Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Joe Goldberg wants to change. At the outset of the fourth season of Netflix’s show “You,” the stalker and serial killer protagonist, played by Penn Badgley, has once again absconded from his past life, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. His inner monologue, equal parts enjoyably sardonic and disgustingly disturbed, assures viewers that no, for real, this time, he’s going to lie low and stop killing people. Four cities and a dozen murder cover-ups in, though, this is a laughable resolution that the show conveys with a knowing wink and nod. But if Joe can’t change, at least “You” can; its fourth season, which will be split into two five-episode parts on Netflix, is a vast improvement over the lackluster storyline that preceded it.
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Despite a season 3 epilogue ending in Paris, the newest batch of episodes picks up in London, with Joe again living under an assumed name. This time around, he’s playing the part of a college professor at an acclaimed university, palling around with a group of rich, soulless academics and influencers, and trying harder than ever not to peek in the open blinds of his new neighbor, art gallery director Kate (“Feel Good” star Charlotte Ritchie). His newfound equilibrium doesn’t last long, though, as bodies soon start stacking up again, and this time he’s the one being watched – by someone with the moniker of “Eat the Rich Killer.”
By now, many of the aspects of “You” that defy all logic to feel like a purposeful part of its weird, dark charm. Why would Joe fall in with people who are constantly in the tabloids if he just faked his death? Why would he get a job that surely requires an intense background check? Don’t his neighbors know how curtains work? Almost all of the questions point back to the show’s greatest, most subtle strength: it plays a long con with an extremely unreliable narrator, letting Joe ramble to viewers about his supposed motivations before reminding us time and again that he doesn’t know himself at all. He acts put-upon and surprised when he constantly ends up on the verge of getting caught, but it’s part of a Ted Bundy-like game, one that the show cleverly disguises under his mountains of pretentious intellectualism and faux-paternal concern.
While “You” season 4 sometimes retreads familiar ground, it rights the capsizing narrative that the show established in season 3, when the character’s thorny, layered psychology was ignored in favor of a mundane, flattened marriage plot. This time around, Joe’s once again in full pretending-to-be-a-hero mode, and Badgley sells the character’s insufferable, self-righteous attitude just as gamely as ever.
This series is often only as good as its female leads, and “You” has also found a great one in Ritchie, who plays a character whose elegance is belied by a sense of purposeful coldness. Kate isn’t as fantastic as some of the previous female leads who have ruled the series (Jenna Ortega, you were the best of them), but she’s still a formidable counterbalance for Joe. Series newcomers Lukas Gage and Ed Speleers and returning scene-stealer Tati Gabrielle are also compelling.
The series maintains its pulpy-slick visual style this season, along with its knack for comedically undercutting its villainous lead at every turn. “You” has a deep vein of dark comedy that runs the spectrum from camp to satire, and the new season is no exception. It’s the kind of show that opens a UK university-set season with perhaps the single most on-the-nose musical choice imaginable: Vampire Weekend’s “Oxford Comma.” It also relishes every opportunity to tear down the rich and terrible. “You” is at its best when it’s a sort of traveling anthropological study of elites across the globe, and the new season seems to finally realize this. The show positions Joe as one sociopath of several this season, and his out-of-control antics often pale in comparison to the kinks and cruelties of his new crowd.
“You” is often a much more complicated show than its soapy premise indicates, burying viewers deeply in the psyche of a man who’s often lying even to himself and trusting us to understand that his narrative is far from trustworthy. This isn’t a “Dexter”-style vigilante show, but an endless manifesto delivered by an attractive man who fancies himself an ally to the feminist cause – when he’s not busy killing women. It’s also a silly dark comedy that loves to write its hateful lead into increasingly convoluted corners.
All of this is a tall order, and sometimes the writers behind “You” can’t help but drop a couple of the plates they have spinning despite their ambition. In this case, the show leaves Joe in “normal guy” mode for a bit longer than is sustainable. This season plays the long game more than most before it, but it doesn’t always do its due diligence when it comes to character consistency. Its twists are also less believable than ever before, but Badgley manages to carry us through the iffier parts of the narrative with the power of his perfectly slimy performance.
“You” has long since been a show that can’t escape its past, and by dwelling on Joe’s failed romantic fixations, the series hasn’t always transitioned easily from one storyline to the next. But in its fourth season, it’s finally clear what this chameleonic show is going for: it’s essentially an anthology about the power of privilege, centered on a white, well-educated straight man who often fancies himself the victim despite quite literally getting away with murder at (almost) every possible turn. The show is at its sharpest and best when it gives Joe’s phony attempts at the personal transformation a rest and instead lays bare the injustice, cruelty, and, yes, campiness and dark comedy of the world. [B]