I don’t understand the purpose of “Are You From Pinner?”, both as an episode of Killing Eve and as an episode of the series that falls so late in the show’s third season. I think I understand what showrunner Suzanne Heathcote wanted from this episode (to explore a bit more about who Villanelle was and how her past shaped her), but none of that is accomplished beyond taking the series down the well-trodden path many a story has gone down before. The revelation that Villanelle’s mother was a manipulative jerk doesn’t augment our understanding of our villain. It doesn’t make us see in her a new light. The episode doesn’t create any argument over nature vs. nurture. It’s even rather muddled in whether or not Villanelle’s recall of her mother’s actions is accurate (although her mother seems to corroborate at least some of Villanelle’s beliefs – namely that she was jealous of the attention Villanelle’s father lavished on his difficult, psychopath daughter and opted to send her to the orphanage to get that attention back on herself as much as to protect the family from Villanelle). So, if everything played out exactly how we expected it to – right down to Villanelle killing her mother – what was the purpose of it?
Well, here’s my assumption (without reading any of the post-episode interviews with the show’s writing staff, as I’m of the belief that you shouldn’t have to do outside reading to understand an episode of TV): The goal was to show us that there’s some humanity within Villanelle, seeing as she “saves” her half brother from being abused by her mother. But here’s the problem with that premise: By definition, a psychopath doesn’t have the emotional resonance to have humanity. They can imitate emotional beats to better fit in and manipulate those around them, but they don’t have genuine human emotions. With that in mind, that closing moment on the train is terrifying (which I’m not sure was the intention, but I’m giving the show the benefit of the doubt in assuming that it was). Villanelle isn’t crying because she’s sad she killed her mother; she’s crying because she wants to prove that she can cry after her mother told her she never cried as a baby. If she’s getting more adept at mimicking the proper human responses at the proper moments, that makes her all the more dangerous. We know she is already good at convincing people she’s pretty normal, but if she can get a mastery over mimicking human emotional responses, well, that puts her in another league all together. But why send Villanelle home to meet the family now?
Well, that one I can’t quite figure out. Aside from presenting Jodie Comer with a showcase episode (something that can be hard to do when the show has two equal leads), why do this episode 2.5 seasons into the show? Season three has been marked by uneven storytelling – with the series unable to figure out just what it wants to focus on. Should we care about Konstantin’s role within The Twelve? Kenny’s murder? Eve’s downward spiral? Villanelle trying to get the jump on Dasha while still trying to manipulate Eve from afar? With three episodes left, all we have are a bunch of dangling plot threads and no real forward momentum to push them to the endgame.* This is the first season where I genuinely don’t get excited at the thought of sitting down on a Sunday night to watch Killing Eve. And that’s a real bummer – especially when it’s one of the only new shows currently airing on television.
*I assume the link to everything tying up in a rather nice bow will be Geraldine, the only character we’ve spent little to no time with at this point, but who has already made it clear she’s working with Konstantin on some level.
I want the series to sweep me up in the mystery and explore the darkness within our non-psychotic characters. I want to watch Eve vacillate between her “normal” life and the dark thrill she experiences around Villanelle. I want to watch the cracks in Carolyn’s facade deepen as she struggles with Kenny’s death and whatever role her daughter might have played in it. But instead the show opts to spend an hour telling us what we all already assumed: Villanelle’s mom might not have been a psychopath, but she was a manipulative asshole. That didn’t make Villanelle into who she became, although it does give her someone to blame when she acts out. As if she needed someone else to blame for that. So, I find myself wishing that Killing Eve had simply taken it as read that Villanelle came from a shitty mother – someone she can pin things on when she doesn’t want to take responsibility for her own actions (which, of course, is all the time). It’s just unfortunate that we had to take this needless detour this late in the game.
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