This review contains spoilers!
The second series of the psychological thriller starring Penn Badgley, aka Dan Humphrey from Gossip Girl, hit the streaming site on Boxing Day. This was the perfect excuse for me to shelter in my room after 48 hours of family time that mostly consisted of drunken board game playing and arguing how my degree is more than ‘just reading books.’ I watched the first series of You the day it was released, ashamedly pretty much all in one sitting, however, I had to space series 2 out. Joe, or Will, this time around was a lot more intense to say the least: expect more murders, more sex and more sarcastic comments on society from Joe’s interior thoughts and voiceover.
Joe now goes as Will and drifts around LA, apparently wanting a fresh start – however, somehow he managed to get that huge human cage/glass box through customs… Candace is presented as the antagonist, despite her understandable intentions of wanting to expose the real Joe to the other characters. Once again, you’re bound to be attracted to Joe who still remains just as charismatic and you find yourself wanting him to succeed in his usually bloody endeavours by being positioned to his perspective. The major difference in season two comes in the form of Love, Joe’s new obsession. Through Love, Joe meets his match (perhaps relating to the apparent and a bit random tennis reference of Love and her brother, Forty) as she herself had killed people and viewed murder as a means to solve her problems. I personally did not like Love as a character; I found her name to be a forced symbol for Joe’s search for ‘love’. Despite her more complicated character development, I wasn’t drawn to her as a female lead, unlike Beck from Season One (Beck did have problems though, I know she was living in New York, but surely the girl could have afforded some curtains…)
Beck was rather one dimensional as almost all of the first series was from Joe’s perspective. The show, however, acknowledges this in its second series through Forty and Ellie considering who Beck really was and Forty realising that she was not killed by Dr Nicky, putting him closer to Joe’s web of violent lies. Forty has his flaws, however, I found his character warming and funny compared to his rather unrelatable sister, despite the storyline of her husband’s death. Joe receives some form of payment for his actions by being trapped in his relationship with the pregnant Love, however, the final scene sets out the next season with Joe’s new ‘target’, his neighbour. A response to Joe has been romanticising his character and Penn takes to Twitter frequently to remind viewers that he is in fact a murderer who manipulates people and ultimately locks the people he loves in glass boxes!
‘You’ has been renewed for a third season so we can definitely expect more exploits from Joe and Love. I wonder where his glass box is now. In the basement of Love’s house?
4/5