What I Think

Every week it feels like there is show on a streaming platform that the people around me won’t stop talking about. That show recently has been YOU, on Netflix. I always have a tendency (that I know many of you probably have as well) that when everyone wants me to enjoy a piece of media a part of me wants to hate it, it’s just the edgy hipster part of me that wants the art that I enjoy to be unique to me. However, despite this I found myself consistently hooked on YOU. I don’t think that anybody can deny that the show is engaging if nothing else, it’s one of those shows that despite the heavy material in every episode, I could never watch just one in a session. Now the show definitely isn’t perfect, it has many narrative flaws and I don’t know how much of the engagement came from me actually caring about the plot or if the show manufactures this through having loose threads constantly dangling in front of you. Oh and Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers.

The first thing that I have to applaud YOU on is what originally kept me watching. This feels like a show built for millennials but not in a bad way like some other shows. Watching Joe go through these long research sessions where he finds out everything about Beck made me think about how easy it would be for me to do the same thing to someone we know. The Joe that the audience knows through his inner monologue seems creepy and sadistic but, at least during the first few episodes, it made me question how far from him the average adult in this generation is. Sure, without a doubt, Joe is a stalker and more than likely a sociopath, and he does things that I wouldn’t even think of, but to me the show is most interesting when his methods hit close to home. When it feels like the average “Joe” (haha) could do any one of these things. The setting of New York contributes to this anxiety as well. If you were to ask me where the easiest cities to creep on someone is, New York would probably be near the top. There are so many people around all the time, so many dark alleys to creep around in, this city was made for Joe and it makes me sad that they go away from it in the very next season. The way the show is framed makes it natural for us to root for Joe, he is the main character after all, the show follows him and the way that he justifies his actions to himself in his head serves the dual purpose of making him look innocent in the eyes of the audience. This is a really cool narrative technique! YOU puts us in the mind of a sociopath, which is right up my alley. However, as the show goes on and the show gets higher and higher stakes Joe becomes less believable to me. When he’s doing things like creeping through Peaches mansion or literally pulling a gun on someone in the middle of the street it reminds me of the plot armor that is obviously around him. The show gives justification for why he gets away with MOST things but also conveniently ignores things when it wants to.

I think I lost part of the narrative experience watching this show while season two was already out. There was no part of me that thought Joe would be caught and the series would end with him dying or going to jail, because of this I’m sure some parts would land a lot better than they did. Hell, I’m pretty sure I predicted that the season would end with him killing Beck in the second episode. Looking back on it, I don’t think anything really happened in the show that was unexpected, but yet the whole narrative structure of the show is built around the viewer questioning what’s going to happen next but because Joe feels invincible the question changes to “How is he going to get out of this one?” The show does put a ton of effort into crafting Joe’s way of avoiding being caught, except for with Benji. We’re really supposed to believe that everyone Benji knows believes he went out on a bender one day and never came back? There might be an explanation but I didn’t see it so even if there is that’s kinda a point in itself. Look, I’m not usually one to poke holes in a narrative until it sinks, I’m always for suspending my disbelief in exchange for a greater appreciation of the art, but the world YOU doesn’t work if it isn’t a replication of real life. Otherwise it loses everything I complimented it on earlier in this post.

I love character driven stories, and the character of Joe is probably one of the best written sociopath I’ve seen since Walter White. I think he, more than anything, is what keeps me hooked on the show. However, a show needs more than just a compelling protagonist, the supporting cast needs to be there as well. When you’re talking about supporting cast the most prominent one is obviously Beck. I have complicated feelings about Beck, a part of me wants to say that she is underwritten, that the writers knew they were only going to keep her around for one season so they didn’t bother going far enough into her story as compared to Joe. Then the other part of me says they focused on the character just as much as they should’ve, because Beck feels like a representation of the viewer. She posts everything on social media, she teaches yoga, she always goes after the wrong guys, to me she feels designed to be as relatable to the viewer as possible but I’m not the viewer their aiming for. I think this was a great writing choice and I’m sure it contributed to the enjoyment of many viewers, it just wasn’t for me, so I’m going to put down Beck as a positive.

To conclude my thoughts, I would recommend You to your average viewer. Despite it’s flaws it has a compelling narrative and well written characters. I personally probably would’ve preferred if it was a one season show, just because of the whole realm of believably thing I talked about earlier, but I’m still watching the second season as I write this and we’ll see if I write a review for that as well. If you’ve made it this far thanks for checking out my first real review on this site. I was really nervous about starting this blog but all the support I’ve received so far has made eager to keep writing so let’s see where this goes!