Killing Eve: Season 2

I've probably talked about it before here, but one of Marissa's favorite mental exercises when she judges the relative qualities of various shows, is the DVR test. That is to say, "how long do I let this show build up on my DVR?" It's an inherently imbalanced test and it's only getting less informative. A lot of shows are better off saved-and-binged these days, and the pulpiest "comfort food" shows are going to be a lot easier to throw on every week than anything demanding a more invested viewing. Game of Thrones, for all its flaws, was the ultimate champion of this DVR test even in its later days; in eight seasons, I don't think we ever let an episode exist on our DVR for more than five or ten minutes, save for when we were on vacation.

I bring all of this up because Killing Eve is a show that should do well on the DVR test. It's pulpy, it's low stakes, and it's still relatively fresh and new after just one wildly successful season. (One of my lamer vices is compiling ranked lists form around the Internet to build "consensus" rankings every year, and Killing Eve was 2019's #3 show according to 67 critics' year-end best lists. That's huge!) And yet, it doesn't do so well on the DVR test, at all! We let the final three or four episodes of the season build up on the DVR and sit there for a few weeks, opting instead to spend our hour-long chunks of free time on, like, Jane the Virgin and The Bold Type. (Yeah, the only hour-long TV shows I watch these days have women-led target demographics, what about it?)

And it's not like the show built up on our DVR because we wanted to save it for nights where we could pay attention to it; Chernobyl passed the DVR test with flying colors and that's as intense and attentive a watch as any! Besides, we both lost the thread of the plot on Killing Eve a long time ago. We're here for Villanelle to do cold-blooded murder in kooky outfits, really.

I dunno - did anyone else feel just completely unenthused by Season 2 or was it just us? It almost seems like they ran out of story before the first season even ended, like this would have been a great miniseries or even film franchise. My prediction is that it will fall out of the Top 20 entirely in whatever 2019 critic TV ranking compilation list I make - it just seems like Season 1 was a flash in the pan!