Killing Eve – Desperate Times

By: Kelly Kearney

This week’s episode of Killing Eve had it all. A Harry Potter reunion? Check. Surprising sexual tension between co-workers? Check. A killer Villanelle costume that would turn even the biggest bacon fans towards vegetarianism. Check. “Desperate Times” calls for desperate measures when Eve’s attention slips from Villanelle and focuses on MI6’s new “it girl.” Villanelle does not do second best. So, as the case of the Ghost occupies a certain curly haired agent’s attention, the question remains; how far will the flamboyant assassin go to remain a fixture in Eve’s mind? When it comes to Villanelle, there are no limits.

Everything is Under Control

If you thought Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) was a woman with a strong and intimidating personality, then meet her boss Helen (played by fellow Harry Potter alum Zoe Wannamaker). Hanging up her broomstick for a Pringles can and an endless amount of rage, Helen meets with Carolyn over her failure to keep Konstantin (Kim Bodnia) in check. Now that the charmingly bearded Russian went AWOL with Villanelle (Jodie Comer), Carolyn and her entire Operation Manderley are in danger of having their plug pulled by her ranting, chips gobbling superior. Ms. Angry Boss Lady isn’t in the business of getting screwed over by insubordinates who can’t keep their word and she makes that known in the most vulgar of ways by saying, “If I wanted to get screwed ‘til my a-hole bled, I’d go down to the Torture Gardens on a Friday night and ask for the full S-ting English!” Whether you know what the Torture Gardens are or not is besides the point. The woman who’s practically hemorrhaging rage from every pore says it was brutal. What Helen wants is reassurances from Carolyn that she will fix this Konstantin issue before it gets out of control and places their entire mission at risk. Carolyn does her best to ease her supervisor’s anger, promising that “everything is going according to plan.”  Nobody wears that calm confidence like an armor better than Carolyn and because of it she manages to diffuse Helen’s rage and escape her office unscathed. No thanks to Eve (Sandra Oh), of course, whose created a major mess for Carolyn to clean up or else risk the wrath of Helen and the end of her commendable career.

Over at MI6 offices Eve is digging her heels into this Ghost investigation.  She stares at her office walls, now littered with photos and clues of each of this mystery woman’s kills and discovers something interesting about Alistair Peel. It seems the tech tycoon wasn’t Ghost’s only victim. Numerous people in his family and at his business have recently died and they all managed to slip through the cracks of their investigation…until now. Their deaths seemed like the result of natural causes, but Eve has figured out that each person had a health issue that could easily mask foul play. Whoever is killing these people has some kind of medical knowledge that didn’t raise concerns in the bodies’ post mortem. Eve tells her team that they’re probably looking for a nurse because each kill was clean and almost humane; as if the killer didn’t want to witness their suffering. She wonders what kind of killer exhibits empathy for their victims and Hugo (Edward Bluemel) interjects wondering, “a nice one?” Since there is no such thing as a nice assassin (the definition of the job separates the decent from the lethal) it must mean The Ghost is more complex than the average murderer and this intrigues Eve even more. So much so that Carolyn sends her and Jess (Nina Sosanya) to talk to Peele’s standoffish son, Aaron (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), about the surprising amount of dead people linked to his family’s name. Eve questions him about the sale of his company, but the younger Peel is dodgy and refuses to speak unless it’s through his lawyer. The only information he does offer up is his disgust for officials like Eve and Jess. He promises that his company’s ability to mine data will one day make their jobs obsolete. He has no respect for them or their work and his obnoxious avoidance forces both agents to leave the meeting empty handed.

A Slaughterhouse in Amsterdam

While Eve is chasing a ghost, Villanelle and Konstantin are chasing their dream – a new life free from The Twelve. The two are on the run, giving them the perfect opportunity to rebuild their lives in the city of Amsterdam. The Dutch capital has it all – fashion, art, plenty of people to kill and open-faced sprinkle sandwiches that put the American “fluffer-nutter” to shame. It is the perfect place for Konstantin to stay hidden while finding work for his freelance, hagelslag eating, killer. Minus his stand out fashion choices (think euro-trash meets Buddhist monk), Konstantin has slipped off The Twelve and Carolyn’s radar and now he’s ready to get down to business…but first, a trip to the museum. Villanelle could use a little culture in her life, whether she wants it or not, and oh by does she not want it. The outrageous woman is bellowing how BORING this entire field trip is until a painting by Jan de Baen catches her eye. It’s a gruesome piece of art depicting the slaying of two brothers who were hung like pigs to be slaughtered. The gory scene inspires Villanelle and she turns to Konstantin and says, “They look like bacon.”

Cured meats aside, this trip to Amsterdam is supposed to be all about work, but if the assassin can slip in a little message to Eve in hopes of attracting her attention than all the better. Villanelle sends Eve a postcard, one that Carolyn later intercepts and hides from her overly obsessed agent.  If there is one thing Carolyn and Konstantin have in common, it’s that they both work very hard at keeping Villanelle and Eve apart. The Russian never misses a chance to remind Villanelle that work comes before pleasure. She needs to forget about Eve since the agent is no longer interested in her anyway. He even implants the idea that Eve makes Villanelle weak and she should spend her time concentrating on her next job and not a lost cause.

Leave it to the wily assassin to figure out a way to get her work done in such a way that Eve couldn’t possibly ignore her. If you want to get your girl’s attention there is no better way than donning an adorable pig mask and slaughtering a man in public. The painting at the museum certainly was inspirational because after luring her victim into a brothel in the red-light district Villanelle strings the man up and guts him like a prized pig. The crowd outside the brothel window gets a front row seat to the murder (including the man’s wife and infant) and it seems more like performance art than an execution. This kind of gesture is exactly what would normally capture Eve’s attention and send her running straight into her killer counterpart’s arms. It’s like a love letter to the one who knows you best. The only problem is Carolyn knows this too and instead of sending Eve to Amsterdam to investigate the murder she sends Jess, who is definitely not the person Villanelle wanted on the case.

With no real progress on finding Ghost and Jess handling the Amsterdam murder, Eve goes home to find Niko (Owen McDonell) in the kitchen with their new bodyguard. Carolyn thought the Polastri’s could use some protection, but Niko isn’t feeling any safer. In fact, he tells Eve that none of this is normal and he accuses her of gaslighting him into thinking it is. He pleads with her to leave her job and be the Eve he knows and loves. Unfortunately for Niko, this is who Eve is and she drives that message home when she ignores his concerns and heads to their bedroom to finish up some work on her case.

The following day at MI6 we see Kenny (Sean Delaney) looking for any connection between Peel’s maids and a background in nursing. In the meantime, Eve and Hugo blow off some steam and head to a local diner for the best fried chicken Eve’s ever tasted. The two crack some dark jokes that soon lead to flirtatious banter with Hugo asking the billion-dollar question we all want the answers to. He bluntly asks what is going on between her and Villanelle. He understands the excitement of the job can woo anyone away from common sense, but what is it about this particular killer that gets Eve all hot and bothered? For Hugo, it all comes down to sex and he wonders if she gets off on Villanelle watching her or if it’s all about the chase. She smugly responds with “both” and that really lights Hugo’s fire. He leans in to kiss Eve, but their romance is interrupted by Kenny who’s calling with news that he’s finally identified The Ghost.

Love Me, Love Me, Say That You Love Me…

Back in Amsterdam we watch as Villanelle is camped out at the brothel window waiting for Eve’s arrival. When Jess shows up instead the lovelorn woman is filled with rage. She decides to drown her heartbreak in some ecstasy and a night of dancing at a local club. Now high and still unable to forget about Eve, the disoriented woman gets into a fight with a pushy young girl while waiting to use the restroom. Villanelle is lethal when she’s sober but on drugs she is downright animalistic and in no mood to deal with the rude little club kid. She grabs the girl by the throat and starts choking the life out of her. In comes Konstantin to the rescue, who bolts into the bathroom and carries her out of the club kicking and screaming. Villanelle is a loose cannon and the longer she goes without Eve the more she risks their lives in hiding.

If the goal of the brothel slaughter was to sway Eve’s attention away from The Ghost than Villanelle could soon be hanging up her pig mask because The Ghost is about to go down! Thanks to Kenny’s hard work we learn Eve was right about the kind of woman The Ghost is – a middle-aged woman, possibly of Asian descent, someone whose talents could easily go unnoticed…someone like Eve. So, when we next see Agent Polastri walking through a school yard speaking Hangul to someone we assume is her mother it’s no surprise her eyes stay focused on an East Asian woman escorting her kids to school. She asks the unsuspecting woman if she dropped some money and the woman says no and tries to avoid Eve’s friendly small talk. Finding common ground was key to getting this woman to trust her and the money lure works long enough for the police to get into position. That’s when Eve points out the red laser aimed at the woman’s head and whispers for her to come without a fight or the trained snipers will gun her down in front of her kids.

As the episode draws to a close, Eve prepares to interrogate The Ghost (Jung Sun den Hollander) while Carolyn watches on through a two-way mirror at the police station. Whether or not Eve knows she’s being watched doesn’t change the fact she seems to be preparing for battle. She ties her hair back in a pony tail, smooths down her clothing and applies a stern and cold sneer that says The Ghost will not get any sympathy from her. As Eve seemingly falls deeper into her own darkness, Villanelle wakes in her hotel room in a pile of her own sick. The drugs and the attempted bathroom murder was a serous wake up call. As she wipes the sleep from her eyes, she cries real tears over her entire situation, which is out of the ordinary for a woman who prides herself on being an emotionless killer. What is a psychopath stuck in her feels supposed to do when the one person who matters most is too busy playing cat and mouse with a ghost? Nobody can predict the lengths Villanelle will go to get what she wants and what she wants most is Eve.