Old habits die hard in the trailer for the second half of You‘s fourth season
It felt like only last week that Joe Goldberg was giving up being a serial killer
TV News You
Joe Goldberg’s English holiday ain’t over yet, guv. Netflix’s two-part excursion across the pond continues this March with another five episodes of everybody’s favorite serial killer romance You. And like the best-laid plans of mice and Joe, someone discovers Penn Badgley enjoys murdering almost as much as he loves pretending he’s a good guy.
After a five-part whodunit, Rhys (Ed Speleers) revealed himself to be of Joe’s ilk, an aspiring killer who would fit neatly under an invisibility baseball cap. Now he seeks Joe for an informational interview on how to move up the serial killer ladder. Everyone’s gunning for a Netflix series of their own these days, and Rhys would like to be the subject of an overlong serial killer documentary that gets adapted into a TV show about a sexy stalker. Who could blame him? Unfortunately, Joe’s as conflicted as ever, fighting the urge to kill until his one true love, Love (Victoria Pedretti), re-enters the picture.
We were mixed on the first half of season one. In our review of season four part one, The A.V. Club’s Saloni Gajjar wrote:
At this stage, You has to work hard to justify its existence, subvert its own structure, and explain how Joe keeps getting away with his many crimes. Yes, he’s a good-looking white man so it’s easier for him to evade authorities. Still, with the number of bodies he leaves behind every time he runs, how long can this go on? Season four isn’t immediately concerned with these burning questions, however, which is kind of a problem if you’re breaking it into two parts.
Will the second half get Joe back on the path to bloodshed? We can only hope. Part two creeps on to Netflix on March 9.
9 Comments
lol Netflix can fuck right off with its shameless season splitting.
Not very different than a weekly release, is it?
That’s what’s so shameless about it. I’m fine with a weekly release. I like a weekly release. Splitting a season into halves and releasing them *just* over a month apart suggests the “dump it all at once” strategy is actually a pretty bad business model, but it’s too ingrained in the service’s identity to abandon.
Netflix split Shameless seasons too?!Bustards!
I’ve never once understood what the appeal of this show is supposed to be. When the trailer for the first season came out, I legit assumed it was a limited series that would end with Joe getting his comeuppance, but before I could watch it I happened to find out it actually ends with him killing the girl he’s been stalking…and then the show just keeps going with him winning over and over again because all the other people in the show are complete idiots. What’s supposed to be entertaining about that?
I assume the point the showrunner is trying to make is exactly that: why does society have so much empathy, even a desire to celebrate violent and damaged men?Joe is a terrible person, but Penn Badgley is handsome and his performance is really charismatic, which is the entire tension of the thing. It pushes all these genre buttons that suggest he’s the underdog hero, but at what point are his actions so obviously horrible that you stop rooting for him? I like the show as a treatise on this idea, the ways “anti-heroic” men are romanticized in fiction, and terrible real-life men somehow keep getting chances.
If you stick around, you’ll eventually see Joe live long enough to disappear in the woods and become a lumberjack.
I had the same issues until I actually watched it. It’s really framed as more of a dark comedy. I don’t think it’s supposed to be taken as seriously as every seems to. He’s definitely not depicted as super smart or suave internally. The show also seems heavily interested in the subversion of rom com tropes and behavior, which is entertaining. And it slips into “Dexter” mode a lot, where he ends up killing some real assholes, which can be satisfying.Yea, he kills the woman he’s stalking in the first season. But she is a fully realized character who is allowed to have flaws, and she is given at least some agency. It’s not like Criminal Minds or SVU torture porn.I dunno. Not for everyone but I’ve enjoyed it and I get why people like it.
So (***SPOILERS***)We’re all in agreement that Joe is doing all this killing & has totally dissociated, Fight Club-style, right?