I’m five episodes into the second season of Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble created series You (previously on Lifetime, now on Netflix) and I find myself constantly musing over exactly what it is about this season that, at least for this viewer, makes it feel less engaging than the first season, as well as slightly off in terms of what its message is.
I keep asking myself What am I watching? and Why am I watching it? and the series appears to be having some trouble providing any actual answers to these questions. At least so far.
The reason I’m choosing to write anything down at all when I’m only halfway through the season is because I’m fascinated by exactly when and where information should be given to the audience, because trying to find the reason for my disconnect with the second season of You, when I had no trouble connecting with the first season, is providing me with such delicious brain-fodder.
So here’s the thing about our protagonist Joe: he’s a predator.
He’s not the flawed anti-hero type that’s dealing with a shit-ton of baggage and doesn’t want to step into the role of a leader – though this archetype is tracing Joe’s outline this season to detrimental effect, but I’ll get to that – no, Joe is a stalking, mistrusting, controlling (though when it matters completely lacking self-control), anger-fuelled, self-righteous, delusional, predatory sociopath.
That was the whole point of painting him in a romantisized light in the first season of the series, and it was done to great effect, because his sympathetic, good-guy vibe is all a smokescreen, a set of lies that he tells so well to the rest of the world because he believes them to be true; deep down he knows he’s not a good guy, but as long as he can justify his actions to himself, he’s able to continue on believing that the rest of the world is in the wrong, while he is, clearly, in the right.
In Joe’s head, he only wants what’s best for the woman he’s in love with, he can’t see that his stalking, mistrusting, control-freak self is, ultimately, what will drive her away, because he places all the blame on her. And finds good cause to kill her, because she betrayed his devoted and deep feeling of love. She broke his heart first.
It’s chilling, and in the best sense of the word.
The greatest storytelling thrill comes from the first season’s apt way of deconstructing the romantic tropes we’ve grown so used to, for example the simplicity with which it strips away the idea of someone watching you without your knowledge actually being sweet and thoughtful, and revealing the possibly darker and more sinister implications beneath.
By doing so, the first season of You told women to beware of the fantasy, to be alert to the signs of mistrust and need for control that are red flags for someone like Joe entering your life on the down low, and for us all to examine our idea of what love is, can be or should be.
Redemption Arc Anyone?
So then, to the reason why I’m having issues connecting with the storytelling of season two.
It’s because the storytelling of the new season is failing to evolve with its subject matter. It seems the narrative is incapable of finding the sort of tension it built easily with the novelty of its first season, and because of this, it seems set on reverting into continuously appealing for the audience to connect with, and find understanding for, why Joe is a predator.
Not only are we getting flashes to Joe’s turbulent childhood, with parents who both physically abused him and emotionally neglected him, but we’re also getting it through the aforementioned tinge of the anti-hero trope as Joe finds himself acting the reluctant guardian of a fifteen year old girl.
Sorry, Joe. Just because you’re now hunting down other predators to protect underaged women from their wicked ways doesn’t erase the fact that I watched you murder your last girlfriend.
The narrative (aka the writers of the show) should be aware of this fact and should stop trying to paint Joe out as just another victim, especially as a victim of domestic abuse breaking bad and taking his fucked up childhood out on unsuspecting women.
It is a truly dangerously trope-y fine line to walk when you bake in a #MeToo-inspired subplot while simultaneously trying to make your predator main character come off as a victim himself.
The water gets even murkier when you throw in a setting absolutely oozing disdain for any kind of self-help or self-improvement by framing it, through Joe’s narrative voice and POV as protagonist, as ridiculous, pretentious and part of a privileged set of people with no real understanding of true hardship. Add to that these ridiculous, pretentious and privileged people then being shown to lack any real humanity and you have a proper conundrum on your hands in terms of exactly what your message is.
Trauma is bad and causes people to act out, but there is no salvation to be had, because trying to better yourself is pure hippie bullshit? Well, at least as far as five episodes go. I’m curious to see where the season actually lands.
Here’s what I’m truly missing: the women’s stories.
None of the women’s stories are told from their perspective. None of them, thus far, are properly fleshed out, apart from Candace, but Candace’s story of dealing with the trauma Joe caused her is all in flashbacks, which occur in reaction to Joe, rather than the audience getting to follow her journey from victim into avenging angel, and as we got the idea of a second narrative perspective planted through Beck last season, it could’ve come much earlier this season.
I don’t want to emotionally connect to Joe. That ship has sailed. I can’t sympathise with him, even when I’m meant to empathise, because he’s the type of man that makes me look sideways at most men these days, which is wholly unfair, but unavoidable.
The reality of what type of man might be a threat is that it’s often the ones you’d least expect, and trust is a commodity that’s already hard to come by, so to take a look at these women, who are so eager to trust, even in todays climate of mistrust, and get their motivation stated early on, even if that motivation will have a twist to it, would be intriguing, to say the least.
But You doesn’t seem to run that deep, so perhaps I’m just wishing it to be more than what it is. I’ll wait for the final episode of the season to decide whether that’s a good thing, or a bad one. And in that post I’ll probably draw a few correlations to Dexter and how well that show handled the build of sympathy, along with the empathy, that they asked you to have for its violence-proned protagonist.
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