Killing Eve: God, I'm Tired
May 27, 2018 6:34 PM - Season 1, Episode 8 - Subscribe
Villanelle's mission is proving anything but straightforward, forcing her to take drastic measures. (Season finale)
God, this show is amazing.
Killing Eve is now my second-favorite show on television, after Better Call Saul.
Also, I'm just dumbfounded at how talented Waller-Bridge is. I have a fan crush or something. Everything I've seen her do has been so very good.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:53 AM on May 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Killing Eve is now my second-favorite show on television, after Better Call Saul.
Also, I'm just dumbfounded at how talented Waller-Bridge is. I have a fan crush or something. Everything I've seen her do has been so very good.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:53 AM on May 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
How do you have an 8-episode season? what the hell?
posted by some loser at 11:21 AM on May 28, 2018
posted by some loser at 11:21 AM on May 28, 2018
How do you have an 8-episode season? what the hell?
A single-digit season length isn't particularly unusual for a UK production. But Killing Eve was already green-lit for season 2 when this season premiered, if that makes you feel better.
posted by oh yeah! at 1:38 PM on May 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
A single-digit season length isn't particularly unusual for a UK production. But Killing Eve was already green-lit for season 2 when this season premiered, if that makes you feel better.
posted by oh yeah! at 1:38 PM on May 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
"God, it makes me rage how efficient things are when you are a dick to people."
Sandra Oh really grew into, and grew a character through 8 episodes.
I really identify with her facial expressions because I apparently make some really goofy ones because I don't like how my face looks so I stopped thinking about how my face looks and how my face looks to other people.
Have always liked Fiona Shaw in everything I've seen her in, but this role is aces - even better than her Marnie in 'True Blood' which was pretty wild too.
I hate cliffhangers, but this one ain't bad.
posted by porpoise at 8:19 PM on May 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
Sandra Oh really grew into, and grew a character through 8 episodes.
I really identify with her facial expressions because I apparently make some really goofy ones because I don't like how my face looks so I stopped thinking about how my face looks and how my face looks to other people.
Have always liked Fiona Shaw in everything I've seen her in, but this role is aces - even better than her Marnie in 'True Blood' which was pretty wild too.
I hate cliffhangers, but this one ain't bad.
posted by porpoise at 8:19 PM on May 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
Still VERY interested in the contents of Nadia's note.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:34 AM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:34 AM on May 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
"I've not done this before"
"Don't worry I've got lots of experience"
*oh here comes the lezzing up*
STAB
*Oh, ok... murder then, talking about murder*
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:49 AM on June 1, 2018 [18 favorites]
"Don't worry I've got lots of experience"
*oh here comes the lezzing up*
STAB
*Oh, ok... murder then, talking about murder*
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:49 AM on June 1, 2018 [18 favorites]
FYI, BBC America is running a marathon of Killing Eve S1 "Expanded" on Sunday 7/22 from 7am to 3:30pm.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:21 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by oh yeah! at 5:21 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Sandra Oh's complete lack of cool is what sold me on the show.
It's so delightfully unexpected. I don't know how they can keep that up but I'd love to see them try in a way that's not an obvious pun for me to use right now.
posted by provoliminal at 7:36 PM on September 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
It's so delightfully unexpected. I don't know how they can keep that up but I'd love to see them try in a way that's not an obvious pun for me to use right now.
posted by provoliminal at 7:36 PM on September 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
I think from start to finish, the timeline of the show is what? Two or three weeks? Not *nearly* enough time for Eve to get as unflappable as all the old, experienced, operators that surround her. I'm curious to see if there's a timejump in season 2.
posted by Mogur at 4:31 AM on September 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Mogur at 4:31 AM on September 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
Konstantin's daughter - awesome character, so well played (great casting find). Think we'll see any more of her in season 2?
posted by progosk at 3:42 AM on September 21, 2018
posted by progosk at 3:42 AM on September 21, 2018
Just saw the finale in the UK: so many loose threads, but that bed scene was fantastic - the cinematography, the dialogue - it was all there. I'm still sceptical about Konstantin's offscreen death.
Jodie Comer has done brilliantly underplaying a role which naturally invites scenery to be chewed, but Sandra Oh has given us a fantastic human portrayal of someone with conflicting career, personal, and fangirlish motivations. Also, like with Hannibal, the queer sub/surtext felt pretty natural and organic to the plot.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 4:22 PM on October 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
Jodie Comer has done brilliantly underplaying a role which naturally invites scenery to be chewed, but Sandra Oh has given us a fantastic human portrayal of someone with conflicting career, personal, and fangirlish motivations. Also, like with Hannibal, the queer sub/surtext felt pretty natural and organic to the plot.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 4:22 PM on October 6, 2018 [2 favorites]
Eve: "Bonjour...eh...parlez-vous anglais."
Villanelle's neighbour: "I don't like to, but I can".
- I love this exchange for is acknowledgement of the notion, beloved of monoglot Brits, that this is how any random Parisian would view the idea of speaking English.
The French neighbour also gets a share in the final, and best exchange in the whole show:
Neighbour [As Eve regains her senses at point where the audience assume Villanelle has bled to death on her apartment floor] "She's gone".
Eve [Noticing that Villanelle is in fact not there at all] "Where?"
posted by rongorongo at 5:40 AM on November 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Villanelle's neighbour: "I don't like to, but I can".
- I love this exchange for is acknowledgement of the notion, beloved of monoglot Brits, that this is how any random Parisian would view the idea of speaking English.
The French neighbour also gets a share in the final, and best exchange in the whole show:
Neighbour [As Eve regains her senses at point where the audience assume Villanelle has bled to death on her apartment floor] "She's gone".
Eve [Noticing that Villanelle is in fact not there at all] "Where?"
posted by rongorongo at 5:40 AM on November 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
People not knowing how to interact with kids amuse me. The Good Place recently had some fun with that.
"She's so annoying."
So, a question: is Villanelle a manic pixie dream girl?
posted by Pronoiac at 2:13 PM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
"She's so annoying."
So, a question: is Villanelle a manic pixie dream girl?
posted by Pronoiac at 2:13 PM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
That's ... a good question.
A manic pixie dream girl is to a degree a personality type, but is defined by how the character functions in the narrative.
So, strictly speaking, I'd say not. But, loosely, yes.
Firstly and ambivalently because her character is a subversion of the beloved-as-narcissistic-fantasy trope. On the one hand, Villanelle as a love interest is poisonously self-destructive for the pursuer. On the other hand, Villanelle as a love interest is poisonously self-destructive for the pursuer. That is to say, MPDGs are supposed to lead to self-actualization but in real-life this often works out to a pathological relationship. The show knows this and makes it explicit. So, in this way she is, but the meta-narrative is a subversion.
Secondly, the protagonist is a woman, not a man, and the whole dynamic is a different thing. MPDG as a concept is designed as a critique of sexism. On the other hand, you could argue that women could internalize this message and see other women this way, instrumentally and obsessively. But it still isn't the same thing. Yet, even so, as a meta-narrative the show may be subverting the sexist trope by inserting a woman protagonist in the man's place to highlight what is similar and what is different, thus shedding more light on the strict version of the trope.
Much more casually, I think Villanelle really is something of a MPDG both for Eve and the audience. She's very desirable as a version of the elfin, delightfully mischievous naif. Crucially, she also very much is something of a transformative fantasy for Eve.
There is a trope that we want to call a manic pixie dream boy -- it is a very gendered wish-fulfillment thing for straight women. But it's different than MPDG in its social function under the patriarchy. So this isn't that, either. It's more like the fantasy relationships girls sometimes experience with other girls in their tweens.
I'd say this is a hybrid of the patriarchal MPDG trope and the tween girl/girl obsession dynamic, a hybrid that is very interesting.
It's several different kinds of things at once and they all intersect in women's desire. (In the MPDG aspect, the MPDG-ness is the transformative nature of desiring a woman as narcissistic wish-fulfillment which, to some degree, women as well as men internalize as "this is what women are for").
When all these things are placed alongside the patallel relationship between Eve and Carolyn, the show is intensely about women's relationships vis a vis desire and self-actualization within the distorting environment of patriarchy.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:09 AM on December 16, 2018 [4 favorites]
A manic pixie dream girl is to a degree a personality type, but is defined by how the character functions in the narrative.
So, strictly speaking, I'd say not. But, loosely, yes.
Firstly and ambivalently because her character is a subversion of the beloved-as-narcissistic-fantasy trope. On the one hand, Villanelle as a love interest is poisonously self-destructive for the pursuer. On the other hand, Villanelle as a love interest is poisonously self-destructive for the pursuer. That is to say, MPDGs are supposed to lead to self-actualization but in real-life this often works out to a pathological relationship. The show knows this and makes it explicit. So, in this way she is, but the meta-narrative is a subversion.
Secondly, the protagonist is a woman, not a man, and the whole dynamic is a different thing. MPDG as a concept is designed as a critique of sexism. On the other hand, you could argue that women could internalize this message and see other women this way, instrumentally and obsessively. But it still isn't the same thing. Yet, even so, as a meta-narrative the show may be subverting the sexist trope by inserting a woman protagonist in the man's place to highlight what is similar and what is different, thus shedding more light on the strict version of the trope.
Much more casually, I think Villanelle really is something of a MPDG both for Eve and the audience. She's very desirable as a version of the elfin, delightfully mischievous naif. Crucially, she also very much is something of a transformative fantasy for Eve.
There is a trope that we want to call a manic pixie dream boy -- it is a very gendered wish-fulfillment thing for straight women. But it's different than MPDG in its social function under the patriarchy. So this isn't that, either. It's more like the fantasy relationships girls sometimes experience with other girls in their tweens.
I'd say this is a hybrid of the patriarchal MPDG trope and the tween girl/girl obsession dynamic, a hybrid that is very interesting.
It's several different kinds of things at once and they all intersect in women's desire. (In the MPDG aspect, the MPDG-ness is the transformative nature of desiring a woman as narcissistic wish-fulfillment which, to some degree, women as well as men internalize as "this is what women are for").
When all these things are placed alongside the patallel relationship between Eve and Carolyn, the show is intensely about women's relationships vis a vis desire and self-actualization within the distorting environment of patriarchy.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:09 AM on December 16, 2018 [4 favorites]
I started out the season very hot for this show but by the end of it I was pretty cooled off.
None of that is because of Sandra Oh or Jodie Comer, both of whom were amazing.
It's mostly the stint in Russia, which started to remind me of Alias, but not in a good way. Kinda fake, kind of written, kind of rote. Konstantin's escape from Villanelle was especially horrible, a low point. Also far too many obvious or repeated lines clustered around that... "so annoying", "you hit me with a log", "[Konstantin's wife] is very big", yeah yeah. Eve also had character problems, becoming kind of stupid, incompetent; annoyingly passive one moment, then annoyingly lashing about randomly the next. When she stabbed Villanelle it felt like an act of boredom, both for Eve and for the writers. I kinda like... stopped caring about Eve and Villanelle's relationship. They let it simmer too long and it doesn't feel believable to me that it is boiling.
I feel like the turning point for me was when Eve got out of the car to confront Villanelle when she was coming to kill Frank, calling Villanelle's bluff. All the turnings of the plot after that felt kinda bad to me. I think maybe this show likes to tear things up before I feel they are really established.
Still, it's entertaining and very watchable, so I'm hoping to find some way to watch Season 2. I hope the magic and promise of the early episodes comes back.
posted by fleacircus at 8:36 AM on August 19, 2019
None of that is because of Sandra Oh or Jodie Comer, both of whom were amazing.
It's mostly the stint in Russia, which started to remind me of Alias, but not in a good way. Kinda fake, kind of written, kind of rote. Konstantin's escape from Villanelle was especially horrible, a low point. Also far too many obvious or repeated lines clustered around that... "so annoying", "you hit me with a log", "[Konstantin's wife] is very big", yeah yeah. Eve also had character problems, becoming kind of stupid, incompetent; annoyingly passive one moment, then annoyingly lashing about randomly the next. When she stabbed Villanelle it felt like an act of boredom, both for Eve and for the writers. I kinda like... stopped caring about Eve and Villanelle's relationship. They let it simmer too long and it doesn't feel believable to me that it is boiling.
I feel like the turning point for me was when Eve got out of the car to confront Villanelle when she was coming to kill Frank, calling Villanelle's bluff. All the turnings of the plot after that felt kinda bad to me. I think maybe this show likes to tear things up before I feel they are really established.
Still, it's entertaining and very watchable, so I'm hoping to find some way to watch Season 2. I hope the magic and promise of the early episodes comes back.
posted by fleacircus at 8:36 AM on August 19, 2019
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posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:35 AM on May 28, 2018 [5 favorites]