Streaming Sensation’s Second Season Stuns
Surprise hit “You” returns with binge-worthy bloodshed
Like some of the show’s most resilient victims, Netflix’s “You” is one program that can’t seem to stay buried.
After an overzealous Showtime bought the rights to the show only to quietly let it go, Lifetime picked it up and released the entire first season and was met with dismal ratings, averaging 1.1 million viewers per episode. Yet, like so many shows pronounced dead by mainstream broadcasting, Netflix re-released the first season with its streaming charm, attracting roughly 43 million households to each new episode.
And now, after a brief hiatus, “You” has returned to Netflix with its fresher, frothier second season.
Premiering on Dec. 26, the second season of “You” moves the show’s action from the claustrophobic skyscrapers of New York to the sprawling paranoia of Los Angeles’ made-for-noir streets.
Loosely based on “Hidden Bodies,” author Caroline Kepnes’ 2016 sequel to “You,” this season once again follows Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), our murderous, bibliophilic and utterly charming protagonist who is just as likely to quote Faulkner as he is to chop off your head (he might even do both at the same time).
With the metaphorical blood of his Season 1 obsession, Beck (Elizabeth Lail), still on his hands, Joe adopts the pseudonym Will Bettelheim and flees to Los Angeles to escape the vengeful threats of Candace (Ambyr Childers), an old love interest Joe mistakenly thought he had successfully murdered.
With the stress of Candace’s dogmatic quest for justice on his mind, Joe begins the season by committing to becoming a better person, and much of the drama in Season 2 stems from his well-intentioned but disastrous efforts to tamp down his obsessive and murderous shadow, especially when faced with his genuine affection for his latest love-interest, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti).
One of the strongest features of this latest season is the revamped setting. Joe is a New Yorker to a fault, and the show milks his fish-out-of-water status in L.A. for wry comedy. In the first episode, a wannabe influencer unironically gushes “Hi gorgeous people” to her phone with that signature SoCal vocal fry, giving Joe one of his first distates of his new exile and the perfect opportunity to raise his eyebrows.
Los Angeles is shocking, even for a murderer.
But, under the haze and exposure of the show’s new sunny setting, Joe gradually and begrudgingly immerses himself in the modern Hollywood lifestyle as he entwines himself in the lives of Love and her codependent brother Forty, a walking film bro cliche trying to make it big in the business.
Like so many “self-aware” L.A.-based productions, “You” quotes Raymond Chandler and other noir classics like Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” liberally. Though with the extremely graphic, quasi-satirical perversity of the stalking and murders, the season feels closer to Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” as Joe follows friends and enemies alike through bright streets and dilapidated Old Hollywood residences.
Though the show never veers into the gleeful and abrasive Hollywood criticisms of De Palma’s film, it still takes jabs at the industry. However, it can become hard to tell when the mocking ends and where the genuine belief in Hollywood begins.
It’s the type of show where one character casually mentions that he’s going to a Dungeons & Dragons party at Joe Manganiello’s house, where he bumps into Katheryn Bigelow and convinces her to produce his original script. We’re supposed to laugh at the insiderness of it all, even though it feels a little superficial.
Still, the show cruises through its plot with the same speed and recklessness of Brad Pitt in “Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood,” gaining surprising momentum when other streaming shows typically sag due to a lack of ideas.
Episodes eight and nine in particular put Joe through a series of increasingly ludicrous situations that spiral out of control. For once in the series, he truly appears helpless to his circumstances, and you can’t help but breathlessly wonder: how is he going to get out of this one?
These episodes present “You” in its top form when it puts Joe, a remarkably transgressive character who seems entirely unfit for the cultural moment, in situations where we can’t help but root for him. His moral failures are our pulpy pleasures.
If Season 2 provides any sort of cohesive message, it’s that it’s wickedly fun to watch Joe scheme and murder his way into our hearts.
Contact Brandon Schultz at bschultz@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.