Summary
Rhiannon becomes more comfortable with the idea of being a murderer in Sweetpea Episode 2, and chooses her next “deserving” victim on a whim.
After the premiere of Sweetpea, I made a pretty long list of Rhiannon’s potential victims. For now, that list may still be accurate, and there are several entries — like Julia! — that I’d consider to be virtually guaranteed. But Episode 2, “This Sort of Thing Needs Some Feminine Energy”, throws a couple of curveballs, and Rhiannon targets another random guy quite on a whim.
But the signs are there — this is a serial killer in the making and no mistake. A good chunk of Episode 2 is devoted to Rhiannon trying to cover up the evidence of her first murder, then her rationalizing it by going out of her way to prove that her victim deserved it. This is clearly the metric she’s going to use from this point; the guy she kills at the end of the episode is the bloke who was snapping his fingers in the hospital where her father was dying, whom she spotted behaving the same way in the pub.
The Cover Up
Rhiannon’s evidence-destroying techniques aren’t great at this stage. When she wakes up in the morning feeling very well-rested – a few people even comment on how attractive she looks – and she initially thinks that the murder the night before was just a dream. But the bloody clothes and knife in the bathtub say otherwise.
After putting the clothes in the washing machine and the knife in a pot on the hob, Rhiannon goes to work. She spots police gathering around the canal and starts getting involved in the office speculation, trying to ingratiate herself into the investigation to help redirect the scent (and determine if she made the right decision.)
Initially I was alarmed at how much Rhiannon was drawing attention to herself, but then I remembered that’s the point. Nobody notices her. Nobody thinks it’s weird that she’s contributing theories about the crime that the police haven’t confirmed yet, since nobody pays much attention to the fact she even exists.
Rhiannon Makes Her Presence Felt
This is one of the themes of Sweetpea Episode 2. As well as covering up her own tracks Rhiannon clearly feels emboldened by having taken her life into her own hands, and this manifests as her taking charge of the paper’s coverage, finessing an excuse for her and AJ – who remains a potential victim but is becoming, in the meantime, a love interest – to visit the family of her first victim, Ryan.
By snooping around, Rhiannon discovers that Ryan had a restraining order against his former employer and used to relentlessly bully and torment one of his colleagues. This is music to Rhiannon’s ears since, through this, she determines that Ryan did indeed “deserve” what happened to him. Since she was also horrifically bullied, she knows how it feels to be victimized. She is casting herself as a kind of avenging angel fighting the fight of the downtrodden.
Rhiannon’s meddling doesn’t backfire the way you’d think. In fact, she gets some credit for the subsequent negative article about Ryan that the paper publishes, and even gets invited by Norman to hang out with the entire gang at the pub after work. That little bit of praise goes a long way. By the time Rhiannon is performing karaoke, you can tell she’s feeling herself.
Who’s Next?
Despite being thrown for a loop by the presence of the police in the pub, Rhiannon determines her next target quickly – the obnoxious guy from the hospital who’s in there clicking his fingers at the bar staff. She follows him out, lures him to a quiet area, and stabs him to death. It’s much more calculated and efficient than her previous encounter.
On the way home, Rhiannon stares meaningfully at a billboard advertising Julia’s real estate business, so it’s easy to assume she’s next on the list, especially since Rhiannon had to rush home at one point earlier in the episode so Julia could passive-aggressively tour her late father’s house. But spare a thought for Craig, who keeps badgering Rhiannon about trying to buy her father’s business. He’s putting himself in a dangerous position too.
