Killing Eve “I’ll Deal With Him Later”

Wait…is this show a dark comedy?  I really can’t tell at this point.

I’m fine with that if it is.

I’ll say this for Killing Eve:  it doesn’t waste time.  I’ll chalk that in part up to the fact that this is British television, and they tend to limit their series/seasons to a relative handful of episodes, at least compared to American television.  I meant, Gotham was doing 22 or so episodes per season.  That show moved fast for very different reasons.  That reason being mostly because it was insane.  Killing Eve has to set up the two characters that are going to be locking horns, particularly since the pair knows each other’s face and general existence by the end of the episode.

The less compelling (but still entertaining) of the two is Eve.  She spends the episode putting a team together at MI6 made up of former co-workers at MI5, and they’re basically set up in a dingy room with a computer guy and basically, the episode showcases how her hunches and intuition, for lack of a better word, lead her to answers.  She knows that the killer is the key to her bosses, whoever they are and whatever they are trying to accomplish by killing seemingly random people across the globe.

Case in point:  Villanelle murders some guy in Bulgaria in the cold open, and even she says she isn’t sure why.

However, the portion of the episode about Villanelle says a lot about her, and what it says is she’s probably a psychopath.  At the very least, death doesn’t bother her.  Now, if this was the standard serial killer sort of character, like Dexter, I’m sure I’d be seeing all kind of stalking and killing as she comes across as a single-purpose, focused killer who only wants to obey her darker instincts.  Fortunately, that’s not the case because, in part, Dexter sucked.

However, what I do see is Villanelle’s handler Konstantin wants her to take a break.  She’s stationed in Paris right now.  Why not rest for a bit?  She didn’t exactly pass her psyche eval with flying colors.  Heck, Villanelle even goes on a date with an artist neighbor named Sebastian.  He seems friendly.  Sure, she seems mildly disinterested, but that boob bought the lie that’s she’s trying to sell perfume of her own design.

Said perfume is used to assassinate her next target by mixing in a nerve agent at a political fundraiser.

I’m beginning to think VIllanelle doesn’t know how to relax.  Or this is what she finds relaxing.  Either could be disturbing.

But not as disturbing as the nonchalant reaction she gets when she sees Sebastian accidentally killed himself with her perfume.

Please don’t make this show another Dexter…

As it is, while Eve has to actually do some work and make a guy sweat over nonexistent surveillance footage to get a face, Villanelle learns about Eve from Konstantin because there’s a mole in the organization.  So, it’s the computer guy, right?  I mean, the other options are someone else from Eve’s team, unlikely since they literally just arrived, her new boss Carolyn, or Eve herself.  And Eve seems…not the type.  I mean, the other option is there’s some character I haven’t seen yet spying on everyone on behalf of the Russians.  Since they seem to be Russian and all.  Are they Russian government or something else?  I don’t know that I know.  Or if I was told, I forgot.

I’m mostly just glad I’m not one for perfumes.