Difficult Women: Why We Love KILLING EVE's Psychopath

what are you a bad person yep have you kidnapped makeup is it hard to be bad not that you'll practice Psychopaths on TV are nothing new from Tony Soprano to Walter White to Dexter Morgan a staple of the prestige TV era has been these characters with blurry morals that are difficult to root for a style that has come to be known as the difficult man as the guy who literally wrote the book on difficult men author brett martin describes this hero or rather antihero as a monster but a person that we root for and care for despite his monstrosity ultimately difficult men challenge their audience inching for bit by bit to try to find that last straw take breaking bet at every turn Walt becomes worse and worse slowly breaking down each excuse we found for him over the years until we can't pretend that he's anything but a monster but in killing Eve on BBC America the brilliant Phoebe wall average takes that challenge on from a completely new angle we follow Sandra Oh's character Eve pilaster II aboard mi5 officer who suddenly gets pulled into a case on mi6 which as the name would suggest is a bigger deal now she's chasing an international assassin across Europe who seems to be targeting high-level government figures the show just finished it's amazing first season in May of 2018 and while every bit of the show is fantastic a standout feature is its co-lead and villain the deadly assassin villanelle played by Jody comer thank you despite all the terrible things we watch bill and I'll do it can be hard to remember that she's the bad guy in the show because well she's not really like any character we've never seen before what are you doing so today that's what we're gonna look at what makes villanelle and especially intoxicating character despite being a homicidal villain and how she's different from the difficult characters we've come to know over the years warning I'm gonna be looking at villanelles actions in some detail so even though I'm not gonna give you plot specifics there are some spoilers ahead I'm Jackson and this is ideas at play before I get too far into villanelle a quick bit on killing eve we zoom out and look at the show's plot it's a pretty conventional spy thriller a lower tier government agent is brought into an off-the-books investigation it's not that each plot point the show hits is a new and exciting Bend on the genre but rather it's the way killing Eve hits them that's so refreshing every choice is made in the most eccentric way possible always finding the time and space to enjoy itself like this scene in the second episode where Eve is introduced to her new secret headquarters with her new boss Caroline Martin's I once wore red rings my kind of coat then those hams we've seen secret headquarters unveiled a million times in the genre but I'm not sure any has ever found the space to enjoy this kind of a site in the process it catches us off guard and it's this eccentric approach to every choice that's at the heart of what makes killing eve so fun and what makes villanelle so endearing she's really funny letting yourself into my apartment and drinking from a tiny cup doesn't make you intimidating by the way it's just rude villanelle is this peculiar character that's always unpredictable not just because she's a murderous assassin but because she's a child at heart she finds childlike Glee and everything whether it's faking her own death to scare her handler or celebrating a mission accomplished even the way she talks makes it hard to take her too seriously she's constantly getting distracted in the middle of conversations or even jobs just like a child with a low attention span before we going with this it gives us the sense that villanelle is really just concerned with enjoying her light she's a free spirit who doesn't really have any greater ambitions she's not concerned with who she's killing why she's doing it or the consequences in her words all she's looking for is normal stuff nice life cool flip the best shows give you a transport of experience they can make you feel like you're part of a place in killing Eve that place is villanelles mind it seems like such an interesting and frankly fun place that we want to understand it to see the world as she does and that makes it really hard to remember that she's the villain of this story but the show doesn't try to hide that fact either in the first episode alone she kills at least six people including several bystanders uses a child as an accessory to the murder of his grandfather and ruins little girls ice cream where other difficult men seem to struggle with the bad things they've done villanelle doesn't she talks to her victims cordially watches the life drained from their eyes and then goes on her merry way she just loves killing but this one has asked you know I like that breathy wants so far we've tiptoed around the elephant in the room no matter how many versions of the difficult man we've seen they're difficult men sure there have been violent anti heroines before but a lot of times they use a man to channel those violent tendencies but villanelle doesn't and she uses that difference to her advantage I said it was probably a woman Victor Kedron was a misogynist and a sex trafficker he may not have considered a passing woman a threat she must have been able to get close she leverages her beauty in the second kill as well hiding in plain sight as someone who looks like she belongs anywhere and then luring her targeting clothes other times she uses tampons as a way to divert the attention of men and uses a hug to get the details of her next mission of course her femininity is far from her only skill she's great with all manners of weaponry and is creative in her means of murder which is definitely a fun little tidbit on a resume she brings a certain flair her kills Pepin was cool her femininity definitely adds to her allure we're not nearly as used to seeing a difficult woman as we are a difficult man and that absolutely colors how we see some of her actions as she develops a crush on Eve that turns into obsession with amazing hair she steals leaves things sends her clothes and perfume follows her around and shows up in her home she's a predator playing with her food whether that's murderous or sexual burning male psychopath this behavior would be menacing and villanelles certainly is scary but at times her crush on Eve comes off almost more cute than anything else bear it down even in a scene where the threat is explicit like the first conversation that you have we focus just as much on the sexual tension and innuendo as we do on anything else [Music] villanelle is so unusually charming that we can't help but get pulled in and we're hardly the only ones one of the main themes of killing Eve is obsession Eve herself is obsessed with serial killers in general and specifically villanelle it's the reason she's brought onto the case in the first place and as Eve becomes more obsessed with villanelle villanelle becomes more obsessed with Yves Yves fascination with villanelle makes her a surrogate for the show's audience and for TV audiences at large from the very beginning she is a sort of admiration and respect for what villanelle is able to do she's a smarty the smartest of us and for that she deserves to do or kill whoever the hell she wants I mean if she's not killing me then frankly it's not my job to care anymore but beyond that killing Eve draws tons of parallels between our two main women both are women in male worlds whether it's in law enforcement or hit womaning a word I just made up they each have handlers at first both men in Constantine and Bill and then both in shadowy figures whose motives remain a mystery when Carolyn replaces bill both even villanelle are doing what they love and this showcase of similarities blurs the line between hero and villain even when we keep getting confirmation that villain L is a monster it keeps getting sucked into the villain L trap like we do with so many difficult men maybe villain L has a tragic backstory that will explain everything she doesn't and if she did it wouldn't change anything Eve and we as an audience keep expecting something in this equation to change either villain L will become less likeable and cross some kind of line or will come to understand this tortured soul and save her but killing Eva isn't interested in playing that game and has put all of its cards out of the table villanelle will always be likeable and enjoyable she can't cross the line because she's already way too far past it no I'm going to kill your dad in the face no because he's an [ __ ] and she's in a tortured soul that needs saving she's the kind of person who admires the carnage of a shootout first artistic merits instead killing Eve is more interested in making us decide rather than steer us toward a specific argument so many of the show shots linger on characters inviting us to look deeper into who they are there are a lot of theories for why we sympathize with these kinds of characters some think that it's our conditioning to relate to whoever the main character of a story is others think that it has to do with our inner and deviant desires me I think it's at least in part because we like to watch people doing things expertly there's a sort of universal respect for seeing the best in action whether it's Don Draper coming up with insanely smart ad campaigns for Walter White cooking up the purest meth in North America and because of that we want to root for these characters we'll make excuses we'll look the other way we'll hide our infatuation and villanelle is no different she's amazing at her job as heinous as it is Pulitzer prize-winning TV critic Emily Nussbaum introduced the idea of the bad fan in 2013 fans who root for these terrible people and tear down those who tried to stop them are we bad fans for falling for villanelle probably but I think that question ignores how hard the answer is here because just like Eve we can't help but be captivated by how entertaining villanelle is thank you so much for watching please like subscribe and share this video I absolutely loved killing Eve and even though it's probably not the most popular show out there I think it's probably my number 1 or number 2 of 2018 so far so I just had to make a video about it I didn't spoil the ending on purpose so if you haven't seen it I really encourage you to there's so much to love about the show beyond villanelle as always a huge shout out to my patrons on patreon who make this channel possible if you like my channel head over there and throw in a buck to help make it the best channel it can be and if you're looking for more stuff I've been recapping each episode of the him till the season over on my blog so take a gander at that until next time thanks again

Channel: Skip Intro

Views: 728,009

Keywords: ideas at play, ideas, at, play, ideasatplay, ideasatplay 2018, 2018 ideasatplay, video essay, television, tv, killing eve, killing, eve, killingeve, phoebe waller bridge, phoebe, waller, bridge, wallerbridge, waller-bridge, phoebe waller-bridge, bbc america, bbc, america, psychopath, psychopaths, difficult man, difficult woman, villain, hero, jodie comer, jodie, comer, villanelle, sandra oh, 2018, analysis, killing eve season 3 teaser, best of villanelle

Id: boEh7PekJA8

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 29 2018