YOU....It's Complicated.

If I were to describe my feelings while watching Lifetime’s “YOU”, (now on Netflix) I would say it's complicated.  Which I think would be fitting as a description for the narrative of this show,  as well as a description of the show as a whole.  Not since my days of watching soap operas have so many feelings and emotions been stirred up about characters, plot lines, and cliffhangers. Rightfully so, the show about an imbalanced,  murderous stalker,  who believes he's found the love of his life, slowly unravels over its episodes - truths about our main character, the woman at the center of his current affection, (Beck, as played by Elizabeth Lail) and the people in her life, in much of the same way as a soap opera. Using many of the same devices, just with additional depth.   Introducing us - quite cleverly - to a world where nothing is as it seems.  Complexity wrapped in aesthetic pleasure is one of the show's strong suits. If there's a weak point or week points to this show, it's in its favoring of a good reveal to great storytelling and in that very complexity of storytelling.  Much of which lies within our antagonist Penn Badgley because you are walking a fine line creating a character who is attractive, sexy, charming, intelligent and caring while at the same time being completely manipulative, violent and dangerous.  I personally consider walking the fine line between portraying evil and danger as glaringly obvious, and full of distinctive qualities we associate with our own societal phobias and able-ism - and glorifying it - one of the most difficult tight rope walks in narrative. Much of that difficulty lies in the sway charm and attractiveness holds over most of us in society. I for one can ignore an awful lot when there is a pretty face attached to it, if that face is also backed by charm and magnetism well then it’s very hard to be objective about what may be right in front of my face. In a glass half full, glass half empty dichotomy, attractive qualities have the ability to swing the pendulum towards half full on a regular basis so that whatever rain may appear on the horizon is sure to have a rainbow. Joe is the epitome of this, and when “YOU” is at its best and its worst, it’s when Joe is in peak form. Joe like any good devil , does not just deal in lies, and he is not simply a liar, or an abuser, or an stalker and a creep. The Devil does not make up your wants and needs and give them to you, although that can also be so, he takes advantage of your real ones. He doesn’t come to you pitchfork in hand, teeth bared, tail sweeping at the floor, he comes bearing gifts, and words of encouragement , stroking at your ego. Joe’s affection for Beck in my mind is a product of his narcissism which allows him to conflate obsession with love, his desire to have a human pet, with Beck’s need of him - but he accurately assesses Beck’s issues, and he is good at playing the role of caretaker. This is a fine line, but I think indicative of a harsh reality of human interaction. That being that being a monster is firmly within the spectrum of humanity. YOU’s depiction of Joe mostly does this astonishingly well.

  The show muddy’s the line even further by making Beck such an unsympathetic character. Beck is messy, she is needy, narcissistic herself and can gaslight with the best of them. Which leads to another another harsh reality…not everybody that dies or is murdered is sympathetic as a person. I recall multiple occasions upon which while watching some true crime television show like “Dateline mysteries,” conversations in my family assessing whether or not the victims were truly an “angel” in real life, because it was so oft- said. A morbid fascination that soon led me to wonder why it was necessary to say. Are our views of right and wrong so fragile that merely hearing that a person was a dick in life makes them less sympathetic as a victim of such heinous crimes? If our judicial system is any indication the answer is yes. This I believe is somewhere along the spectrum of platitudes like “Don't speak ill of the dead” except with the misplaced concern in reverse. One overly concerned with the victim in life, the other usually overly concerned with murderers and abusers in death. But here's the tea, sometimes complete assholes are murdered too, sometimes minutes before someone is cut from the fabric of existence, they are mid stroke into being an unconscionable idiot, or mean, or cruel. It's sympathetic that they died because no one deserves to die because they're an asshole, or because they're not a nice person, or because they are messy as fuck.  But that does not mean that they were nice or good or angelic while they were alive.  Beck shouldn't have to be a perfect girl, for us to sympathize with her over a petty, self congratulating murderer, but here we are.

The point for me when the show (Im guessing the book also) crosses the line is when it made narrative punch decisions like having Beck’s friend Peach Salinger (yes.. Peach Salinger) be a stalker in her own right. It’s not necessary. Never mind that both Peach Salinger and subsequently Shay Mitchell’s performance as Peach is one of the best parts of the show, but narratively it teeters a complex, but fun drama too much towards fun, and in the doing puts too many psycho’s in Beck’s kitchen, while ethically softening the blow of Joe’s toxicity, narratively backing his claim as protector. This when the story would have been better served by having Peach be manipulative, and cruel, but not wiling to kill, or a obsessive, making Joe’s claims just what they would be in most any real life case, exaggerated proclamations meant to bolster his own idea of self, as well a his role in Beck’s life.

Since the advent of social media, that particular mode of human interaction has played an increasingly large role in our dating and friendship circles for better and for worse.  The ways that YOU connects them at all these interesting intersections without taking away from the narrative, in effect, adding punch to the narrative is astounding.  It’s ability to capture, but not preach the fragility of friendship as contextualized in the modern age is magnificent. To acutely arrive where social media leaves us all feeling less than is handled masterfully in the arc of Peach Salinger. Peach acting as an avatar, quietly providing us with a twinge of jealousy for our friends successes, and a pinch of happiness in their failures. Beck’s friend Annika as the more obvious commentary on the nature of the surrogate self that we project into society through the avatars we use in social media, represented in her vile racism uncovered through the very same medium she used to disguise it. And finally the ways that social media can help us find connection or make us targets, or allow us to target others in ways previously not available. It’s ability to help us find the truth or make it even all the more illusive. The distorted reality of Peach Salinger, the covert racism of Annika - which Joe uses to manipulate Beck, the ways in which social media drove Joe crazy about Beck, but also allowed Beck to gaslight Joe. The ways in which it enables Joe and to isolate Beck, (typical of behavior for abusers) and in which Peach uses it to manipulate just about all of her friends. The show did this in a myriad of ways , both subversively and true to form.

“YOU” is a very complicated show about male toxicity, that doesn’t make it simple for the anyone else. It complicates its relationships, and leaves just about everyone from Beck to even a young abused boy as some version of complicit in its devilry. Just about everyone is a mess, and just about everyone is harboring ugly secrets, that they are willing to harm others to hide. If there is any person on this show remotely innocent, it is Karen, the only person in a non toxic relationship, being exactly who she is, confident in who she is with a keen moral compass. Outside of her, just about everybody in the show is at one time or another somewhere on the spectrum of messy to evil.  Joe being at the very top of the list, on the very far wrong side of the spectrum.  Overall, I admire “YOU” for being a show, willing to dive and tap into these grey areas of relationships and the complications involved. Brilliant because it dares to take the risk of walking some very fine lines to point a mirror in the audiences direction. To make us look at our own obsession with aesthetics. With what things look like rather than what they are. I didn't always agree with the narrative choices, and I'm still not sure about making a killer THAT charming, but do think its too easy to lay all the blame at the feat of the narrative for our own willingness to overlook Joe’s murderous machinations because he’s good looking charming, and like a dead clock every once in awhile lands on the right thing to do. I think the show is convenient scapegoat for our own falibility in the value we place around these aesthetics which is more responsible than anything for social media’s own peculiar but understandable reaction to Joe as a sympathetic character. I prefer making a killer charming, to the overdone trope of the killer who everyone recognizes is a killer, because that's not the way it works in real life either.  There are very few predators in this world that function by letting everyone know that they are predator. In the animal kingdom, a great deal of them have various and very distinct ways of fooling their prey or placing them in a state of ease so that they are unprepared for the attack.  With human interaction and all of the complex variables that come with it, I think it's important in any narrative medium, whether it be TV, literature, or film to discuss these topics and these interactions with exactly the amount of complication that is involved with their reality in as much as any of those mediums can. With “YOU”, I think we have as excellent a show as can be in laying bare those lines (considering that it's also meant to be entertaining) and that is always going to dirty or muddy the water just a little bit. What you does so well, so brilliantly is make clear to us that when it comes to finding the right one,  or avoiding the wrong ones...in general …it's complicated.