Killing Eve – It’s Agony and I’m Ravenous

By: Kelly Kearney

In this week’s episode of the slow burn drama that’s torching it’s fandom like an out-of-control wildfire, Villanelle is free from jail and on the road to embracing her many murderous talents thanks to an unlikely mentor she was ordered to kill. Meanwhile in London, Eve is still on the hunt for the leader of The Twelve but with more clues swirling around Lars Meier, she is getting closer than Hélène probably wants her to.

Brighton by the Sea

Episode four picks up right after last week’s phone call between Eve (Sandra Oh) and Hélène (Camille Cottin). The two women meet up at a West End theater for a little flirtatious game of cat and mouse, only they’re both the cats in this scenario and the mysterious missing member of The Twelve, Lars Meier, is the rodent on the run. The two women are in a competition to drag him out of hiding thanks to Hélène’s ex, Fernanda, and her social media posts. Hearing that Eve made contact with her ex halts those thirsty looks and Hélène flips the script mentioning Eve’s “awful night” of having her ex arrested. The mere mention of the blonde stops Eve in her tracks. That’s when Hélène starts caressing her bandaged burned hand and the two draw closer as that familiar bi-fi tension simmers. Both women are searching for Lars and now the two are in competition: may the best woman win! Luckily for Eve, she has the upper hand thanks to her partner in espionage and crime, Yusef (Robert Gilbert) who manages to scour the internet with facial recognition software uncovering a photo of Meier taken in the ‘70s by a French photographer. Eve-1 Hélène-0. It’s not that Hélène isn’t looking as hard as Eve is, it’s just that she has more pressing matters at hand–mainly, getting Villanelle (Jodie Comer) out of jail. She has a job for the inmate to do and it probably doesn’t hurt to know her release could distract Eve long enough to get the drop on Meier.

Like a scene straight out of a Wes Anderson film we catch up with Konstantin (Kim Bodnia) and his briskly-walking backpack-sporting protégé, Pam (Anjana Vasan). In the dreary English coastal town of Margate, the two sit and talk in a hotel room, which Konstantin tells Pam is now her home for the foreseeable future. Today starts her training and it’s his job to see if she is capable of taking orders and following through–no questions asked. He says she must come when he calls her and then asks her what she’s good at. We are gifted with that famous Konstantin laugh when she says “embalming.” Then he snickers at her one-kill list and tosses her a key with an order to meet him on the pier in an hour. Do not be late.

Havana

Next we head to Cuba where new FSB agent Caroline (Fiona Shaw) rolls into a safe house where The Twelve is keeping the operative who survived the severed toes in the nose hit. She and his caregiver (Anna-Maria Everett) share a laugh over local rumors he cried like a baby (in more colorful language) when they tortured him, but to his credit the guy does look like he’s in rough shape. He’s lucky to be alive, and with Carolyn there, who knows for how long?

Back in England Pam shows up on time for her training lesson but that’s where her obedience ends. When Konstantin orders her to push an old, injured woman off the pier and into the sea she refuses, and in return her handler unleashes a tirade of disappointment that taps into those insecurities we saw her brother bring out moments before she killed him. Konstantin insults her, even asking if she is stupid when Pam mentally checks out of the entire conversation. He thinks she is wasting his time and tells her to go home; she isn’t right for the job. Instead of heading back, Pam walks over to the Dreamland Amusement Park to blow off steam playing a few games, eating cotton candy, and hopping on the spinning tea cups. Laughter consumes her as if she is experiencing emotion for the very first time. Her behavior is almost a maniacal so, Konstantin was probably wrong. She does have what it takes to be a psychopathic killer for hire.

Speaking of Pam’s handler, he calls Hélène to say maybe he, too, is not right for this job anymore. He would rather stay quiet about the Twelve and go back to his blissful life as a sausage eating Mayor. He threatens to talk to Andreas if she doesn’t agree to let him quit and this makes her laugh because she has a graveyard’s worth of dirt on him- namely a man named Paul. Pretending like he doesn’t remember the guy he set up to take the fall for the 6 million dollars he embezzled from the Twelve, nor the fact Carolyn killed him on her couch, isn’t convincing the woman. Nobody knows he took that money and if the dirty dozen found out his little Mayor’s gig would be relocated to Hell. So, for his own safety he better figure out how to turn Pam into a killer and abide by Hélène’s orders.

Back to Havana where Carolyn handcuffs the rogue assassin’s survivor and when he wakes, she tells him the FSB knows he has the names of all of the Twelve and their locations. He responds by laughing and asking for a lit cigar, which she agrees to hoping it will make him talk. She underestimated his grotesque misogyny because the only response she gets is an insulting plume of smoke to the face and an excuse about never groveling to a woman. Needing a moment to calm down she walks out the door and directly into the hands of an unknown assailant who puts a bag over her head and drags her away.

A Natural Born Killer

Cut to the beach and as a blue car rips through the sand we see it was Villanelle who kidnapped Carolyn! As for her victim, nothing shakes that woman not even a blind trunk ride to her assumed death. The minute the hatch opens she jokes that if her attacker wanted a cigar all they had to do was ask. After a short dragging through the sand Villanelle removes Carolyn’s hood and she is most amused by who she sees, even if she does hate surprises. If that’s true than she really must hate what happens next when Villanelle clocks her upside the head with a wrench. She eventually comes too—with a raging headache and one important question: why didn’t she kill her? The blonde spared her after the last thing Carolyn said before she hit her with the wrench–that she always liked her, even when she was a little girl. Villanelle doesn’t remember meeting her as a child and wants the story. According to Carolyn, they met when she was in the orphanage, and she remembers her because she tortured some greedy girl with a bracelet and that kid went on to lose her finger. What impressed Carolyn was how unremorseful she was and only concerned about whether or not she could see the severed limb–nothing about the girl she hurt. She was morbidly homicidal from birth and that answers some of the many questions Villanelle had about her past and why she is the way she is. She assumed The Twelve turned her into a killer and hoped the venture into Christianity would make her good– worthy of love from someone like Eve (as if she is some angel). Caroline laughs and says killing is primal, “why be good, when you could be good at what you’re good at?” They are both natural born killers and maybe instead of running from it, it’s time Villanelle embraces it. And that’s the thing about Carolyn, she understands what it means to live up to your fullest potential and on that level the two have some profound respect for one another. If Villanelle is the promising young star than Caroline is the matriarch of all these broken and talented monsters—the unapologetic Queen, and her rank appeals to the little gruesome orphan who just wants to belong.

After their talk on the beach the two agree to leave the wrenches behind and head back to the safehouse for a meal and conversation about what’s next. Carolyn has a job offer for her and after seeing her sweet digs and full catering staff the newly unemployed assassin is intrigued. Maybe it is time for Villanelle to turn her talents into a legitimate career and join the FSB? First things first, the toes in the nose guy. Carolyn tempts her curiosity by telling her to check out what’s left of the guy in the other room and maybe it will inspire her. She takes one look at the broken and toeless man and her eyes light up like it’s Christmas morning. She pokes and prods him until Carolyn leaves them alone to talk shop, making sure to remind her the man has information the FSB needs. Villanelle is going to dig out the information and make her new boss proud. She winds up torturing the man with a cheese wire and cutting off his fingers every time he refuses to talk. He begs her to kill him and even compares her to the female monster who cut his toes off. He tells her he doesn’t have any names only a place he knows is connected to The Twelve called “El hombre De Das Caros.” With that, she plunges a knife in his chest and watches with delight as the life drain from his eyes. This is her art—her masterpiece, and she’s finally letting the joy it brings wash over her.

After finding her own amusing inspiration Pam calls Konstantine and tells him to meet her back at the pier; she was mugged and thinks she needs to go to the hospital. When he gets there he is alone and walks to the end of the pier to look out across the water. That’s when Pam runs up from behind him and kicks Konstantin into the sea. Pam is ready for training and if her teacher’s bellowing laughter is any indication, he is very pleased by this news. Don’t underestimate Pam, Mr. Mayor, she knows how to get rid of a body!

“A Kiss With A Fist is Better Than None”

Now that Villanelle has a location, she, and her boss head there and sit in a café waiting, for what, Carolyn doesn’t know but promises her protégé she will when she sees it. To pass the time they eat lunch and play a game of truth or dare but the whole moment comes to a screeching halt when they catch the eyes of a man walking down the steps in a pink suit. Carolyn says she thought he was dead, but dead men don’t take off running, jump out a window and away from Villanelle on a zooming Vespa! Later, Villanelle asks Carolyn if that guy was an ex-boyfriend, apparently ex-lovers are on her mind right now, but the subject gets changed to another round of truth or dare. This time Carolyn takes the dare and winds up playing an epic head banging air guitar, once again, impressing Villanelle. The blonde might be a serious murderer, but she also loves to play games, and Carolyn feeds into that by allowing her to see a part of her most wouldn’t live long enough to. The day started off with her in jail, then with orders to kill, and now she’s accepting a job offer from her air guitar playing target. Life is weird.

Speaking of surprising opportunities falling into laps, after purchasing the photo of Lars Meier, Eve walks into Hélène’s house and is greeted by the Frenchwoman in black lingerie heading into a bath. Eve follows her knowing this sexual roller coaster the two have been on might end with her nabbing the Twelve, so she is prepared to take one for the team–not that the team isn’t tempting her. After reaching into the bath to shave Hélène’s legs, Eve strips her off her clothes and joins her in the tub so they can have a deeper discussion about the fembot army she created and why she works for the Twelve. It’s more complex than that, at least Hélène has convinced herself it is, and claims she saves the girls the world throws away. She’s giving them a life, and a very posh one at that, so she doesn’t feel guilty. The two women awkwardly sit naked in the tepid water until Hélène changes the subject to dinner, “I’ll make some soup, “and the two just eat soup and watch cooking shows like a couple of normcore married lesbians! It’s not long before those rainbow tides turn when Hélène ruins the mood with confession time: she got Villanelle out of jail and assumed the very shocked Eve would want to know. Is Eve angry, excited, or a bit of both? It’s hard to tell what’s causing the flood of emotions she’s drowning in, but Hélène seems quite pleased with herself. If Eve’s talents exist in the realm of seduction than her counterpart’s reside in manipulations of the heart. She says passion isn’t always about sex but about suffering and nobody suffers more than Eve over Villanelle. The silence turns the heat up in the room until Eve can’t take it anymore and swoops in to kiss the French temptress, but is it really Hélène she’s kissing? As we see Villanelle looking out her window across the landscape thousands of miles away, we see the same image reflecting back in Eve’s eyes. They can fill their lives with men, religion, murder, and quests for justice, but they can not fill that empty part of themselves only the other is meant to be in. This is the story of two halves of one whole, and the more they fight to stay apart, the more the universe will push them back together. It’s like that with soulmates, even the kind without souls.