These Drinks Is Vicious: The Killing Eve Thread

The series finale was actually the strongest episode of the season by far--there were two soundtrack choices that made me quite happy, for one thing--but it feels like too little, too late. Getting Eve and Villanelle together only highlights how much stronger the season would have been if they'd been given more screen time together. And for a show has consistently handled queerness without the usual bullshit, it was really disappointing to see the series conclude with two particularly musty homophobic tropes: the psychotically obsessed lesbian (Gunn), and the bury-your-gays conclusion.

Watching the finale made me feel confident that quitting after season 1 was the right decision. Performers are still good but the writing seems like active sabotage.

I don’t know what the other writers were like on the first season, but every season since has seemed like… stuff just happened and characters seem to care, but maybe not? It might be my reading of it, but the ongoing events just seem ephemeral and I’d have to attempt to remember what happened when I started the next.

If I binged it, maybe it’d have been more connected? I can reduce an entire season’s plot summary to five bullet points or less, which is fine if there’s a lot of internal character work, but I didn’t get that.

Conceding that I haven't gone any farther than I noted above--first couple of episodes into this season (looking forward to those musical cues crypto mentions)--with both this and The Handmaid's Tale (and Mr. Robot to an extent, and probably lots of shows), it just feels like they weren't meant to go beyond a couple of seasons. But they caught on immediately because of strong first seasons, which cornered them into an extended stay--I'm sure it's hard to walk away after all that flurry of attention and awards.

The opposite of Mindhunter, which should have kept going but left so much hanging.

When the tv series started it was a Phoebe Waller Bridge writing project based on a successful book series. Then she dropped away from writing and became a producer I think. I enjoyed it for the most part but do wonder how it would have fared if she had remained writer.

somewhere around the end of season 2 I started to just find the actual plot machinations incomprehensible.

The machinations were not a problem for me until the show started caring more about the incomprehensible plot than the characters (so, Season 4).

I'll analogize a point I've made before in this thread. The biggest mistake was trying, bit by bit, to make Villanelle more likeable...I'll stop short of saying they tried to "humanize" her, but they did methodically soften the nasty edge. It reminds me of what they did with Carroll O'Connor on All in the Family (and especially moving into his spin-off show): they tried to make him lovable. Early on, the character's racism was front and center, and you had to gauge how you felt about the rest of him in relation to that.

Alf Garnett was a working class icon apparently. I think it was said that he became far more popular and was taken more seriously or at least sympathised with much more than intended. People taking his political stance as something to copy etc. So not sure to what extent he was rewritten in transatlantic translation.
I have read that one has to make even the worst character sympathetic to some extent or one will just not care what happens to them. Not sure how much control one has over audience interpretation.
Archie Bunker just being the same character in US remake of the show etc.

So reception must have been different , though I thought Bunker had similar unintended support for what was intended asa satirical character. Buut why you would need to sweeten him for public consumption I don't know,.
I do remember an American I was talking to in the late 80s bewailing the addition of unconvincing happy endings as a Hollywood trope around then which is presumably years later. Can't have the audience feeling bad after all.

My impression was that neither character seemed much different from where PWB left them at the end of Season 1. And that they can both act their socks off, but don't have much chemistry together because their relationship doesn't make much sense + Eve's "messiness" seems like a convenient way to lampshade a motiveless character

I want to read the source novels to see if that makes any more sense there. & see what has changed.

Jeez this final season was bad. I agree with cryptosicko that the finale was the best episode of this bunch but mostly made me wish Eve and Villanelle had been working together all season. Instead we got a whirlwind of underdeveloped, confusing plotlines and characters. Feel like the writers threw in every idea they could so that you didn't think too hard about the show having no purpose anymore

the dancing / killing montage was the best thing all season, everything else was just background tv

but generally i'm just glad i don't have to watch it any more

I watched this as a conpletist, but series 4 was at least 6, probably 7 episodes too long. There were fun bits, like the Jesus stuff, but they didn't contribute to the plot. Even the whole Pam thread, which went on forever, was entirely superfluous and could have been resolved in less than 10 minutes of screen time using existing characters.

I quite liked that actress in We Are Lady Parts but Pam is so superfluous to the story and not very well- defined. And then they introduced yet another barely-characterized female assassin! at some point, it becomes funny how bad it is