I was part of the frenzy when You came to Netflix in 2018. I loved Gossip Girl and was excited to see Penn Badgley on a new show. I’m a big tv person, someone who always needs to have a show on in the background whenever I’m doing something, so I jumped on the opportunity to watch a new show. And, the feelings were surely mixed at first.
At first, I actually kind of hated it, the creepy obsessive love story, like every Rom-Com gone bad. The fact that this psychopath was being romanticized, and that the more you watched, the more you actually started to feel for Joe and for his character. He was only trying to protect Beck, right? Peach wasn’t good for her, Benji didn’t love her, he did it all out of love, which wasn’t actually love, but instead obsession. But I’m the type of person that once I start watching something, I have to see it through. Not only that episode or that season, but I also have to see it all through. I want to see the path these characters and their stories take, I want to see where the writers are going with all of this, and how it will all play out eventually.
So I watched, and I watched. Season 3 just came out, and I was kind of reluctant to watch it. Season 2 wasn’t my favorite, and it felt like they were just drawing out the storyline of the first season and trying to play on that momentum. That this story really didn’t have it in it to keep going and keep playing out, especially if Joe was going to be married. How can he find his new Candace? His new Beck? His new Love? Well, apparently Joe’s love is conditional and his crazy is just too much in another person.
While this show is insane, with Joe’s constant ability to whisk away his problems and cover up his and Love’s misdeeds, it’s crazy good. Was I sitting here wanting to scream at the tv sometimes, that sure that story sounds insane because it is but it’s true! That all someone had to do was turn around, look around a corner, be a bit more aware! I hated watching this show, being drawn in by Joe’s sad story, feeling for him for being stuck with Love, pitying Love for her loveless marriage, even cheering the Quinn-Goldbergs on to get away with murder more than a handful of times.
The insanity is part of the fun. You is unpredictable, every second of the show. You never know when someone will become Joe’s new obsession when Love’s jealousy or overprotectiveness will strike again. And the insane coverups each and every time. The simple things every character is missing, and their obliviousness to their own safety. In a time fueled by a love of true crime, and everyone wanting to be a detective in real-life cases when they occur, this show fills that feeling in part. And in a world of media where tv shows are only getting crazier, some shows are so bad we simply cannot watch them. For instance, every season of Riverdale gets even crazier and even worse than the previous one, to the point where I don’t even know who actually watches and enjoys Riverdale anymore. But You has managed to evade this. It has persevered past people thinking it is simply too crazy or too insane to be enjoyed. And maybe that’s because it feels real.
True Crime has become a love amongst Gen Z and Millenials, which was made very apparent with the recent Gabby Petito case. And the more we become fascinated by true crime, the more we realize that a show like You isn’t actually that insane. Cases happen like this all the time. We don’t want to admit that it’s real, that these things can actually happen in our lives and the lives of those around us, but it is entirely too possible.
Is You the best show out there? Not at all by far. But it’s not actually as bad as some people make it out to be. You fills so many wants of a guilty pleasure show, and satisfies a part of our curiosity and interest in true crime, with the safe thought that Joe Goldberg could never make us his next You.