Badgley himself told the New York Times, “In my experience, it tends to be men who are more horrified by Joe," maybe because his abuse is "less of a novel idea to women. You's Joe is a particularly interesting study, because outwardly he doesn't seem like a horror-show psychopath, but as women know from crime shows and their own experiences, abusers often don't. Some people take self-defense classes others search for clues in paperback books. Given that women are more likely to be the victims in both true-crime stories and real life, the stories read like a 101 course in How to Not Get Murdered. ![]() “My research found more that people may be drawn to crime to learn how to prevent it from happening to them,” she says. ![]() Vicary’s work focuses on why women in particular are drawn to true crime stories in 2010, she published a study that looked at why more women than men reviewed true crime books, and what they hoped to learn from them. Again, and I truly cannot stress this enough, he begs her to take him back, only to murder her. Other acts are less veiled: he abducts and murders her on-and-off boyfriend he starts seeing the therapist with whom he's convinced she is having an affair, and eventually attacks the man at gunpoint. He attempts to befriend her friends, people whom he all but openly hates. He waits for her to kiss him, so that she feels like she entered this relationship willingly. He encourages her to stand up to a sleazy professor she does not realize she is being groomed to believe that she would not have found that power without his help. While trailing her, he saves her life after she stumbles off the subway platform, only for her to feel indebted to him he also steals her phone and follows her every text, plan, and move through the cloud. He looks her up on social media, only to stalk her. But this is where things shift, because for every ostensibly romantic thing Joe does, there’s a sinister end in sight. They flirt she buys the book he learns her name she leaves. (Coincidentally, some fans have noted that Badgley-as-Joe bears resemblance to one of the most infamous serial killers ever, unnerving in its own right.) But what the show does exceptionally well is utilize Joe's good-guy perception to skewer several hallmarks of Hollywood romance by following them down dark roads to their ultimate extremes.Īt the show’s open, Joe and Beck have a traditional meet-cute: she's looking for a book, he’s a bookstore manager. Some fans were drawn in because they thought Joe was hot, much to Badgley’s personal chagrin, a fun/upsetting dynamic that’s now being replicated with the streamer's new Ted Bundy documentary. A modern romance column, this is not-but it is a massive hit, because according to Netflix, the series has attracted over 40 million viewers since its platform premiere (which could mean a lot of things, based on Netflix's shadowy reporting, but still, huge). Instead, You unfurls more like a 10 hour episode of SVU wherein an average Joe bookseller-spoiler, sorry-holds his girlfriend hostage and ultimately kills her. This would be where most rom-com credits roll, but we are not in a rom-com. (Cue laugh track!) He pleads, she forgives, they have makeup sex. Where ‘80s-era Lloyd Dobler had a trench coat and a boom box, Joe has a rock, which he uses to accidentally smash Beck’s ground-floor studio windows. Because we hear his thoughts, we know he wishes it was raining, for full dramatic effect. ![]() There’s a scene in You, the soapy drama that premiered on Lifetime last fall and recently moved to Netflix for its second season, that wouldn’t feel out of place in a romantic comedy: Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), our narrator, has just broken up with his perfectly competent girlfriend, Karen (Natalie Paul), and runs through the streets to the apartment of his one true love, Beck (Elizabeth Lail).
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