You is a drama-thriller TV series created by Sera Gamble and Greg Berlanti and starring Penn Badgley, Tati Gabrielle, Charlotte Ritchie, Lukas Gage and Ed Speleers, alongside other cast members. You season 4 Part 1 has 5 episodes, each around 50 minutes long. You season 4 part 2 also has 5 episodes and is set to release on March 09.
Netflix’s description of the series reads:
A dangerously charming, intensely obsessive young man goes to extreme measures to insert himself into the lives of those he is transfixed by.
– You Season 4 Part 1 Review Does Not contain Spoilers –
Penn Badgley’s voiceovers in You are a mixture of horrifying and attractive. It’s deep and dripping with sexual tension, but it’s also the voice of a stalker and murderer. It’s confusing and messy and just so toxic; fortunately or unfortunately, you also cannot look away.
You season 4 feels completely different yet horrifyingly familiar – a feeling that is not new for You series, yet something is strikingly new in every season. Although the first season was the true stuff of nightmares, something that can happen to normal women like you or me, something that has probably happened to many, I am sure, the subsequent seasons, personally, have gone off the rails a bit.
They are trying to go forward with the same idea and playing around with it a bit, keeping the storyline the same. And sure, stalkers gonna stalk, but You season 3, with the excellent Victoria Pedretti as murder wifey, was truly off the rails but not really. Apart from her, the thing that drew me to the show last season was Joe’s vulnerability at some point and the fact that I love toxic relationships in any shape or form.
With You season 4 part 1, however, is not exactly the series that we love and hate. It’s a nifty little whodunit that turns the hunter into the hunted, but of course, rooted in Joe’s love for Marienne (or something similar to it anyway) or interest towards Kate. You season 4 part 1 isn’t the series that we have seen for this long – its characters, although with their own flair for the over-the-top, aren’t memorable like the others in the last 3 seasons.
I think that’s primarily because the moment you get into royalty, it starts to get old pretty fast. There’s only so much you can show when it comes to the top 10% of the population that we haven’t seen before, and the interest dies out quickly. There was a certain charm and freshness in all the characters in the previous 3 seasons, and they shaped the storyline in very interesting ways. This time, it feels rather used and abused, and the people don’t have as much pazzazz as you’d expect for You.
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Anyway, another interesting part of You is the places where they are set. Previously, we have run around in America and seen different facets of the neighbourhood and people in every season. This time, as is known, we are set in London and see the different people and their personalities come through. The series looks dreary yet beautiful, as you’d expect London to be like.
Coming back to the story, You season 4 part 1 gives us a different take on Joe’s adventures (if you can call it that) and flips it a bit on its head. With Joe now the target of someone just like him, his internal monologue is delicious to hear. The moral superiority he holds over the person who holds up a mirror to him is interesting and arresting; plus, you are still trying to figure out the suspects as you meet Joe’s new friends.
It’s a surprising change of pace for Joe is refreshing, but it drags a lot in between for a lot of its runtime. I guess it’s not fun when the stalker doesn’t stalk anymore and instead tries to solve a mystery. It’s not bad, per se, but it lacks the nasty and grimy moments of season 1 and the murderous couple dance of season 3. It’s new for Joe Goldberg as well as for us, and quite interesting to watch him try to make sense of everything, but it’s not intriguing enough.
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We go on and on, learning about his new friends. It’s fun at first, funny even, but it doesn’t catch your attention for long enough. At least not like the more relatable crowd from the first 3 seasons. They were good, the story mouled according to their personalities. Here, much like everyone, things seem a bit more surface-level. It feels like we’re seeing everything from a distance instead of being in the throngs of it.
Maybe it’s because Joe himself isn’t in the mess like you’d expect. He’s also on the outside of the mystery, and we are there with him. We are frustrated with him, but sympathising with him is difficult, and thus it makes the entire thing a bit confusing. How do you sympathise with a cold and calculating murderer?
Don’t worry, everyone. Joe Goldberg does have another little pet to keep himself occupied and up-to-date as he destroys lives all around him. Nadia is the convenient plot point who comes up whenever Joe needs some help and disappears when his work is done. The trope is getting a bit too one-the-nose now, but hey, we live in Joe’s world, and that’s how it is here.
Penn Badgley is getting too good at playing Joe Goldberg, and I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not. Either way, it’s a little sickening listening to his internal monologue and the way he plays this man who can do anything and everything for selfish reasons. Charlotte Ritchie plays a surprisingly vulnerable yet rude Kate who can get under your skin with her believable performance.
Summing Up: You Season 4 Part 1
You reeled us into a toxic relationship once more with our neighbourhood stalker, whom we can’t get enough of. It’s always great watching Joe go down the same path as he always did, thinking of himself to be a morally superior being whose decisions all make sense, regardless of how pathological they are.
Is You season 4 the best one yet? No. But it’s definitely entertaining, and watching Penn Badgley is always dreamy.
You is streaming on Netflix.