7/14/2023 0 Comments You tv seriesWe already know that neither Joe nor Love feel any meaningful sense of shame, and that they lack what we might call consciences. But this season’s gestures towards murder as a way of life - the couple, for instance, speaks in veiled terms about a disagreement over a dead body in their couple’s therapy session - feel affected and airless. And the deck was stacked for viewers at home, as well, as Joe is more likable than the snobs, users, and oddballs he encountered. In the first two seasons, the show’s impulses towards social satire shielded Joe: In this universe, he is the least outré person in any conversation, which allows him to escape suspicion. These violent outbursts, which carry with them a body count, are integrated almost too seamlessly into a story about performing domestic perfection. Joe and Love share a willingness to do anything in pursuit of affection, but Joe’s version of that is deeply calculated, while Love’s lashings-out carry in their wake severe consequences for locals who cross her, or threaten her marriage. He sees women as vectors for pleasure and good company but will hurt or kill them in attempting to keep them his. Married to and raising a child with the impulsive Love (Victoria Pedretti), Joe is constantly on the hunt for more, or covering his tracks. Joe now operates as he always has, constantly scrambling for advantage, or for sheer animal pleasure. What it lacks is agility within its protagonist, and the show increasingly feels stuck. “You” has shown a great ability to change up its situation. But Badgley’s Joe still thinks about most situations in the same, broken way. Changing the place allows for novelty - and for new justifications why contemporary life might just push a person to murder. But it can feel, too, like the show is accommodating the fact that starting off with an incorrigible sociopath allows you to up the body count but not, really, to develop a character. Starting the season in a new place allows it new avenues for social satire. It’s that aspect of the show that’s grown to demand more and more of viewers’ attention as the endless parade of carnage has dulled in impact. (The first season was set in fashionably literary New York, the second in louche and Erewhon-y Los Angeles, and the third in influencer-gutted NorCal Eden.) What the show can at times lack in precision it makes up for in sheer tonnage of mocking reference: The show is “You” because it’s committed to showing an audience their interests, and themselves. The show has always played off its title in two ways: Served us Joe’s thoughts about the “You” he’s pursuing and shown us a warped version of ourselves in its depiction of Instagram-ready milieus. And yet the show feels creatively depleted. This has been a winning formula for a show that, after its cancellation on Lifetime, thrived on Netflix the streamer has announced its renewal for a fourth season ahead of the launch of its third. On “You,” the viewer is asked first to root for the bad guy, and, in doing so, then to get to know him. Those shows, in exploring central characters who did monstrous things, ended up with fan bases who rooted for the bad guy. The show, starring Penn Badgley as Joe, a stalker and killer to whose internal monologue we have access, is difficult to compare to series like “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad” but for one particular. And three seasons in, its act is getting tired. “ You” began by reversing the equation of Golden Age TV dramas.
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