The last week of December, 2018, must have been a busy period for the folks at Netflix, for there were quite a few releases. Starting from the global phenomenon Black Mirror: Bandersnatch , an interactive film, to Selection Day , a series starring Indian actors, Netflix made sure that its viewers were tuned into their shows during the Christmas week. However, there was another show that caught on like fire as soon as it dropped on the site. It was a thriller that had the coolth of a romantic drama called You .
You immediately became the talk of the town and millennials went into a frenzy to justify the actions of the show’s anti-hero Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley). Well, in Indian cinema, stalking has always been romanticized. The hero follows the heroine for a week, and, within a song or two, the heroine, who’s usually the damsel in distress, falls into the hero’s arms. But You goes beyond the conventional methods of wooing and enters psychotic territories to show what kind of a person Joe is; he’s the nightmare you don’t want to see.
In the beginning of the series, we’re introduced to a handsome bookstore manager (Joe) who tends to read the minds of his customers. What starts off as a light-hearted comedy turns into a heady mix of lust-and-blood, as Joe does unimaginable things to the people around the women he falls in love with. You mainly focuses on Joe’s toxic relationship with Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) – she’s called Beck throughout the show; so, she’s Beck in this piece, too – and his former lover, Candace (Ambyr Childers). While Candace appears mostly in dreamy sequences, Beck is the apple of Joe’s eyes that he won’t let anybody else get close to.
It’s scary to think that, at the click of a button, a person can land up at your house, as that’s exactly how Joe finds his way to Beck’s residence (he googles her and finds out her address). He stations himself outside her house, and observes her. He also uses Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get more information about his targets. Even though, he uses these sites as a device to keep track of their likes and dislikes, his social media footprints remain absent. And his biggest advantage is perhaps his ability to distinguish between people’s online and offline personas.
Joe is definitely aware of the negative results his activities might bring about. He knows he’ll get into trouble if he gets caught while burning a body, or when he locks somebody up in a glass cage in the basement of the bookstore, but his face shows none of it. The internal monologues – voiceovers that reveal his state of mind – help us understand his fears and capricious judgments. He’s clever and calculating, and, since his charming looks betray the homicidal fetishes lurking under his skin, he gets away with the heinous crimes he keeps committing on a regular basis.
The ten-episode series, which is based on Caroline Kepnes’s novel of the same name, takes a lot of inspiration from American Psycho . Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), in American Psycho , murders people, but doesn’t get punished for his misdeeds. Similarly, the killings in You don’t point towards the show’s protagonist, Joe. Karma seems to elude them. But for how long will they be able to put their murky past behind their backs? Will the police ever let them live in peace if they came to know about their sociopathic behaviors? Then, I guess, the writers of American Psycho and You aren’t interested in straightening their characters’ moral fiber.
You , developed by Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble, will keep the viewers on the edge of their seats. While every character is neatly written, I enjoyed the extra layers of creepiness that Peach Salinger (Shay Mitchell), Beck’s friend, and, Benji (Lou Taylor Pucci), Beck’s boyfriend, brought to the show. They somehow make us root for the anti-hero.
But who are we, really, if we continue to support Joe’s amoralism through thick and thin? That’s a question we should ask ourselves after watching the show.
