![]() Joe now operates as he always has, constantly scrambling for advantage, or for sheer animal pleasure. What it lacks is agility within its protagonist, and the show increasingly feels stuck. “You” has shown a great ability to change up its situation. ![]() But Badgley’s Joe still thinks about most situations in the same, broken way. Changing the place allows for novelty - and for new justifications why contemporary life might just push a person to murder. But it can feel, too, like the show is accommodating the fact that starting off with an incorrigible sociopath allows you to up the body count but not, really, to develop a character. Starting the season in a new place allows it new avenues for social satire. It’s that aspect of the show that’s grown to demand more and more of viewers’ attention as the endless parade of carnage has dulled in impact. (The first season was set in fashionably literary New York, the second in louche and Erewhon-y Los Angeles, and the third in influencer-gutted NorCal Eden.) What the show can at times lack in precision it makes up for in sheer tonnage of mocking reference: The show is “You” because it’s committed to showing an audience their interests, and themselves. The show has always played off its title in two ways: Served us Joe’s thoughts about the “You” he’s pursuing and shown us a warped version of ourselves in its depiction of Instagram-ready milieus. And yet the show feels creatively depleted. This has been a winning formula for a show that, after its cancellation on Lifetime, thrived on Netflix the streamer has announced its renewal for a fourth season ahead of the launch of its third. On “You,” the viewer is asked first to root for the bad guy, and, in doing so, then to get to know him. Those shows, in exploring central characters who did monstrous things, ended up with fan bases who rooted for the bad guy. ![]() The show, starring Penn Badgley as Joe, a stalker and killer to whose internal monologue we have access, is difficult to compare to series like “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad” but for one particular. And three seasons in, its act is getting tired. “ You” began by reversing the equation of Golden Age TV dramas.
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