There's something wildly captivating about how bad guys are portrayed on television. Tommy Shelby, Elliot Alderson or Walter White, you name it and you’ll find the human side of these dark masters almost always overshadowing their obvious shortcomings. Regardless of whether it’s a trope or a trick, it has been working since the glorious days of film and TV and it continues to work on you and me, even today.
The most recent addition to the galore of this dark charisma is none other than Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgely) from You, the show that recently completed its third season. Much like many binge-watchers of the show, I must admit that there are glaring issues in the show but I must also confess that I finished the entire new season in one night.
SPOILER ALERT!
Two seasons down, one would think Joe has had his share of love conquests; the not-so delightful pursuits of Candace Stone (Amber Childers), Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and later on with Victoria Pedretti's Love Quinn. He may have finally found his match in Love's impulsive and dubious personality.
The similarity, however, made Joe realise an alarming reality: he needed redemption to absolve him of his previous sins. In order to do so, he pins all his hopes on his unborn child and a pleasant suburban neighbourhood. What the quiet town of Madre Linda wasn't prepared for was at its doorstep and the chaos had just begun.
Season three of You brings a more intense yet taxing outlook on Joe and Love's turbulent marriage. While Joe has been vindictive over the last two seasons, he's shown trying to steer clear of anything that digresses from his path of improvement. But he, too, is helpless before his animalistic thirst for adventure and ends up fixating on his neighbour Natalie.
While he tries to keep his obsession under the wraps, especially from his murderer of a wife, his attempts, however, end up in vain. Joe's redemption plan hits a bumpy road constantly as Love... you know, keeps on killing people left, right and centre.
Joe, whose stalking behaviour followed by inner monologues have been a mainstay of the show, finds himself right in the middle of a predicament by the end of first episode which, for once, he didn't cause. The ending earned an audible gasp and I sat up straight to concentrate on the screen better. But two episodes down, the frown on my forehead kept getting deeper and four episodes in, the script became terribly predictable.
While Joe desperately tries to steer Love out of her obsessive patterns of jealousy and resentment, he's always met with the tiring task of cleaning up the mess of his significant other - literally. The sense of karma isn't lost on Joe as he realises that Love is exactly like him; only worse.
The third season also introduces several new characters. While some are a breath of fresh air (Team Theo till I die), others manage to exhaust the audience (you know we are talking about Sherry Conrad). The added cast, however, did add much-needed charm to the otherwise repetitive script.
However, the element of surprise was somehow lost in the show. I had expected Joe and Love to bring the good ol' glass cage back. I had expected them to lock just a few more people in it. I had expected them to kill off just some more characters. I had expected them to be completely desensitised of murdering innocents. What stuck with me, though, was how I was just nodding along with Joe's inner monologue of justifying his terrible acts. There was a bigger villain in season 3 - and it wasn't the stalker I had abhorred in the past.
While together, Joe and Love make quite the perfect team (read: murderers), neutralising each other's failings and coming together to avoid being discovered, one can hardly sympathise with the two. Even after knowing what Love truly is capable of, Joe sets his heart on yet another woman, vowing to keep her from harm his wife might project on the latter. And he succeeds…almost. Joe's need to be Marienne's knight in shining armour gets the better of him, which ultimately lands her in a tricky situation and she barely escapes with her life intact.
Unlike the first two seasons of bookstores and coffee houses, You season 3 is a Gen Z dream. With a town full of tech-savvy, Instagram-friendly neighbourhood, there are times when the premise of the show asks a bit too much from the audience. In a fast-paced tech town, where the whole area is under surveillance, the idea of a couple murdering people in broad daylight and cleverly getting away with it seems like a farfetched thought. But hey, I'm not complaining.
Once again, You manages to hold its own in a world of ever-increasing policing and has made thousands of fans along the way. Even with three seasons down, and another one on the way, the Netflix hit seems to have kept the fandom alive. For what it’s worth, You is still compelling television.
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