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S3 Ep 5 “Are you From Pinner?” https://twitter.com/fleabaged/status/1337531331685675009
whore knee thought first: IMAGINE if this was instead a 45 minute bottle episode of V and Eve trapped in the same room. Fighting, fucking, screaming, accusing, and confessing. Then they part ways at the end, upset, only to realize, later on, they only trust each other now. 
NEXT: Let’s just get this out of the way right out the top. My distaste for this episode has nothing to do with Jodie. She’s a fucking incredible actress. Her performance here is the single best part of this episode. None of the critiques have to do with her. Ok? Ok.
BEFORE I BEGIN: Villanelle came onto our screens as one of the most alarming and compelling characters on modern tv. She was created and written so carefully and so thoughtfully by Phoebe. Every line in Season 1 is so intentional. Villanelle avoided overdone tropes at all costs.
I can appreciate this episodes intentions, giving a performance showcase to a great actor. But my favorite show went out of their way to give one of the most liberating once in a lifetime sapphic characters mommy issues after CAREFULLY avoiding ALL cliche tv tropes.
Season 3 already, 4 episodes in, breaks every format that came before it. It has no respect for the original tone of the show. It’s a PG rated ensemble season while it’s two predecessors are a gritty co-lead sizzling dynamic. They broke EVERY rule so far with NO regard.
To bulldoze Phoebe’s original vision of Villanelle and purposefully avoiding family backstory feels like there is zero respect for the world built in the first two years. And to break this rule for the most CLICHE mother saga is TRIPLE infuriating.
“They had to develop Villanelle in order for bridge scene to happen!” Worst take. First of all, Eve’s on that bridge only knowing that Villanelle shot her and slapped her around on the bus. They didn’t do anything for her, so yeah, they could’ve done ANYTHING ELSE w Villanelle.
I agree they needed to develop Villanelle, though. Literally I would’ve taken any other way. Dasha. Was. Right. There. Why bring in this prestigious actress and NOT USE HER. WHY 5+ family members we DONT care about? Why not use your incredible existing cast to DEVELOP V?
Villanelle HAD backstory. Nadia is backstory. Anna is backstory. Dasha is backstory. There is no shortage of backstory for this woman. But it’s clever, it avoids tropes, it doesn’t give away too much. To take a whole episode of your 8 episode season is actually insane to me.
Finally, there is so much room in this episode. They halted the entire momentum of their season to do something that could’ve occupied half an episode. All the supposed payoffs later on suffer b/c we missed out on so much of the “middle” part of the story. For dung throwing.
ALSO the whole episode we are just waiting to see What Villanelle Will Do and she DOES THE MOST OBVIOUS THING. There’s nothing surprising here!!! Not to mention THEY PUT THE MAJOR SPOILER OF HOUSE FIRE IN THE TRAILER 
ANYWAYS. These are my thoughts and if you enjoy this episode and s3 literally I love that for you b/c I LOVE to love things! But this one is just too frustrating for me. With that being said. I will now begin the episode and appreciate that At Least Villanelle Is Very Very Sexy.
ACTUALLY WATCHING EPISODE THREAD: perhaps they made this ep simply for the “Mother Russia” pun
Fuccccccck y’all remember the “Konstantin is setting her up with a fake family” theory 
FUCK that would’ve been so wild.... her anger.... her level of unhinged...
FUCK that would’ve been so wild.... her anger.... her level of unhinged...
the shirt is a sign to me telling me to fuck off isn't it
this is the woman you see who is the only person dancing to the live band at farmers markets
i appreciate even tho there is no discussion of sexuality in this episode this look is clearly a Closet Made of Glass statement outfit
in 3x03 they said she needed to find her family because knowledge = power but then she knows all of them??? has all these memories of them??? I guess the knowledge is finally confronting her mother and getting the truth, but still, like, it's weird how much she knows/ remembers
i cant stress enough how much i dont care about the sequence of conversations she has with every. single. person. in this house. THEY DON'T EVEN GO HERE!
the mom being like YAY she won and then like NO you've called her sestra im angry now. ok.
i was SO SO SO SO sure when i saw the trailer that this would be the niko/villanelle reunion LMAO. i would've liked to have seen it.
enjoying these last 10 minutes of mother/v dialogue if you use a sapphic lens and take it as heavily queercoded. def would be into that reading!
I need to kill you, I'm really sorry
^ thought it was interesting they used a similar piece of wording to the iconic song of s1
it's hard for me to grasp why she's so affected by this when s1 so clearly told us we shouldn't give a fuck about her family because neither does she, and she gave no indication ever that this was something she longed for.
ANNNDDDDD i watched that video of WAP playing over the train scene so many times that i now hear it in the episode when it's not even playing. love that for me.
even when this episode aired I still wanted the season to have a chance to finish before casting huge judgements. it wasn't until episode 6, which I fully expected to be an Eve driven episode, that my rage bubbled over and my apprehension turned to disdain. See you next time!
