“Still Got It” – Aired on May 3, 2020
Writer: Elinor Cook
Director: Miranda Bowen
Grade: 4.5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
“Still Got It” is yet another strong entry to season 3, once again challenging viewers to adapt to the shift in tone and style in comparison to the first two seasons, and doing so even more unabashedly than any the previous three outings did. Showrunner Suzanne Heathcote and the writing room are taking risks, and you better not get left behind.
Sure, you may have already noticed from the first three episodes that the narrative no longer operates within the narrowly confined parameters of the two leads, while the rest of the characters merely contribute as figurants. Sure, characters other than Eve and Villanelle now get regular chunks of minutes per episode dedicated solely to them. Sure, the quirk-o-meter keeps climbing higher. Heck, we even had an opening-credits theme appear out nowhere for the first (and only) time in “Management Sucks.” So, yeah… it is not as if you have not noticed the changes…
But “Still Got It” takes a step further by bluntly plonking that reality in front of the viewers, explicitly integrating those shifts in question into visual and narrative cues. It is non-linear in structure, featuring not one, but two stories told in circular time, one embedded into the other, mind you? It shows in big letters the names of the characters on whom the scenes center and not the locations where they take place as has been the case in the past. Its color correction and frame editing are quite distinct. It showcases two adult women behaving like toddlers high on sugar (or insane-asylum regulars, take your pick) for almost a minute before the obligatory at-least-one-per-episode murder quota by Villanelle is fulfilled (hey, at least some things remain the same). Major characters rival Candide or Odysseus with the frequency and celerity of their travels from one geographical location to another. The only one not traveling does not appear until late in the episode, and when she finally does, she remains on screen for four successive scenes lasting six minutes. In short, “Still Got It” represents the unapologetic confirmation of season 3’s sui-generis nature, in terms of style and storytelling.
In case you have not read my past reviews and think that I am pointing out the above to criticize the show, allow me to state unequivocally that, halfway through the season, I find this Heathcote-led version of Killing Eve absolutely fantabulous. The entertainment value is high. Having settled into their roles, the cast members appear to genuinely have fun performing. More importantly, the threat of lapsing into redundancy in the name of combing through every strand of the old formula is dexterously thwarted. Well done, dear showrunners.
The hour begins with Niko in the countryside of Poland, settled into the routine of daily life in his hometown. He is delivering bread to an old woman named Milena (Anita Poddebniak) who is happy to see him “make it home” where he belongs. He is later having a beer at the local bar when he notices a slew of texts from Eve wanting to talk. He leaves his phone on the bar as he gets pulled off his seat by the locals for a group toast, allowing a mysterious woman nearby (okay, not-so-mysterious if you look closely, it’s Dasha) to snitch his phone and leave the establishment without anyone noticing.
Back to London where Eve wakes up on the couch at the offices of Bitter Pill. She smashes her covers behind the couch in the most unsanitary way possible before getting up and spending the rest of the working day sporting a foul odor and munching on Bear’s Coco Pops, not to mention her panties peeking out of her pant leg. Okay, I’ll stop. She did, after all, brush her teeth (!)
It also happens to be her birthday, not that anyone at Bitter Pill knew until a birthday cake is delivered in a box. A smile forms on Eve’s face as she realizes that Villanelle must have sent it. She opens the box on the roof and finds the cutest birthday cake inside, in the shape of a London double-dutch bus. Then, Eve suddenly turns angry (I’ve heard at least four different theories as to why), hurls the box down from the side of the roof in a fit of rage, and watches the cake get splattered all over the ground in the parking lot below, much like Kenny did, I presume, when he fell (or, was chucked down) from the same spot. Maybe Eve also thought of Kenny at that moment, because her expression of anger turns to shock and regret as she stares at the smashed cake on the ground below.
Sprinkling the eccentric sequence above are ephemeral moments of plot sobriety, such as Eve finally receiving text replies from Niko (or, so she thinks) accepting her request to talk. There is also something familiar, Eve claims, about the crime-scene photo on Bear’s computer of the murdered political agitator in Girona, Catalonia (Villanelle’s spice-shop victim in “Slowly Slowly Catchy Monkey”). The way her face is upturned and buried under a sand of paprika reminds Eve of a murder in Russia that was never solved, one where a young gymnast preparing for the Olympics was found dead in a similar position in the locker room, covered in hand chalk (seen in the cold opening of season 3).
Shortly after the cake’s demise, Jamie joins Eve on the roof to inform her that she cannot be “camp out” at the office. Next thing you know, she is a temporary guest in his house, which leads to a brilliant dialogue between them over a couple of bottles of beer. It starts with Jamie chuckling at Eve obsessively looking at her phone and behaving, according to him, “like a sad teenager, waiting for a ‘like’ on Instagram.” Eve soon strikes back with a derogatory remark of her own, thus launching a verbal duel of mine-beats-yours in terms of having a “chequered past.”
It begins benignly with Jamie citing taking a piss in the shower that morning and Eve admitting to never having bought The Big Issue, but quickly escalates into a series of severely grave confessions, with Jamie ultimately coming out on top when he mentions his best friend dying on the drugs provided by him. The broader lesson, courtesy of Jamie: “Do not think that you are the only self-loathing arsehole in the room, ever,” and “it’s all about choices.” Frankly speaking, the excellence of the scene rests less in the content of the dialogue (we already knew about Eve’s bad deeds) than Sarah Oh and Danny Sapani’s outstanding deliveries of their lines.
On the following day, Bear shows Eve the photo of the gymnast killed in 1974 that he found in his research. There was never an arrest made but Eve believes that attaching an identity to the killer in Russia four-plus decades earlier may lead them to the copycat killer in Girona, and to the Twelve. Eve is distracted though as she keeps receiving texts from “Niko” (wink, wink). He must be insisting on her coming to Poland to have their talk because, just like that, Eve drops the conversation with Bear and Jamie in midstream, grabs her purse, and exits the office reminding Jamie with a smile, “Choices, It’s all about choices.”
She is Poland next, surprising Niko who appears to be repairing Milena’s barndoor when Eve arrives at the entrance of the property and waves at him. Niko looks oddly stupefied though, as he waves back at her. The rest of the episode establishes, in a long-winded flashback, that Niko had no idea about Eve’s arrival, and that those texts were sent by Dasha who nicked his phone in the opening scene in order to execute her far more sinister plan.
The satisfying part in all this, story wise, is that when the camera cuts to Moscow for the next scene with Konstantin and his daughter – welcome back, Irina! –, viewers are unaware that a flashback has begun. The pay-off is well worth it as we discover, one scene at a time, the intricacies that took place within the previous 24 to 48 hours (I reckon), until the moment of Eve’s handwave to Niko at Milena’s place. That does not even include the eleventh-hour shocker, instigated by Dasha who, unseen in that initial hello scene, was lurking a few meters away from Niko, holding a pitchfork.
Having failed miserably in his efforts to convince Irina that he was not “full of shit” and that he had “a plan,” Konstantin returns to London in hopes of faring better with Kruger’s widow, played by Rebecca Saire (familiar to fans of BBC’s Vanity Fair from the 80s). She is “in such a muddle” in the aftermath of her husband’s murder that she cannot stop shaking and choking as she talks. Needless to say, Konstantin’s theatrical act (Kim Bodnia’s expressions are a delight to watch here) of the ‘concerned friend’ works wonders.
Charles left his wife an email with an attachment that she is supposed to forward to someone. He also mentioned something about a large sum of money that went missing and that “he’s worked out who’d taken it.” She will forward the email to Konstantin instead, and move to their family holiday house for safety reasons, because Konstantin the concerned friend advises her to do so while cupping her hands in his for comfort!
Next destination in Konstantin’s journey is Barcelona where he startles Villanelle in the street while she is staring at a store window. The next cut shows Villanelle in her lavish mansion dancing and baking a cake, which is in fact the beginning of the second, and shorter, flashback submerged within the prime one already in motion. Dasha stops by with good news. “They” are ready to meet Villanelle for a new contract. Villanelle is ecstatic to hear about the possible promotion and her ensuing triumph dance by herself after Dasha leaves is probably more delightful than any that you and I have ever attempted on our own, but don’t care to admit. She goes out shopping to further celebrate her joyful mood but Konstantin cuts it short by startling her in front of a shop’s window. There! We are now caught up with the prime flashback.
He needs a personal favor from Villanelle, “off the record,” he specifies, as Villanelle echoes his words because she had evidently heard him say this before. She must eliminate the unstable, fragile Mrs. Kruger. In return, he will give her the location of her family in Russia that she had asked him to find in “Meetings Have Biscuits.” That is all the motivation Villanelle needs to fulfill her obligatory quota of at least one murder per episode, which takes place in a riotous sequence that needs to be seen rather than described.
Carolyn takes center stage in a succession of scenes focusing on Geraldine’s angst resulting from what she perceives to be her mother’s apathy toward her following the emotional suffering caused by Kenny’s death, and on Carolyn’s opportunistic nature as she makes a calculated attempt to use the recent calamities (Kenny, Kruger, her own close call with death) to her advantage during a cafeteria conversation with the annoying Paul in order to reclaim control of her office.
The final piece of the puzzle, before we catch back up with the original timeline where Eve waves to Niko, involves the introduction of a new character, an icy-toned, high-heeled, dressed-to-kill member of the Twelve (played by the French actor Camille Cottin, a star in her native country). She criticizes Dasha for letting Villanelle get distracted by Eve and wants the matter resolved because, as if it needed reminding, Dasha can only go home when the Twelve say so. Dasha proposes to kill Eve but that would attract too much attention according to Madame 12, so she tells her to “drive a wedge” between Villanelle and Eve – am I the only one who chuckled at that quote and thought, “Good luck with that”?
Apparently, part of Dasha’s plan to drive a wedge between them involves going to Poland and posing as Magda, the “oldest friend” of Milena. When Niko makes his regular bread-delivery stop and wonders where Milena is, Magda replies that her friend’s appendix got “grouchy” and that she had to go to the hospital, but that it’s “nothing serious.” She asked Magda to take care of her place and her “favourite bread man” until her return. None of it is true, as suspected. Dasha killed Milena and fed her to the pigs. Literally! Sweet ol’ Magda wonders if Niko would be gracious enough to help her with the broken barndoor. He offers to stop by the next day to fix it.
Dasha’s master plan consists of having Eve witness the brutal murder of her husband, and arranging it to look like Villanelle committed the heinous act, which brings us to the present moment as Eve waves to Niko from a distance upon arriving at Milena’s place.
Dasha first attaches a note to the pitchfork that reads, “Still Got It.” Then, in a chilling sequence during which she carefully keeps herself out of Eve’s view, she savagely sticks the pitchfork to the back of Niko’s neck, almost pinning him face-first to the barndoor while Eve, who had the widest smile on her face up to that moment, collapses to her knees in terror as she watches her husband writhe in agony on the other side of the barn and expire in a matter of seconds. The excellent camera work by director Miranda Bowen and the emotive score combine together to convey the miasmic intensity of the sequence with maximum impact.
The ending shot of the outing shows Villanelle alighting from a train in Grizmet (fictitious town in Russia) seemingly ready to meet her family.
Closing thought: I must again question the wisdom of Dasha’s plan, considering the negligible impact of Villanelle’s barbaric slashing of Bill in “Don’t I Know You?” had on Eve’s obsession over Villanelle. Bill was, after all, Eve’s most cherished friend for whom, frankly speaking, she harbored far more affection than she ever did for her husband, and even after Villanelle executed him with multiple stabs, Eve’s infatuation with her never skipped a beat.
Last-minute thoughts:
— The ‘chequered past’ duel between Jamie and Eve was a hotly contested one. I am not convinced that Jamie’s conclusive mention about his friend dying on the drugs he gave him is the worst one I heard in that conversation.
— Villanelle touches her neck anxiously for a moment as she gets off the train in Grizmet. I’ve heard several different interpretations to this, ranging from her somehow feeling Eve’s pain upon witnessing Niko get stabbed in the neck (what? telepathy?) to her feeling closer to Eve when wearing a turtleneck.
— Carolyn is surprised to see Konstantin walking along the sidewalk as she is returning home from work in a car. Curious to see the significance of that fleeting moment in future episodes.
— Irina’s diagnosis of her father during her diatribe is spot on. She is simply not buying his lies to cover up the fact that she has never been a priority for him.
— Did anyone interpret Villanelle baking a cake as her attempt at surprising Eve on her upcoming birthday, thus decisively cluing in the viewers on the fact that they are watching a flashback?
— Mrs. Kruger weeping and saying, “I don’t want to be free,” as she hugs Villanelle is an adequate nod to the title of episode 7 of season 1, where poor Agniya says the same thing before suffering a similar fate at the hands of Villanelle.
— The sound of frogs croaking to help you sleep? Carolyn sure believes in it.
— Rest in peace Niko, but I honestly did not think you would even make it this far.
Until the next episode…
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