Author Spotlight
Connor Vogel
Can people really change?
This question drives the new season of Netflix original serial killer drama “You”— one I’m still not sure I can agree with even after watching this new season.
The series follows Joe Goldberg, played by Penn Badgley, on his search for love as a psychopathic killer.
Change is a central catalyst of “YOU,” as each season sees our favorite killer change location, occupation and even identity as he desperately tries to outrun his past.
The fourth season follows Joe — now “Johnathan Moore” — as an English professor across the pond as he enjoys his “European holiday” free of his old problems. But after the past three seasons, we all know that wherever Joe goes, death follows.
After a night out with his estranged neighbor and university colleague Malcom Harding, Joe is thrown into the city of a social circle of rich socialites. But one by one, an “Eat The Rich” murderer kills off Joe’s new friends.
With a two-dimensional supporting cast, formulaic plot and his least interesting love interest yet, “YOU” shows viewers it’s running out of steam. This season’s many problems highlight not just what is wrong about the show, but with this genre in general.
The severely underwritten supporting cast of stereotypical wealthy upper class border on caricatures but are intentionally written this way so the audiences can’t to any character they are killed off as premeditated plot devices to drive a story that focuses more on progressing the plot than character should be criminal.
So Joe dons his signature baseball cap and sets out across London to find the wolf among sheep in this world of selfish backstabbers, each with their own agenda and secrets.
Now Joe is on the receiving end of a stalker’s obsession in this whodunit and must be his own Benoit Blanc and find the killer before his secrets are revealed in a mashup Clue and Dexter.
The show makes it very obvious that there is a change in plot and gives everyone the refresher course no one needed. Even this change of pace was a more interesting premise before I started watching the show.
I’ll take this time to show my appreciation for Badgley, an actor who can make you sympathize with a serial killer. This feat is one he doesn’t receive enough credit for, so I’m here to recognize he turned down the creepy meter a lot this season, even though we all wanted to see the psycho under his mask.
This detective story suffocates all other plotlines for the most predictable plot twists yet, with this game of cat and mouse far less appealing than the new love we were expecting to take center stage between Joe and Malcolm’s ex-girlfriend Kate.
In the end, YOU’s newest chapter forgets what it is at its core, the story of a serial killer and attempting to victimize a serial killer is wrong in a number of ways. This season only proves what many know in their hearts: that you can grow and evolve, but you cannot change.
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