TV Review: You Season 3 Gets Creepily Suburban
There is something about the suburbs that is absolutely terrifying. It is a place where many horror stories find their home, along with 99% percent of Lifetime films in which a lead has a mental breakdown and becomes a serial killer. Yet, for Season 3 of You, it is a perfect match. Two leads that “look safe” but carry more body bags than a coroner.
It was during a David Letterman/ Variety interview that Penn Badgley spoke about “white male privilege” and how, in some ways, the show speaks to the systemic luxury of being defined as “safe-looking” and “banal.”Upon looks, Badgley’s Joe always appeared like a lost puppy scrummaging through classic books and romantic daydreams. Our fascination with him as a character is that he weaponized his self-pity and turned it into relatable charm. Who hasn’t pined that their crush liked them back or that life would simplify to become fun? The problem is most of us do not have a basement cage where we lock people up to torture them. Yet, I digress. For however much he left a path of dead women behind him, there were instances where, as an audience, we found ourselves saying, “I hope he finds Love one day.” Well, he literally did and she is a biyotch.
This season Love (Victoria Pedretti) actually out-crazies Joe, but grounds herself in a mutual common ground: self-pity. Nobody feels bad for Love quite like Love and, again, you understand. She trapped a man with a pregnancy, of which he married her and moved to a stellar neighborhood, and now they have an adorable baby that tires them out. Love is not feeling sexy or stable, and is on a homicidal overdrive to connect with her husband, whom is already “You-ing/”stalking neighbors, including one of MY FAVE actresses Tati Gabrielle as Marianne. Yet, she is not behind with her wandering, as charming neighbor Theo gives her scenes to prove that, perhaps, the most dangerous thing about a crazy person is that they think they are sane.
In a world that believes the pain you are caused justifies the pain you cause, You, Season 3, shows how that very notion is a doorway to insanity. It is the joy we take in “triggering others” that assures no one is above getting shot or shooting down another. Pedretti and Badgley have perfected their characters, in part, because they wield their pain like armor against accountability instead of actually healing their surroundings over, literally, lighting them on fire. Yet, characters like, Scott Speedman’s Matthew become a mirror to their “crazy” by showing a flawed man tries to do better but a crazy one thinks he already has. Hence, in Season 3, Love and Joe become a FASCINATING WATCH as a deadly couple playing a “game of chess” with Scott Speedman’s Matt” the only person that can sniff their malice from the top of his tech empire. What is really intriguing is that Love and Joe don’t want to hurt him because, through him, they see they are wrong.
Michelle Obama said it, “When they go low, you go high.” Of course, it is easy to already feel “high” when surrounded by people that speak of wellness but live for lowliness such as, “self-help gurus” Cary (Travis Van Winkle) and Sherry (Shalita Grant). Moreover, what does it mean to “turn the other cheek” when you only have a few? Part of why we laugh and get even MORE ADDCITED to You, during Season 3, is that our “fave villains” are shading a new plethora of imperfect characters and hypocrites promoting self-love. Still, the question is, whether it is ending someone’s livelihood or life, do you have the right destroy someone, even if they are not truly being themselves? As Love and Joe push and pull each other through the havoc and death they cause, more than ever, audiences will see their internal fractures.
I always wonder the attraction to You, in the same way, I am determined to figure out the psychopathy that makes Dateline such as oddly, calming show. In a way, though one is from the perspective of a killer and the other the victim, both present themselves as series based on “justice.” By all means, Love and Joe are killers, but their trek into Suburbia is a strange, hypnotic grab into how people can truly become “dead inside” amidst their iced coffees, over-priced cupcakes, and sincere belief they should host a Ted Talk on empathy without having it. You Season 3 premieres October 15 on Netflix.
