Roush Review: New Setting, Same Old ‘You’ in Season 4
Review
You
The stalker becomes the stalkee in the fourth season of Netflix‘s addictive psychological thriller You, which wastes no time putting us right back in the head of TV’s most literate and creepy voyeur, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley, whose voiceover commentary is so insistent it could invade your dreams).
“I’m in a Hugh Grant movie,” Joe mutters to himself early on, having exiled himself to Europe after the bloody events of the previous season. Now in London, adopting a new name and identity as a professor, a heavily bearded Joe bristles with contempt at the jet-setters he finds himself among, but learns his secret isn’t safe when a mystery killer lures him into a new web of deceit and nonstop texting.
You flips the script by having Joe be the one asking, “Who are you?” this time, aware he’s the target of someone else’s gaze when a body suddenly turns up in need of grisly disposing. “Why does the universe keep doing this to me?” he internally whines.
Soon enough, though, Joe is up to his old tricks, including finding a new obsession across the courtyard: Kate (Charlotte Ritchie), a brittle art gallery director whose initial and understandable antipathy to the American presents a bit of a challenge. (Any resemblance to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, as Joe keeps getting busted staring into her flat, is obviously intentional.)
“I’m in a whodunit, the lowest form of literature,” fumes Joe as the puzzling murders pile up, including during a country-house hunting party that would meet Agatha Christie’s approval. I like murder mysteries more than this bookish snob, but his new clique of “aristo-brats” is such a toxic collection of narcissistic caricatures, it’s admittedly hard to care when anyone gets knocked off.
Wisely, Netflix is breaking the season into halves, with a midpoint reveal setting up a cool and quite macabre new cat-and-mouse game. Still, I can’t say I’m counting the days until the March 9 return.
You, Season 4 Part 2, Premieres Thursday, March 9, Netflix
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M
I watched all of the episodes yesterday and felt the same as Kristoffer. I kept thinking it would get better, but, it never did. This season is a dud so far!
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O
I watched all episodes today and realized I was just watching it because I've spent so much time watching the 3 previous seasons. They try to make all the people he would like to kill (and maybe he does in the next episodes) be horrible people, like spoiled rich influencers or just selfish rich people but even that's not new for the show and just that alone doesn't make you feel he's right in what he does. I'm not hating on the show by any means but at this point I find myself wanting Joe to get what he deserves.
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O
I think that’s the point. Joe is a monster, they don’t want people to root for him, they want you to want to see him get what he deserves. He’s the protagonist, but he’s not the hero, or even meant to be likeable. I feel like he’s less an anti-hero and more an anti-villain. Instead of doing bad things for good reasons, he doing good things for bad reasons.
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