“I Don’t Want to Be Free” – aired on May 20, 2018
Writer: Rob Williams
Director: Damon Thomas
Grade: 4,5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Phoebe Waller-Bridge and writers have taken us on an exceptional ride since the season began seven weeks ago, and the road continued to get rockier with episode number 7. Nothing is what it seems, and nobody is who they appear to be – except one, more on that shortly. One delightfully executed revelation after another keeps us guessing, not about who the killer is or why the killing takes place, as is the case in most spy thrillers or crime series, but rather about the dubious nature of the pursuers.
As far as penultimate episodes are concerned, you will not find a much better one than “I Don’t Want to Be Free.” It’s not pitch-perfect but it mobilizes all the uncertainties accumulated about the show’s main characters over the six previous episodes, and sets the stage for the season finale that has the potential to go in several different directions.
The most noteworthy shift over the course of the last few episodes is the degree to which the relevance of Villanelle’s identity seems to have diminished. For weeks, many fans of the show obsessed over who she truly is, the place where she comes from, and the reason why she has turned into psychopathic killer. However, by doing so, we may have underestimated her candidness while overrating the intentions of the other characters.
Villanelle is the only character who has remained loyal to her original persona. She is essentially transparent in what she does and in what drives her. She embraces her job, she talks about it with others, and she announces to her victims that she is about to kill them (she did it again in this episode). She certainly lies less than all the other main characters and she does not even worry about showing her face in crime scenes or to the people pursuing her.
She is truly emerging as the only forthright character in the show, so to speak. As viewers, in some bizarre way, we may connect with her simply because she is often in the dark about the people surrounding her, in the same way that we feel when we see them on screen. Take Konstantin, for instance. We learn about Konstantin’s hidden identities and true purpose at the same pace as Villanelle does. Remember when she asked him at the end of “I Have a Thing About Bathrooms” about his connection to The Twelve? We were probably wondering the same thing ourselves.
Villanelle’s instincts did not betray her. Konstantin is a shady character. He has his finger dipped in every sauce laid out on the figurative table and seems to know everyone sitting around it. He apparently (and masterfully) juggles different identities. He is Villanelle’s handler, a member of Russian intelligence, Carolyn’s contact person in Russia and, it appears, her outlet for sexual relief.
Speaking of Carolyn, she carries quite a few secrets too. She emerges as a double-spy, slash, traitor, slash, high-ranking member of a secret society, slash, je ne sais quoi. Eve, for her part, may not be as skilled as Carolyn and Konstantin in carrying secrets, but she has shown a number of times that, as long as ends justify the means, she is willing to lie, scheme, put her colleagues in harm’s way, or spy on her boss based on flimsy conjecture (that she turned out right at the end does not erase that fact).
And let’s not spare Kenny either who is, for some reason yet unknown, helping Eve spy on his mother to whom he refers to as “Carolyn.” Have I missed something there? He shares with Eve, his mother’s old photos “hidden in a safe behind her bookcase at home.” He also shows her, Carolyn’s “filthy” private correspondence with Konstantin from the late 1970s, that includes the term “butterfly bead.” Kenny says he “decided not to google that.” I concur with him.
As noted before, Villanelle is the only one without a second skin to peel away. Her true self is on display, as disturbing as it may be. She is an undeviating assassin surrounded by fake people. Even her new cellmate Inga (Emily McIllwraith) is a fake. She feigns being catatonic, with a razor hidden in her mouth, waiting for the opportunity to kill Villanelle. Instead, it’s Villanelle who eliminates her by puncturing her jugular vein with her teeth in a spectacularly filmed scene by director Damon Thomas.
By the time the episode ends, it behooves us to relegate our obsession with Villanelle’s identity to a secondary role and pose pertinent questions that point to everyone else. Who really are these people? Who really are The Twelve?
In the meantime, we finally get to meet Anna (Susan Lynch) and learn the details of Villanelle’s back story. Our assassin was an orphan who became fixated on Anna, her French instructor. Anna was her first love, it seems, and her obsession grew to the point where she ended up cutting off the husband’s penis, believing that Anna was staying with him only because he had one. That is why she was imprisoned. Coming up with a backstory as bland as this one must not have required too much brainstorming in the writing room, I presume. Then again, it fits the idea that, at this point, we should be more concerned with everyone else instead of Oksana’s origins.
There are some great dialogues, again, notably the one that kickstarts the episode when Eve and Carolyn run into each other in the morning at Hotel Atlasov where they are both staying. Carolyn certainly acts at first like she was caught with her hands in the cookie jar. Eve can’t help but wonder why her boss is wearing the same clothes as the day before or where she was coming from right at that moment. She literally asks these questions to Carolyn who, in exquisite style, ignores them and goes on with her own narrative.
Dialogues between these two have truly become the cornerstones of Killing Eve’s “verbal excellence” and this one is no exception. For another example, see the “determined face” back and forth that takes place few minutes later. Sandra Oh and Fiona Shaw deliver their lines so efficiently that we get fascinated not only by the relevant information revealed in them, but also by the dry humor that they unleash upon our senses.
There are a couple of other scenes involving the two of them, one in which they are with Konstantin, the other with Kenny. The former clearly announces the hostility between Konstantin and Eve, the latter shows for the first time that Carolyn is getting annoyed with Kenny and Eve. When Eve reminds her that she was the one who assigned her the task of finding Villanelle, Carolyn responds in a chilling tone: “Yes. And I can take it away.” She is even more dismissive with Kenny: “Go back to London. Traveling makes you rude.” Eve and Kenny are, of course, not going anywhere.
Villanelle is eventually rescued while being transported with Agniya (the inmate she befriended in last week’s episode as part of her plan to kill Nadia) by a man named Anton (Andrew Byron). It is not clear how this was executed since we only see things from Villanelle’s perspective during the frantic scene. Anton rides a motorcycle and one of the guards in the vehicle is his ally. Somehow that results in a three-vehicle accident involving the prison van and police cars. Bunch of officers are killed in the process. We only know this because that is what Villanelle sees when she walks out of her prisoner transportation vehicle. For good measure, the guard also kills Agniya, the cancer-stricken inmate who is confused and says, “I don’t want to be free.”
Anton takes Villanelle to an abandoned building to inform her that he is her new handler. He is arrogant, irritating, and he talks in a truly patronizing tone throughout the conversation. It becomes quickly obvious that he is nothing more than a plot device, and a poorly written one, frankly.
In one of the dumbest moves of all times by any villain in the history of TV shows, Anton points a loaded gun at Villanelle for a few seconds – as if that were supposed to startle her, it does not – before arrogantly smiling and handing it to her. It’s the gun that she is supposed to use to carry out her next job, which is to kill Konstantin (apparently, he has also become a nuisance to the powers that be).
Villanelle smiles back and asks Anton “are you always like this?” Then, she shoots him, naturally. Anton was evidently the only individual on earth who did not consider that to be a possibility. He duly joins Frank in the ranks of buffoons that make you wonder how they reached their positions in their respective organizations with such low IQs.
It’s the only portion of the hour that stumbles a bit. Once it’s over, we enter the second half of the episode which almost entirely consists of Eve’s visit to Anna and Villanelle’s visit to Konstantin. Eve learns all kinds of details about Villanelle/Oksana’s past through Anna. She also feels obligated to reveal to her, for her own protection, that Oksana is not dead and that she is currently in Moscow. She also realizes that Konstantin was the one who lied to Anna about Oksana being dead. I already told you above that Konstantin had his finger dipped in every sauce possible, remember?
But guess what? The bearded jack of all trades is also in trouble himself…
All cards are laid on the table as Villanelle breaks into his house and holds him at gunpoint when he arrives, claiming that she is also keeping his family “in a cupboard somewhere.” They may get to live if he dies.
Throughout this scene, Villanelle stays true to her nature, she hides nothing. She tells Konstantin that “they” want him dead. When he asks who told her that, she answers, “Anton.” When he asks where Anton is, she replies, “he is dead.” She even confirms to Konstantin that Anton gave her the assignment to kill him. When Konstantin asks what she wants, she replies “I want to do my job.” It means Konstantin must “go.” Villanelle offers no lies, keeps no secrets. Compare that to Konstantin who, held at gunpoint, still tries to scheme his way out of trouble. He does get away at the end, somehow. Never mind his family, I guess.
The episode ends with what is supposed to be a big twist involving Carolyn. Personally, I was not nearly as shocked as I would have been, had that twist taken place two or three episodes ago. By the end of “I Don’t Want to Be Free,” however, there was no revelation about Carolyn that was going to surprise me.
A very promising season finale awaits us and last Sunday’s episode, through solid scripting, excels in building a plausible foundation for it. Outside of the questionable Anton scene, nothing is pedestrian or rushed here. I also applaud writer Rob Williams and Waller-Bridge for not ending the penultimate episode by signaling a season finale that focuses solely on a Villanelle-Eve showdown. It would have been a trap, in my opinion, to reduce so many complex plots and expertly written characters to a season finale that features a prolonged duel of some sort between the two.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adored their face-off in episode 5 – see my review – and I don’t mind seeing some more of that next Sunday. It is refreshing, though, to go into the season finale knowing that there will be more substance to it than just the synergy between Eve and Villanelle.
Until next episode…