You - Seasons 1-2

“You walks a fine line between calling attention to an abhorrent issue and accidentally glamorizing it.”

Title: You
Episodes Reviewed: Seasons 1-2
Creators: Greg Berlanti 👨🏼🇺🇸 and Sera Gamble 👩🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Original novel by Caroline Kepnes 👩🏼🇺🇸 and TV scripts by Greg Berlanti 👨🏼🇺🇸 (20 eps), Sera Gamble 👩🏼🇺🇸 (20 eps), Caroline Kepnes 👩🏼🇺🇸 (20 eps), Kelli Breslin 👩🏼🇺🇸 (11 eps), and various (4 ♀ and 4 ♂)

User-submitted review by Anika 👩🏼🇨🇦

—SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 4/5

In equal parts addictive and disturbing, the Netflix original series You follows Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), a classic “nice guy” who works in a bookstore and falls in love with a customer, Beck (Elizabeth Lai). Joe’s crush quickly turns into a toxic obsession as he stops at nothing to have a fairytale ending with her, even if that includes stalking, lying, stealing, kidnapping, and murdering to get what he wants.

The most chilling part of the show occurs through the decision to have Joe narrate as if he’s talking to the one that he loves—be it Beck in Season 1, or Season 2’s new fixation on Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). He justifies everything he does for love, making the audience both question his sanity and weirdly root for him at the same time.

While the show’s plot can progress slowly and some of its effects get a bit disgusting (meat grinder, enough said), the question of whether or not Joe will get caught and have his happily ever after makes the show very addictive to watch.

Gender: 2/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

On the one hand, You is capable of portraying women in a positive light. The leading women of Beck and Love receive strong backstories while avoiding stereotypes, and over half its episodes pass the Bechdel test.

However, Season 1 still comes off as misogynistic and degrading towards women overall. The show’s anti-hero, Joe, sees Beck as nothing more than a fantasy who needs to be “saved” from both her friends and from her own choices. Because Joe constantly stalks his love interest, You employs the male gaze, making the audience almost complicit as he objectifies Beck throughout the season. Worse yet, she eventually gets kidnapped and murdered by Joe.

But if viewers can stick with the series, Season 2 takes a drastically different turn. Suddenly, our anti-hero is surrounded by four strong and brutally honest women: the aforementioned Love, his landlord, the landlord’s little sister, and an ex-girlfriend who turns out to be alive and hell-bent on destroying his life. Despite their differences, all four of these women have clear desires and well-developed storylines.

This doesn’t solve everything, though. An overarching theme sees almost every female character getting abused, assaulted, kidnapped and/or murdered. Sure, Joe and a couple of other male characters experience abuse as children too, but violence disproportionately affects the women on the show. Regardless of intention, portraying such visuals actually normalizes real life abuse, priming men to feel entitled to women’s bodies. Not unlike the controversy surrounding 13 Reasons Why, a fellow Netflix original series, You demonstrates the fine line between calling attention to an abhorrent issue and accidentally glamorizing it through the power of media. Ostensibly, You subverts the problematic behavior seen regularly in rom-coms by showing how creepy and dangerous such acts are in real life. But when fans romanticize and root for Joe’s character on social media, it fails at its broader goals.

Satire or not, this show treats women like objects, and no amount of saying otherwise will change how audiences subconsciously respond to seeing the glorification of a dangerous and misogynistic criminal.

Race: 2.75/5

At the heart of the show, You is a story about how a white boy falls for and becomes obsessed with a white girl. In Season 1, only a handful of people of colour show up in supporting roles, including Beck’s Asian American friends Peach Salinger (Shay Mitchell) and Lynn Lieser (Nicole Kang). In addition, Joe lives next to Latinx neighbours, Paco (Luca Padovan) and his mom, Claudia (Victoria Cartagena). Unfortunately, what thin storylines these characters receive border on stereotype (e.g. Claudia is a single mom with a drug addiction; Beck is friends with an Indian grad student finishing medical school; etc.). Furthermore, they function solely as contrast or support to the main white characters.

At first, Season 2 seems like more of the same as two of Love’s closest friends, Lucy (Marielle Scott) and Gabe (Charlie Barnett), are Black and only seen supporting either Love or Joe. However, new characters like Delilah (Carmela Zumbado), Joe’s landlord, and her younger sister, Ellie (Jenna Ortega), are Latinx and make up some of the best roles on the show. Delilah and Ellie may be tough on the outside, but viewers quickly learn that despite their demons, they show compassion to their neighbours, and especially to Joe, who they help during his time of need. However, without spoiling too much, they deserve so much better than where their story arcs take them.

LGBTQ: 3.25/5

LGBTQ representation in Season 1 of You isn’t pretty. Peach, Beck’s wealthy best friend, makes up the only queer character and she’s portrayed as manipulative, willing to do whatever it takes to get Joe out of the way so she can have Beck to herself. Does this trope sound familiar? Well, whether you see Peach as “the Psycho Lesbian” or “the Devious Bisexual,” she slips into damaging depictions of queer women as aggressive and volatile.

Season 2 fares much better, but still needs some work. Love’s three friends, Gabe (Charlie Barnett), Lucy (Marielle Scott), and Sunrise (Melanie Field), are all kind and fun-loving members of the LGBTQ community. They may have thin backstories, but thankfully avoid stereotypes. And while many of the episodes focus on Love’s friends supporting her and giving her advice, the final episode features the romantic and sweet wedding between Lucy and Sunrise.

Mediaversity Grade: C- 3.00/5

With a current Rotten Tomatoes score of 90% and an audience score of 81%, it’s clear that You is loved by critics and Netflix bingers alike. Nonetheless, it fails to fully humanize people of colour and LGBTQ. Hopefully, Season 3 will find a way to wean itself off thin supporting characters and a reliance on stereotypes.

Like You? Try these other titles featuring obsessive anti-heroes.

Grade: CLiApril 12, 2020Female/Nonbinary Creator