vlad telling her Konstantine (Kim Bodnia) escaped, and the FSB has him in their crosshairs. Not surprisingly, she is furious.

Konstantine

We catch up with the man himself, happy as can be in his presumably safe undercover life. He is smiling and waving to his constituents as he heads to his office where his secretary is waiting with a plate of his favorite “chubby bangers” – a/k/a sausages. They’re homemade and his secretary is as proud of herself as he is happy to eat then. That’s when his phone rings and that thousand-watt smile immediately falls to worry.

The one person who is not worried in this whole search for The Twelve seems to be Carolyn, who chews her pencil and laughs as she learns the person responsible for killing members of this top- secret cabal of killers left behind a clue. Peat moss from Scotland was found on the last body and she is delighted. She must love a good “who done it? “because she is practically dancing in her night shirt and bare feet.

Yusuf is also all smiles when he messages Eve. He is good for something when he tracks down Fernanda’s marriage certificate to a man named Lars Meier. Could he be the one Eve’s been looking for? Is he the head of this assassin monster?

Carolyn is also circling around some similar evidence when Vlad halts her trip to Scotland to track down those mossy shoes. It seems a Russian agent was attacked in Cuban – the same country Fernanda said she left when her husband went MIA. The man survived “toes in the nose” torture and, as Carolyn points out, is better alive than dead because he’s more than likely a member of The Twelve. She agrees to fly to Cuba in the morning to sus the situation out.

Payback or Protection?

When Eve gets back to the room she’s annoyed to see Villanelle’s things still on the floor. When she goes to pick up her bloody clothes she notices her iPad is on the bed, open to a conversation she had with Martin. She looks at the camera and says, “Enough.” Cut Martin’s house and he and Villanelle are lounging back on lawn chairs – him looking terrified and tide up and her relaxed and ready to talk about Eve. She wants to figure out what draws her to the brunette and why she has never really tried to kill her. Admittedly, at first, she enjoyed the power over she had over Eve, but Martin says she has to allow herself to be vulnerable sometimes; that’s what true relationships are like. She pushes back saying she would give Eve everything but leaving her. She wants all of Eve,“because in our bones, we understand each other. She’s a rainbow in beige boots.”

Speaking of Eve, she comes knocking on Martin’s door but before he can answer Villanelle traps him in a choke hold and then carelessly knocks him out when she realizes it’s Eve at the door. She lets her in and Eve asks her if she made any break throughs in therapy. The only one that stuck out was how Martin thought the lethal part of her could be trained out of her. Sitting down next to her on the couch while Martin moans from the floor, Eve contemplates what she says and then asks her if she has ever heard of the story about the scorpion and the frog. “They hook up?” Villanelle asks and Eve responds with, “No. They they both die.” A scorpion can’t change its nature. Then, Villanelle grabs Eve’s hand and leaves us wondering about which of these two women has that venomous sting. This time it’s Eve, who says, “I should have done this when we first met.” We see the police burst through the door and cuff Villanelle. The blonde looks crushed, but is this act of betrayal actually a way to keep Villanelle safe from her former employers and the person who is whoever is killing them? As the episode draws to a close, we catch a brief glimpse of Hélène briefing Konstantin on his next trainee Pam and Eve adding Lars Meier to her murder vision board. The case to find The Twelve before the killer does is still on!