When Lifetime continuously kept advertising for a new series, You, that was coming this fall, I was intrigued for a number of reasons. First, Penn Badgley plays the creepily hot stalker main character. Instead of him taking over the Upper East Side of the Big Apple, he’s working in the East Village. Secondly, it had a creative, new inventive concept; the viewpoint of a stalker who becomes a boyfriend. Excuse me, what?
Not only is it an awesome show, it’s also an incredible book by Caroline Kepnes. The second that I found out that it was a book, I needed to read it. Everyone on my Twitter feed that was watching the first episode along with me who had read the book first, was saying that it’s incredible to see it play out on screen. This was the first time in my life that I was reading a book solely from a male’s perspective and boy was I in for it. Not only was it the first time for a new p.o.v., it was also the first time that I was utterly creeped out by a book.
The character, Joe Goldberg, is one that makes you have a love/hate relationship with yourself. You secretly kind of want to root for him on certain occasions. This happens mostly in the beginning of the storyline because you don’t know much about Joe other than the fact that he is pretty much in love with Guinevere Beck, a woman that walks into his book store and automatically catches his attention. Poor Beck, if only you knew what your life would become after you walked through the F–K aisle.
Your small cheering on of Joe dies down once you learn just how much he actually is obsessed with her, thus your love/hate relationship with yourself. How can you love someone so intricately psychopathic? But the way the character is written and portrayed is literally amazing. And I mean, truly inspiring. The way that Kepnes sucks you into his mind and shows you the ropes of his justifications for unspeakable things is just mind blowing.
Each and every single week, you’re taken deep into Joe’s mind while he gets closer and closer to Beck, the aspiring writer who is strangely unaware of her surroundings for living in New York City. (Come on Beck, watch for those damn train tracks!) Of course, there is a number of occasions where you are taken into her mind to see what she is thinking, but is she ever thinking anything bad about Joe? Rarely. Is she ever on to him? Of course not; where the hell would the suspense be then?
She has some people in her ear, like her best friend Peach, played by Shay ‘Too-Gorgeous’ Mitchell, that are vocal about their suspicions of this newfound bo of Beck’s. Though of course, Joe is Joe and knows literally everything. He loves Beck and will do whatever he can do to keep her to himself because “if you don’t start with crazy, crazy love, the kind of love that Van Morrison sings about, then you don’t have a shot to go the distance.”
For two weeks, I was wrapped up in Joe Goldberg’s mind in words on a page and now I still am through his words on TV. Both forms of the story have made me rethink everything about this day and age… and pretty much everything in life.
Social media provides us with the platforms to display our every move at every second. The information that is available to the entire world pretty much by just looking us up on Instagram or Twitter is unbelievable. That article that we gave a quote to for our school’s paper? Well, there goes your name, your major and where you go to school. Happy Stalking!
You makes you completely aware and rethink what you put out into the world, especially on social media. And it also makes you aware and rethink the people in your life. Do you have a Joe Goldberg somewhere?
Catch Penn Badgley (Joe), Elizabeth Lail (Beck) Shay Mitchell (Peach) in You on Sunday’s on Lifetime at 10 p.m. Grab some of your favorite snacks, perhaps a friend to keep you company and catch up on the very first season on Lifetime’s website.