Killing Eve tells a series of short stories about bad choices in its strongest episode of the season
TV Reviews Recap
If you thought Kenny would be the only major character death this season on Killing Eve, the show is ready to pull the rug out from under you. “Still Got It” is structured around a series of vignettes about each of the major characters, and it’s not until a few of them happen that it becomes clear they’re not occurring sequentially, with the fatal scene starting at the beginning of the episode, but not coming to its horrifying conclusion until the end.
The major through-line for all of the vignettes, no matter how disparate the characters, is that all of them are at a break point in their lives. What do they want the rest of their lives to look like? Who are they worried about failing in their lives? Is their past calling them back in a way that’s healthy, or harmful? For an episode that also includes the usual degree of death and violence, it’s deeply introspective. All of these people are traumatized to some degree, and all of them have had a lot of time to think about how they want their choices to define them. It may be made explicit in Eve’s early conversation with Jamie, but it’s just as true for all of them. It’s an odd thing to happen all the way in the fourth episode, but what happened here seems likely to shake out over the course of the rest of the season, from Villanelle ignoring the request that she stop traveling to Konstantin requesting an off the record kill from her to Carolyn failing to connect with her daughter and going back to work.
Of all of these, Carolyn’s is perhaps the most heartbreaking. She finally gets what she wants again, which is a return to work (and her office, wherever it is), but her personal life is a mess. It’s hard not to empathize with both her and Geraldine. Geraldine just wants her mother to comfort her during a terrible time, but she’s also asking Carolyn to grieve in the same way that she does, which is both unfair to ask of anyone and also a failure to understand who her mother is. On the other hand, Carolyn is her family. Is there not some level of responsibility on her part to try and compromise between the way she wants to handle Kenny’s death and what her daughter needs? It’s enough to make you want to scream into a pillow, but for all that this family is living in unusual circumstances, it’s the sort of troubling, impossible dynamic that is going to feel familiar to almost anyone who’s been frustrated by a family member’s refusal or inability to change. Everyone gets set in patterns with their families over the years, no matter how much they may grow or change in other aspects of their lives. These two really need a therapist to help them work through things, but undoubtedly the therapist would turn out to be a spy.
And poor Eve tries to make the healthier choice for once in her life, only to have it blow up spectacularly thanks to Dasha’s machinations. Whether clinging to her marriage with Niko was actually a healthy choice or not isn’t quite the point here—it was a gesture on Eve’s part to have things turn out differently, and now she’ll most likely get sucked back into the obsessive behavior that ruined her life for the past two seasons.
It’s also a sign that the show finally wants to move beyond the same fight Eve would have with Niko every episode, and a decisive choice to move beyond what’s come before. That shot of Niko’s phone abandoned on the bar is obviously meant as foreshadowing, but if you guessed “this leads to Dasha killing him with a pitchfork in front of Eve,” you should perhaps start doing some more gambling. Dasha getting her own vignette is surprising until you realize that she’s the one manipulating Eve, not Villanelle, for once. It’s also a step that makes a lot of sense in terms of the Twelve trying to control their own operation, although it’s just as easy to see this backfiring on them. The connection between Eve and Villanelle was still present, but it had cooled a bit. Now it’s been reignited. Which is worse for a secretive organization—Villanelle sending Eve the occasional birthday cake, or Eve hellbent on tracking down Villanelle and killing her?
Stray observations
- I looked up what a GBH charge was in the UK for you. It’s grievous bodily harm.
- I didn’t end up going into this in the recap, but I really liked the conversation between Eve and Jamie where he tells her “Do not think that you are the only self-loathing asshole in the room, ever.” I still think there’s a possibility of a romance there, but it’s also just nice to see Eve have a conversation with someone who could be her friend, and who can point out that she’s wallowing more than she should be.
- Look, I know the plot needs to move forward from here, but I would really, really love to have seen Villanelle on the Jack the Ripper tour. I just feel like we all deserve that.
- Konstantin, the first step to being a better father is not screening your actual daughter’s phone calls to go hang out with your psychopath surrogate daughter.
- I’ll miss Villanelle calling Niko “the Mustache.”
- Does Geraldine not have a job? What was she doing before her brother died?
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I realize the trendy thing is to covet Villainelle’s wardrobe, but I want Carolyn’s house.
I was just mad Carolyn was the only one who didn’t get a title card.
She most certainly did, 28 minutes into the episode.
Huh. Don’t know how I missed that. Especially since I was watching for it.
I could swear I saw one for her, as she wakened to the recording of frogs.
Her bedroom looks like it belongs on a boat.
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Reported. Thanks.
That cake!
It was pretty but fondant tastes terrible.
Had the same exact thought.
Wait, I love fondant. Why do you say it tastes bad?
I don’t know what type of fondant you have had but every type of fondant I have ever tasted was terrible.
Which one?
If it was a cake boss-type cake, then it was 80% cardboard, styrofoam, and rolled fondant (which is objectively terrible). There wouldn’t have been enough baked goods to share and Eve was right to just throw it off the roof.
I don’t trust Geraldine. I think she was working her mom for intel. And Carolyn’s spy instincts not to confide in anyone for any reason are serving her well. Poor Nico. RIP. Though I didn’t like you and for the sake of the show and the plot am glad you are dead. I would not have minded him going out less brutally though. A pitchfork! and all the leg twitching.
Isn’t she just the innocent dupe, having put Konstantin’s London bus fridge magnet up in their house?
Or is that just what she wants us (and Konstantin!) to think??
Hmm – I’ll allow it.
I have a feeling that Geraldine knows the magnet has a bug in it, but whatever her plans are they won’t be interrupted by Konstantin listening in on Carolyn, so she goes ahead and allows it.
I don’t think Geraldine’s a spy because that would be terrible writing (what are the chances of a spymaster’s daughter being a spy for the other side?). I think she’s been trying to come out to her mom but her mom’s not giving her the chance.
My working theory is that Geraldine founded The Twelve out of resentment toward her mother for neglecting her
The lady Dasha met from The Twelve is played by Camille Cottin – if anyone saw the hysterically funny French show Call My Agent in Netflix, you’ll know her as the lead, Andrea. Interestingly, she also played the title role in the French remake of Fleabag, keeping the Phoebe Waller-Bridge link going. She’s an excellent – and funny – actress so I hope she will have more to do in future episodes
I agree that calling her a “spy” seems a step too far, but I don’t believe this show would introduce a superflous emotional family character, and I definitely don’t believe they’d waste such a character on Fiona of all people. I think she folds into the Kenny of it all.
I’d be inclined to go back and watch her scenes for the first few episodes and see if any pipe was casually laid back there.
Geraldine’s dad = Konstantin?
If she had a conversation with her daughter once in a while, and if she was in a better state of mind, the subject of the refrigerator magnet would have come up and her instincts would have kicked in.
Poor Nico. RIP. I didn’t think a wet blanket could bleed like that.
I don’t remember when I started being aware of the “Innocent who got screwed” trope, but it seems that every show now has that character. It’s usually a family member. It’s, also, usually a woman that gets ”fridged” but Niko, definitely got the treatment.
Nico, that poor dumb bastard
I suspect the showrunners are leaning heavily into role reversal fridging. Bill…Kenny…Niko…
Yeah, I get more and more suspicious of Geraldine the more the show tries to paint her as just some soft girl trying to cheer up her mum. I’m not sure who she’s working for – I feel like the Twelve is too obvious – but she’s asking a lot of questions.
That garden scene while Tip Toe through the Tullips playing was iconic.
I do like the growing relationship between Eve and Jamie. Eve needs a friend and hopefully this one will fare better then Kenny & Bill (Remember him?)I would imagine that Geraldine living with Carolyn is a recent development and she had her own life elsewhere until Kenny’s death. That’s all I can think off because we saw a lot of Carolyn & Kenny (& Konstantin’s) home life last season and it didn’t include her.And bye Niko, better to die now then to suffer even more for the rest of the series.
You mean like the rest of us?
At this point, who would want to be Eve’s friend? Niko was right to try to get as far away as possible! I worry for Jamie…
Being Eve’s friend has about as bright a future as being a drummer for Spinal Tap.
I thought this was the worst episode of the series! But I’m glad there’s an argument to be made in its favor.Dislikes:-I was waiting for some payoff to the title card changes and there was none. Why change a signature aspect of the show for no reason? It seemed like something an exec recommended to make the show easier to follow. Except … this just isn’t that hard to follow. It was a check-in episode that actually announced the check-ins! And “Poland”? Nico was just in “Poland”?-Also, what happened to the opening credits? I know they moved the premiere date up but did they rush things to get there? I love this show I just … what is happening?-Why do so many scenes seem an extra few seconds longer than they have to be? I don’t need exterior car shots, extraneous entrance/exit shots, etc. Eve can’t realistically have the same rapport with the Pill people as she did with longtime coworkers, but the dialogue feels like it’s sleepwalking. Irina pops up to give some exposition? That’s it? I’d rather have her yell at him over the phone since we’ve seen her try to initiate communication many times.-I like that the twist was Dasha’s motivation but the 40 minutes in between was kind of a hodgepodge. Villanelle baking was fun but maybe I was expecting more emotion from both her and Eve after the events of the last episode?-Speculation: Villanelle kills Dasha which pulls Eve in closer and confuses her at the same time to close the season.
If this was about choices then Niko’s death is even more heartbreaking, because he was the only one here who actually made the right choice. He left, he wanted to survive. Even if Eve wants to make the same thing – survive, stay sane – she is doing this in a very egocentric way. Sure, Dasha played her with those text messages, but Eve will continue to hurt people because she refuses to be honest with herself on a deeper level. But I think it’s a game over for Eve. The old Eve is gone for good.
Villanelle also lies to herself a little bit, but she doesn’t know it yet. She is searching for power, family, anything really…Villanelle is changing, but this must be really confusing for her. How someone who can’t really connect the dots when it comes to feelings, attachemnt to another human being etc. can deal with this? Even the way she approached Eve in ep 3 – it was all about power because in her mind this should work. But it doesn’t work.
So she is like this wounded animal who thinks is on the right track to recovery, but that’s just denial, rather than a real power and recovery.
Eve got Niko killed, no matter how anyone looks at it. Of course, there would be no show if Eve had done the right thing when Niko asked her to in season 1 but it’s still a major character flaw. Also, Niko got the “refrigerator”trope treatment, as they say in the comics.
Arsehole. The word is arsehole.
I guess this review really proves how two people can view the exact same thing and reach wildly different conclusions. This was not only the worse episode of the season, it was the worst Killing Eve episode yet. Between the weird time-jumps (Konstantin goes from Moscow to London to Barcelona to London in a matter of minutes) and the jerky edits, this looked like a lame attempt at at a Pulp Fiction style of storytelling, but there’s a big difference between a 2-hr film and a 42-minute TV show. It was clunky and inept.
Niko was always a shallow, boring and static supporting character who never grew or changed or became interesting, so it was inevitable he was going to be red-shirted this season. In truth, every male on Killing Eve is extraneous and we entered the third season with the likelihood none of the male leads would survive it.
The Konstantin Deathwatch is now on the clock.
that was a good episode, but I mean Eve has forgiven Villanelle already for many awful things, I don’t feel like seeing them do the same dance again unless Eve learns quickly it wasn’t Villanelle who killed Niko, and they team up in a much more organic way than last season.
imo that’s exactly what will happen. In an episode about choices Dasha made a really bad one. She miscalculated.Because pretty important part of Eve’s connection to Villanelle is that she knows her style.
Yes, I hope she makes the connection by the end of next episode though 🙂 I’m questioning if we’re being duped to believe Carolyn’s daughter is is a spy herself, it seems too obvious and I’m curious if they are just setting us up to be as paranoid Carolyn must have to be.
My first impression was that no, she is not. But Konstantin was leaving Carolyn’s house and when C. asked her about any visitors. Geraldine lied. So Carolyn doesn’t trust her and there is no way she will let her in emotionally.KE characters are overall rather lonley people, and I think Gerladine fits in, because it feels like she is running away from something. Konstantin on the other hand as funny as he is, can be ruthless and I think he sensed Geraldine weak spots immediately. He is using her. So in my opnion poor Geraldine will very soon wake up in the middle of some big spy shitstorm.
…because if Villanelle actually wanted to kill Nico, she would have:a) Done it already at the end of last season; and / orb) Let Eve see her do it (rather than concealing herself in-the-act).
– “Get her working…without this extracurricular crap.” – excuse me!? So this what VillaneEve is to you, hot lady from The 12?
– The 12 knows that turtleneck is Eve’s signature look. LOL.
Nice touch at the end when Villanlle’s wears…turtleneck .
– Can I just say, that my grandma was always trying to scare me, in a funny way, when I had hiccups. That scene really hit home for me (minus the whole strangling).
-Respect to Owen and Dame Harriet for speaking Polish. They did decent job with not an easy language.
-That said, this was Poland from the 80s, lol
– The 12 knows that turtleneck is Eve’s signature look. LOL.
Nice touch at the end when Villanlle’s wears…turtleneck .I noticed that as well. Villanelle bringing a bit of Eve home with her to meet the family.
I had a Polish employee try to teach me some words. Wasn’t happening. The language seems to come from so low in the throat and back of the tongue that a strictly English / Spanish speaker really can’t relate to the phonetics of it. Even a simple “Czesc” never came out correctly but I couldn’t tell what I was doing wrong.
Poor Nico. was just a guy with a wife and then it turned all to shit and its not his fault
He was the innocent that got screwed. A character that seems to be mandatory in any show nowadays. Also known, as the “girl (guy, in this case) in the refrigerator”.
Yeah, but he still was a real pain in the neck.
Eves just going to fold mentally soon. They toyed with it last season but now with Kenny and Niko gone her tethers to her own humanity are gone. What does Eve have now but a psychotic connection to a psychotic.
Now, see, if THIS leading lady were to finally snap and go on an indiscriminate killing spree that left the men, women, and children of King’s Landing in her wake, I’d totally believe… Nah, still bullshit. Anywho, I do wonder what Eve’s response will be. She’s already been pretty damn low all season, and now she really has gotten her precious Niko killed. In his precious Poland, no less!She’s beyond the end of her rope, so they could go anywhere with Eve. Not King’s Landing, obviously. But pretty much anywhere else. (Yes, I’m still salty.)
I’m right there with you SayITRight. Hate to admit it but, I loved that fictional woman too much for the sting to have gone away yet.
The next Villaneve meeting is going to be spicy that’s for sure. The show is Killing eve which metaphorically weve had a front row seat too. I’m fairly certain she ends the season as a killer. There will never be enough salt for what transpired in Kings landing and what happened on that show I no longer refer to by name. So bad it retrospectively ruined the entire show even when it was great.
I think Eve killing Dasha—purposefully, not in a Villanelle-fueled frenzy—by season’s end makes sense.I applaud the series for (at least apparently) knocking it off with the queerbaiting and finally making explicit the possibility of Eve wanting in Villanelle’s twisted, murdery, eminently fashionable pants. Now it’s time to move past the killer-baiting. Is this a show that merely flirts with its likable, law-abiding protagonist devolving into death dealing? I hope not. The series is much more interesting as a study of a woman who’s been repressing her true impulses, shoving herself into as conventional a mold as possible (see: marriage to Niko), only to have that mold shattered by the psycho assassin who’s obsessed with her. The groundwork has already been laid. Well laid.
I really don’t want to see Eve step back from the edge. I want to see her cannonball off of it.
I actually laughed when I saw Poland in this episode. I’ve lived in Poland for most of my life and I haven’t seen anything like this before (I’ve always lived in the cities but still, I’ve never seen a village like that and I’m sure they stopped looking like that before I was born).
A lot of villages in Germany (both former GDR and West) still look like that, fwiw.
It’s a good thing that Dascha’s plan hinged on Eve completely freezing and not chasing after Nico’s killer like most people in Eve’s line of work would because I’m not sure how an octogenarian could outrun an even moderately fit middle aged woman like Eve.Calling it now: Villenelle kills Dascha in the finale as a romantic gesture to Eve.
My thoughts exactly.Or, Eve stabs Dasha in a bed while Villanelle shoots her from afar, launching the series on a path to endless M.C. Escher replays of the original finale.
Lots of improvisation from legendary Dasha!
But I don’t know, I mean, Eve is not a spy or special agent, she never was.
I think her paralyzing shock was understandable.
If I were Dasha I wouldn’t run. I’d hurry back around and come up the same path Eve had just walked or just hide with the pigs. Don’t forget in spite of her smoking, she is physically active whatever her age.
Eve still had about 100 feet to get to Niko and had she not collapsed her first instinct would have been to stay with Niko? Or maybe not considering she left Hugo on the floor bleeding.
Plus, wasn’t there a scene a few episodes back where Dasha is doing laps in a pool and slicing through the water like a former Olympian before stopping to smoke a cigarette? She’s a wily one, she could probably kick my ass.
I have to think Dasha was smart enough to have a hiding place/escape route planned. I was more skeptical of her ability to time Eve’s arrival with Nico working on the barn.
The change in narrative style with the overlapping timeframes and characters rather the pan location chyrons was interesting but this was a step down from last week’s episode for me. Ep3 was like classic Phoebe Waller-Bridge S1 – almost every scene having memorable lines and absurd setting – Carolyn in the bath, Villanelle and her centurion scent, the bus scene, the teddy bear shop. ‘And no talking about Stalin, that’s strictly third date stuff’.What I did like was that the show is trying to be different and change things up a bit. Nico has been a drag for a while. Definitely the Skyler White of Killing Eve. Still, at least he got a nice dramatic death 🙂
When a TV show feels the need to tell its story with multiple perspectives and overlapping timelines, it’s usually to hide a thin linear plot. This episode of Killing Eve is an example of that.What’s strange is that enough ideas and potential plots are introduced here — Eve looking into Dasha, Eve befriending Jamie, Villanelle getting info about her family, the Twelve boss — to make an above average episode, if the writers had spent a little more time on them instead of having them float around a couple of killings.
I think Geraldine is in the employ of the twelve and she killed her own brother for getting too close. It would explain his apparently relaxed stance of leaving his phone and strolling to the roof without fear.
This show has REALLY rebounded this season. Nico’s demise was incredibly well crafted and edited. Killing maids, killing Kenny, dropping babies in trash cans, pitchforks…they ain’t messing around this season.
Okay but has the video quality this season been discussed? It’s as if half the shots use motion smoothing and half do not. (It’s not my TV settings, I know how to adjust that and it’s all set and not a single other show looks like this.) I did a cursory Google search and only found that a handful of folks were tweeting about it but nobody could figure it out.
In my country I watch on HBO Go (on TV) and don’t see any change if I’m being honest. However enough people mentioned this so something is definitely up.
Is this BBCA thing or AMC thing? Or both? On which channel do you watch the show, if I may ask? I assume folks who, for example, watch on laptop or download for iTunes also don’t have this issue.
I watch on BBCA
I actually spotted Dasha in the crowd picking up Niko’s phone, so that aspect didn’t surprise me. Then once the chronology of events was put into question, I realised what was happening… But I didn’t expect it to be so swift and so, so brutal. He was just a broken man losing his life after suffering at the hands of everyone else.
That’s something this show does so amazingly well. It creates these visceral moments of helplessness and disparity sandwiched between some of the funniest character moments on TV. And even though it makes me feel these terrible feelings, I can’t help but smile that a simple TV show can invoke so many strong emotions. Wowee!
Let this be a lesson to everyone; lock your phone! Really convenient for the plot that Niko did not do that, right?
Anybody else think Niko is a victim in his relationship with Eve? After reading an EW article where show exec producer Sally Woodward Gentle is asked questions about episode 4 in it she states:
Poor Niko has had it coming for a very long time, and he’s dodged the
bullet. Eve has actually been quite vile to him for years. He’s been
desperately abused by her. She has gaslit him several timesShe also says:
There’s always been a sense that actually Niko and Eve do really, really
love each other, but have got to that point in their relationship where
they know they can never get back to how it was before.To me it did not seem that they were well suited for each other. Niko seemed to be blind to (or just not care about) Eve’s interest in the macabre unless she’s telling him how she would kill him and dispose of his body. He seemed like a regular guy who wanted his wife to be regular too and if she went off that script he was going to get hostile.From the start there seemed to be so much more to Eve than Niko cared about. He seemed to openly berate her anytime she did bring up the things that truly excited and interested her. Granted those things are weird and gross but they are still things that mean something to Eve. Doesn’t mean he’s right in putting her down for those interests.https://ew.com/tv/killing-eve-producer-shocking-niko-scene/
There seems to be a lot of anti-Niko sentiment in this comment section, which saddens me. I always thought he was a decent man who tried to support his wife without realising he wasn’t at all equipped to do so. As soon as he took that selfie with indistinct figures in the background (even if they turned out to just be cyclists), I knew he wasn’t long for this world.Line of the night for me was, “I learned a lot about Victorian gender politics.”
Niko was also a boring fuck who only gave Eve set in 2 positions (up and down), never complimented her, never made her feel sexy, beautiful or desirable, and never worked 4 it until Villanelle came along and showed Eve all things are possible with the Power of Sappho.
Feel bad 4 Niko? Not me. The Mustache is Gone and Dead and Buried and Soon 2 Be Forgotten. Works 4 me. It definitely seems 2 be working 4 Eve.
I’m banking Geraldine’s a spy for the 12 because she was jealous of her brother Kenny’s relationship with Carolyn. That would explain him dropping his guard for his visitor before taking a header off the roof. I’m guessing Konstantin is suspecting it but doesn’t want to tip off Carolyn, so he devised that rather lame refrigerator magnet ploy. And she’s gay, because she plays gay in everything I’ve seen her in so far, but I don’t think it’s a real plot point in this- just a distraction to keep Carolyn from focusing on her duplicity. Eventually Carolyn probably has to off her own daughter.
At least Nico finally has a reason for not getting a damned haircut. I haven’t been as distracted by hair until Aaron Paul showed up in Westworld with a ridiculous carrot sprouting from his noggin.
* I liked how Villanelle’s robe exactly matched her crappy cake. What are the odds of that?
* In a just world, Nico would have gotten over his unstable ex-wife and lived happily ever after with Sexy Polish Barmaid. This is not a just world.* Tiny Tim! On Killing Eve! During a murder! This makes me so happy.* Why is Konstantin so perpetually annoyed by his language-prodigy daughter? Sure, she’s annoying, but so is my son, and I don’t shun him in order to devote all my attention to a homicidal psychopath.* Poland in this series looks like I imagine Poland would have looked maybe 80 years ago. Could any Poles confirm or deny this?* The non-linear plot worked well because it’s unusual for this series and thus surprising. * Pigs are really efficient body-disposal tools. (I already knew this from Deadwood.) * I’ve been on this site for years. Why are my comments still gray?