TV Review: You Season 4 Will Be Joe´s Reckoning

Watching You Season 4, I am so impressed and still surprised at this series´ capability to remold itself each season. Since its conception, You has been seen as charmingly dangerous with its capacity to make you feel for its lead who, by all means, is a serial killer of some good people and a few jerks, as well. Played by Penn Badgley, Joe´s charisma could never fade, but this season he embraces his killer desires and makes himself, for the first time, appear unabashedly terrible in viewers´ eyes. This is not easy considering he is surrounded by the worst people of all: nepo babies. 

Apparently, the creators of that Vulture article were on the set or the You team of Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble  understand peoples growing disdain for the children of the wealthy elite, and this season does not do them any favors. In fact, upon meeting Malcom (Stephen Hagan), Simon (Aidan Cheng), Gemma (Eve Austin), Connie (Dario Coates), Blessing (Oziuma Whenu), and Adam (Luke Gage), you, immediately, wish Freddy Kreuger was just doing a casual, nightmare run. Yet, you are not alone in that feeling as the likes of Joe{s love interest the mean Kate (Charlotte Richie),  the ditsy Phoebe (Tilly Keeper),  the brilliant Rhys (Ed Speelers) and the witty Nadia (Amy Leigh Hickman)  join him, or shall I say Professor Jonathan Moore, in judging the babies born with everything who grow to become adults that feel nothing. Still, that emptiness is so human, relatable, and even in Joe, but somehow makes him seem likable when displayed and them… delusional.

I had not realized before this season’s absolutely leaning into Joe´s narration, but it is the titular character´s constant yearning for more and crippling, yet functional sadness that makes him relatable. His ability to self-pity himself out of accountability and guilt for all his misdeeds makes him 100% an emblem of a Twitter feed, but the billowing depression and pining that blankets all his motives is what truly allows viewers to wrongfully cheer for him. Strangely enough, seeing a bunch of old, rich kids do the same and have me hate them is what made me notice that, perhaps, our quiet cheers for Joe to find love and happiness or the death penalty stem from a weird groundedness he has a person. Moreover, his constant misguidedness on what makes him happy or what is love is, again, oddly understandable, despite being absolutely villain, malicious, and y prevalent in this season’s Marianne arc, played powerfully by Tati Gabrielle. She might be the first character to actually reveal and revile Joe´s sick twistedness.  

Upon facade, Joe is the ¨regular, working class literary nerd with a secret basement filled with whomever he has kidnapped for the week. That duality is what turns this season of You into a fascinating cat and mouse. I said it in the beginning, You is a chameleonic show. It transforms in innovative ways, and this season felt like Showtime´s Dexter got a stalker. As Joe begins to revel in ending lives or, at least, hiding the bodies that keep popping up in front of him, the show becomes a shocking and intriguing dissection of his psyche. Joe truly feels justified in the lives he takes, and his stalker is his equal in his thinking and ours in fascination. The dynamic fills with a Moriarty-Sherlock respect: the desire to end the only person that will ever match you in intelligence and understanding. You Season 4: Part 1 Comes Out February 9.