YOU

While the first half of season four vacillated between bad, good and so-bad-it’s-good with aplomb, the second broadens the spectrum from astonishingly terrible to utterly brilliant. ... You succeeds because its flaws are so enjoyable.

You Season 4 takes Joe to an unexpected setting and places him in the midst of a murder mystery with a strong new supporting cast, creating an exciting and complex two-part season.

The new batch of episodes easily comprises the show’s best yet, its tone solidified, its pacing and plotting perfected.

Some of the choices in You’s final episodes are painfully contrived and convenient, but the show does deserve credit for finally (and fully) leaning into the darkness and misogyny that’s always lived at the heart of its story. It’s not a perfect ending, but it’s a generally emotionally satisfying one, and perhaps that’s the most surprising twist of all.

I'm sure many people who loved Season 1 will grouse at Season 2, which reboots the series to Los Angeles and delves deeper into Joe's psyche/trauma. You true believers may have glommed onto its shadowy New York City setting and Joe's erudite mystery, but Season 2 will appeal to viewers who will love to see a snob like Joe get eaten alive by Angeleno hollowness, like a cadaver dissolving in lye. In other words, viewers like me.

It has another go at reinvention by turning itself into a Cluedo-esque Agatha Christie whodunnit, although it is arch enough to feature a discussion about whether or not the whodunnit is the lowest form of literature. It is fun, although it suffers a little under the weight of comparison. ... When it works, it works because Badgley is charismatic and the show is brash enough to drop a decent number of plot twists into every episode.

Largely it plods towards the end, through a series of increasingly convoluted and repetitive plot twists that are silly even by You’s standards.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

This show has an incredible habit of being boring at the start of a season. This could be much better with like 6 episodes in the season because all you do is wait for the 2 last episodes just to get a little dopamine of something finally happening. Most of the characters are annoying. Joe himself doesn't bring any positive feelings. The whole show is quite predictable with the same patterns of new characters in new seasons. The only good things I can mention are the good artistic ideas and philosophy.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Show only continuous due to Joe being the luckiest murder on the planet. Of course, you can suspend belief but this show has frequent events that would be solved by so many of the people calling 911. The show just ends up frustrating me as I sit there seeing characters portrayed as having average intelligent people behaving like people who have never heard of a phone.

Netflix greatly overestimates how "dangerously charming" Joe is. To anyone over 18, he's not charming. He's creepy. Anyone who's dated more than two or three people wouldn't be able to take the show seriously. The actor they cast in the lead role is too short and dweeby to pull off the kind of character they wrote for him, but it comes off as even more comical because the woman they got to play his obsession would have already dated a million obsessive psychopaths by the time she ran into him. She's ten times out of his league, would have already seen all the blazing red flags before, and would have said yes to a restraining order before a date with him. And the idea he could have bedded these women is also laughable. Unless he was a rich actor of course. It's a good premise, but with a horribly miscast 5'9" dorky actor hitting on women 10 times out of his league, the whole show seems silly.