You: Season 2 (Full Season)

January 2, 2020 9:58 PM - Season 2 (Full Season)

In the second season, Joe Goldberg moves from New York to Los Angeles to escape his past, and starts over with a new identity. When he meets avid chef Love Quinn, Joe begins falling into his old patterns of obsession and violence.
posted by The Gooch (12 comments total)

Season two of You is streaming on Netflix in the US.
posted by Etrigan at 6:53 AM on January 3, 2020

This is obviously not a show anyone would consider “high art” or “prestige drama”. Yet, through all the pulpy, goofy, straining believability elements of Season 1(I binge watched both seasons over the last several days), at its core, I found it to be an interesting, recognizable (though obviously taken to the extreme ) examination of jealousy, possessiveness, and obsession.

While Season 2 was perhaps a bit more artful in some ways, better acted for sure, I found myself a little confused about what, if anything it was trying to say, beyond “Women can be just as awful as men”? Also not sure I needed Joe’s backstory to explain his behavior, felt like too much of a crutch.
posted by The Gooch at 9:49 AM on January 3, 2020

I'm sick so I'm binge watching this.

I made it to the end of s2 e1 and was pissed at how Joe was holding that Joan Didion book. I find it hard to believe a bibliophile would hold a book like that.

Also I miss his bookstore coworker.
posted by miss-lapin at 10:04 AM on January 3, 2020

Ok I'm only up to e3 in s2, but they are trying to go in the direction of Dexter? Because a dude who stalked and killed his ex gf is a hard sell for me in terms of turning into some sort of vigilante hero.
posted by miss-lapin at 12:00 PM on January 3, 2020

Yeah, the ending of S2 doesn't really fit with the "old style romcom love=horror" that S1 was, though I continued to enjoy the way he was acted.

At no point is Joe ever actually portrayed as a hero -- sure sometimes he says he's one, but the show is clear that he's lying to himself.

Joe isn't a bibliophile, he's just pretentious.
posted by jeather at 6:38 PM on January 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

A character in the show directly references Dexter in terms of Joe/Will so it's pretty clear the writer was aware of that viewers might draw that connection. And I've heard other people talk about Joe/Will is being very much like Dexter so...yeah....
posted by miss-lapin at 7:53 PM on January 3, 2020

Celebrating bisexual pescatarian authors
posted by aiglet at 9:56 PM on January 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

I loved it. It was bananas.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 1:31 PM on January 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

I, and I think most people I discuss it with, watch this because it is so trashy and bad and we love the terrible plot holes and all of the characters are bad and this show is the worst and screaming at it is great.

But what on Earth is season 3 going to be?

And why would you put your supposedly super secret plastic cage and dismembering spot in a storage unit?
posted by loriginedumonde at 7:18 PM on January 4, 2020 [6 favorites]

At one point when everything was just going so wrong for him I thought it would be so much easier if he just turned himself in. So much stress!

I’m disappointed he didn’t love her more after he found out she was a murderer too but I guess he was interested in the idea of this perfect person and when she wasn’t he lost interest. I’m super annoyed that it looks like he’s going to go psycho for his neighbor next season when he actually got everything he wanted.
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:13 AM on February 1, 2020

Celebrating bisexual pescatarian authors

Finally some representation!

Joe isn't a bibliophile, he's just pretentious.

Did we even see him read anything this season? He used Crime and Punishment as a prop, and he seemed to never get more than like 15% through the Didion, and I don't remember any other books. But maybe I'm just forgetting or didn't notice.

That said, I do think he's a bibliophile, he apparently loved books even as a kid and it seems like they make him feel comfortable/safe. Also he's a voyeur, and books sort of force the reader to see everything from that same sort of reserve -- powerless, mute, and all-knowing (as long as you keep reading, anyway!) within the world of the story but somehow still swept up in it. So I do think he approaches the world as "a reader."

I think being a reader is an identity for him as well, though. Maybe he even cares more about being a reader than about actually reading, just like Beck cared about being a writer more than she cared about actually writing. Or like how Joe also cares more about love, relationships, and women as concepts than he does about actual love and actual relationships and actual women.

I’m super annoyed that it looks like he’s going to go psycho for his neighbor next season when he actually got everything he wanted.

Yeah, I genuinely didn't understand that, or anything about that whole monologue about how he's now in a "trap" in his beautiful suburban home with his loving girlfriend and child-to-be. I would have thought the disillusionment wouldn't come until later -- what's he disillusioned with already?

The thing about Joe is that even though his behavior is ridiculous, I didn't really think his motivations were that weird. Like, sure, of course you want to feel loved and safe, who doesn't? But now it seems like all that is out the window and he just likes the chase after all? I found it disappointing and also just straight up perplexing.
posted by rue72 at 2:21 PM on February 3, 2020

Joe's character is set up to be this way from the outset. Think of Humbert Humbert, another unreliable predatory narrator. Joe is very much like Humbert in seducing the audience to normalize his desires. You can't trust what Joe says he wants anymore than Humbert. That's part of the game. That he got so much of the audience to believe his claims is both impressive and terrifying.
posted by miss-lapin at 7:00 AM on February 4, 2020