Killing Eve episode 5 review: I Have a Thing About Bathrooms

Killing Eve brings its cat and mouse leads together for the first time in a tension-filled hour that makes us wonder what these women really want.

Killing Eve dumps a surprising amount of information on viewers in its fifth episode. We learn that master assassin Villanelle used to be a woman named Oksana. She works for a shadowy organization known only as The Twelve. And she has a dark past, which involves a previous imprisonment in Russia for killing a man we all have to assume sexually violated her in some way. (She cut his genitals off when she killed him. There are probably other ways to read that move, but Occam’s razor suggests only one.) Elsewhere, we learn Frank’s reasons for turning traitor. And we find out that computer whiz Kenny is actually Carolyn’s son.

Yet despite all of this, “I Have a Thing About Bathrooms” spins around one specific axis. It’s the episode in which we finally see the long-awaited meeting between Eve and Villanelle. Technically, the two women meet twice in this episode, and both interactions are intriguing, but it’s the second sequence — a tension-filled meal in Eve’s home — that everyone will be talking about this week.

Villanelle and Eve have crossed paths before, including in the series’ first episode. But this is the first time they’ve met both knowing who the other is. And it’s more than worth the wait.

Eve’s sudden decision to stop the car and confront Villanelle is simultaneously bold and breathtakingly stupid. There’s tremendous bravado in her assertion that Villanelle is waiting specifically for her. (As if that somehow means she won’t hurt her.) Eve’s profiling instincts turn out to be correct, but there’s no particular reason they should. She basically just gets lucky, but it somehow feels like brilliance. (Even though we all know that confronting a professional assassin of Villanelle’s caliber without so much as a handgun is a ridiculously bad move.)

Eve’s increasingly erratic behavior is a subplot that Killing Eve has yet to fully address. For the moment, at least, the show seems more interested in interrogating Villanelle’s obvious boredom with her life and chosen profession. She’s becoming sloppier at her work. She makes ever more dramatic kills. Her crime scenes are a mess. (She doesn’t even bother to make sure Nadia is dead!) Worst of all, she leaves DNA evidence all over a suitcase of clothes she sends to an MI-5 agent. That is hardly the behavior of a woman worried that she’ll get caught. Instead, Villanelle seems primarily concerned with showing off. If anything, she likes Eve because she likes a challenge. The one person who appears capable of seeing through her must be a worthy opponent. Right?

As Villanelle finds Eve more and more intriguing, Eve seems to be spiraling further into a similar obsession. The sequence in which she unzips the suitcase Villanelle sent her — just back from the crime lab, no less — and starts trying on the designer clothes inside, is nothing short of shocking. As she models a fancy party look, complete with high heels and a splash of “La Villanelle” perfume, we’re left not entirely knowing how to feel. It’s an uncomfortable new way to look at the woman we thought was our heroine.

When she lets her hair down — literally, because Villanelle told her back in the series’ pilot she should wear it like that — we can see that Eve is seeing herself in a totally new way. She clearly finds the version of herself presented through Villanelle’s eyes extremely appealing. Why? It seems as though some part of Eve wants to be that woman Villanelle sees: Exciting, dark, sexy, maybe even dangerous.

We’ve seen throughout this season that something is missing in Eve’s life, whether it’s an unfulfilling professional life or an unsatisfying marriage. In many ways, she wants to be challenged in the same ways that Villanelle does, only with less overt bloodshed.

By the time Villanelle breaks into Eve’s apartment and informs her that she wants to be part of the world’s most awkward dinner date, the question of whether introducing these two this early in the show would kill the tension between them is a moot point. If anything, it amplifies it.

Sure, Eve’s in legitimate terror for a life in a way that she wasn’t during their initial encounter on the road. But to us as viewers, it seems less necessary for her to be. Their conversation over reheated shepherd’s pie is both thrilling and surprisingly charming.

Killing Eve is incredibly skilled at mixing the mundane with the horrific, in varied and effective ways. As tears run down Eve’s face, she still performs the required role of domestic hostess. (She apologizes for microwaving instead of using the oven). Villanelle seems as interested in the small details of Eve’s life — whether her sweater set is one garment, for example — as she does in her assassin hunting profession. Yet, the tension between the two women feels almost unbearable at times. Even when she’s being a super polite guest, it’s impossible to forget what Villanelle is… and what she’s capable of doing, with a smile on her face.

Still, Villanelle and Eve’s dinner reads as nothing so much as a date. And perhaps we’re not applauding this show enough for playing with our expectations this way. Though it is clearly a spy versus spy drama, it’s also a twisted sort of love story. Eve and Villanelle’s attraction to one another may not have crossed a line into physicality yet. (Yet is the key word here, however.) But there seems to be no doubt this is some kind of romance.

Next: Killing Eve: We need to know more about Villanelle's past

Their dinner together brims with all sorts of tension, one of which is clearly sexual. (The moment Villanelle sniffs Eve’s neck! Whew!) Therefore it’s impossible not to wonder: When Eve threatens to track down and kill the thing Villanelle loves most? What if that thing is Eve herself?