TV #29 of 2021:
Killing Eve, season 2
Although the effect isn’t felt right away, this season ends up representing a major step down from the show’s electrifying debut. As often happens in such cases, a change in showrunners is likely to blame — and I wonder if the outgoing Phoebe Waller-Bridge had already begun work on the first few scripts for the year, given how they are noticeably stronger than what follows. Eventually, however, the plot becomes a complete mess, as do the basic character motivations propping it up.
I’m reminded of late-stage Orphan Black, another BBC America production which would similarly stick people in a scene together simply because they’d been a fun pairing in the past, without necessarily thinking through the implications of their respective histories or articulating a good understanding of what each might reasonably be trying to accomplish now. When you lose sense of your protagonists like that, it’s so much harder for an audience member to stay invested, or to forgive any overly-contrived story developments. (The last few rounds of Dexter come to mind as well, and not only from some hokey serial killer shenanigans.)
I’m not ready to quit this series just yet, in part because the performances are largely still entertaining, and in part because it apparently swaps head writers again after this stretch, switching from Emerald Fennell to Suzanne Heathcote next and then to Laura Neal in the forthcoming final run. It’s rare to get that sort of anthology approach to a serialized narrative — and cool that a woman is in charge every time — but I hope it also means this sophomore effort is a clumsy aberration and not a sign that the program has irreparably lost its way.
[Content warning for gore and homophobia.]
★★☆☆☆
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