So in the end not really surprising that Zhilina still looks like a skater from Tutberidze school, however scores are already getting lower and there are some politics behind that.
How are Zhilina's scores getting lower, exactly? Last season she scored 183, 191, 166, 168, 167, 173. Now she scores 196, almost 197, her best ever.
PCS comparison to the 191:
Last season: SP 25.06, FS 58.13
This season: SP 29.46, FS 59.61
Well would you look at that, you're... Completely wrong!
Further, it's completely inaccurate to compare event to event, scoring in events tends to vary wildly. Instead you should look at something like her distance from Akatieva, where she now is far closer than she was before. In fact, Veronika routinely got very low PCS last season.
Also, by the way, this would be the Moscow cup in the fall, right? This very competition is NOTORIOUS for having extremely low and strict scoring. Having PCS of ~30, ~60 is very unusual. Let's remember Kostornaya to start the 17-18 season(before her JGP debut) skated clean here and scored 184.05. Her first JGP was 197. The usual SP PCS for JGP contenders in this competition would be around 25.