You S2:E01 “A Fresh Start”
Well. Here we are at the beginning of the second series of You from Netflix. I am TalksTooMuch or TTM for short and I am a new recapper here at WERRRK for this horribly addicting series. I watched the first ten episodes in a blur (just like Netflix taught me!), I can’t wait to see what awful stuff they’ve cooked up for the second season. Rolling You S2:E01 “A Fresh Start” after the break!
Okay, hands up, who watched the first season? All of you? Awesome, so we don’t need to go into too much detail to get this party started. Series one introduced us to Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgely from Gossip Girl!! Is it wrong that I loved that show? It totally is.), a seemingly average erm, Joe with a penchant for falling in love quickly and trying to create a relationship out of thin air based on a prospective partner’s social media postings.
He met and fell in love with Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and expended a metric fucktonne of energy insinuating himself into her life and removing obstacles, sometimes in the form of people, from their happiness as a couple.
Even with all his manipulation, they had a fairly normal basic relationship which ended when she found out he had murdered her old boyfriend and done some other shite that she thought made him look like a psychopath and he meant as signs of true commitment. He locked her in a box (that’s…a long story) where she wrote a version of truth blaming the psychiatrist she’d been sleeping with (John Stamos is unbelievably hot still for a guy known universally as Uncle Jesse) as a peace offering. He killed her during an escape attempt and that version became the official story of What Happened To Beck.
He also had another missing girlfriend from the past pop up at the end, hai Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers. Like on your birth certificate it’s Ambyr?)! Fancy you showing up when all of us, including Joe, thought you were the first of his paramour victims!
So we’re all set! Let’s roll into season two and find out what Joe’s been doing with himself.
We open in Los Angeles, did I mention that Joe is old fashioned and anti-Los Angeles and TV and anything fake like social media or the like? What a great place to hide! Not like there are a thousand phones and cameras clicking at any moment!
He’s passing himself as Will Bettleheim (sp?) and looking for an apartment. As expected, his faked credit history is awesome but lack of online presence is worrisome.
That DRAWL.
Is he some kind of a freak or something? Landlady Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbado) offers Will a ground floor apartment, but perhaps since he was able to watch every single one of Beck’s moves as she pranced around her ground floor apartment (NO BLINDS EVER), he opts for the second.
Or maybe it’s because he has a giant telescope to assemble, as he narrates the rules he’s trying to live by. No focus on one person, no looking them up, no getting “swept up” which is a fun way to describe a murderous and manipulative romantic rampage.
What’s he looking for? A Fresh Start?
He wakes the next day and relives his last meeting with Candace. She came across the book Beck wrote and recognised it as Joe’s MO immediately. Joe wants to know what she’s planning to do about it.
Hahaha jk, nope, she’s going to the police. Nah, still kidding, that would be too easy for him!
(I don’t really think either of those things could be classified as easy on him)
He’s back in the present, internally monologuing about staying unpredictable when a precocious teenage girl interrupts. Oh yeah, nothing predictable in him looking out for a young neighbour (he totally did that in season one, rescuing an abused kiddo from his mom’s abusive boyfriend).
Ellie (Jenny Ortega) is not only looking for information, she’s got some to share. She gives Joe the lowdown on all the tenants, including Delilah, who seems to look out for her.
Joe applies for a job at what passes for a grocery store in Los Angeles; Anavrin (Nirvana spelled backwards, I shit you not) is super fancy and he’s underqualified to handle produce in this “coveted” position. He drags out the book Crime and Punishment at the end of his failed interview and somehow his description of the book prompts Calvin (Adwin Brown from the new Heathers series – I’d sooner the chainsaw) to ask if he’d ever considered working in a bookstore?
Did I mention Joe worked in / kind of owned a bookstore back in New York? That’s how he met Beck! That’s not a very…unpredictable choice, though.
He gets the job! A new apron tomorrow, woooo! On the way out, he spots…You.
His admonishments have no effect and he is on the prowl already, stalking his prey skillfully around the produce mounds until she turns around and…starts to flirt with him. Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) even works there! He tries to deflect with the truth but she’s still.interested.
Like, Love Quinn is on her fictional birth certificate?
We get another little flashback to his conversation with Candace, he ran off before she even got to tell him how she was going to torture him.
In the disappointing book section of Anavrin (he’s totally a book snob and wants nothing to do with your need to cleanse your chakras), he meets Forty Quinn (James Scully – also from Heathers – is this a gang infiltration?) with a palm tree shirt and outsized attitude.
Like on his fictional birth certificate it says Forty Quinn?
Ohhh, the Quinns own the store and that’s why Forty feels comfortable being a dick. Love (these NAMES) tries to set Joe at ease, but he’s trying not to be an obsessive and murderous stalker for the moment so he runs away as she’s trying to figure out his “movie”.
It’s too late, he’s already masturbating in the back thinking about her climbing into his lap in the 6 minutes he has left of break. He stops himself before finishing, he doesn’t do this any more! He doesn’t “fantasize to some impossible version of a woman I barely know.”
Awwww, that’s growth!
Joe muses on his personal growth but he’s having trouble leaving the past behind him. Especially since Candace has vowed to find and destroy him, that’s her plan. She deserves that!
They’re just…so well suited!
I told you the filming and camera usage would be a problem in LA! Already Ellie has been filming Joe, so he confronts her then ends up breaking her phone before she runs off. Totally normal, nothing to see here.
He’s off to the DMV to get a driver’s license where he runs into Love, who’s helping an Arabic woman be treated like.a.person. Love kisses Joe on the cheek and how is that even possible?
He doesn’t understand it either, so he allows himself the joy of an online search. Love has locked down every once of her social media accounts, in LA. Hm.
He replaces Ellie’s phone and she explains her school film project to him. Something cinema verite but she doesn’t believe in books and a bargain is struck vis a vis reading/watching weird vines or something.
I am also an old.
She comments on an Instagram feed being fake and Joe is instantly interested. How can she tell? She offers to be his internet sensei, which involves taking pictures of stuff he likes but not hastagging or of his face. She gives him some heartfelt advice.
Ahhh see, he has to create an account so he doesn’t look weird, so he can send Love a friend request. Got it.
He falls asleep under a tree outside in Los Angeles in the summer (hahahaha as a ginger I have to say AS IF), wishing he could stop running and dreaming of his mother abandoning him as a child.
He wakes up sunburned through.his.shirt with an accepted friend request; Love is married? Married or not, Love is at his apartment door because it appears she is also a stalker. Huh. These guys should be double married!
She treats his sunburn with apple cider vinegar, then blows.on.it while he reminds himself to keep it light. Breezy even.
She’s just as passionate about books as he is and she’s read authors he hasn’t! Like Joan Didion! How can he not have read Joan Didion? Is Joe one of those bookshop arseholes who only likes pretentious male authors?
They’re off on Joe’s California Conversion Tour!
Which ends sharing headphones at the edge of the hills eating food out of a cardboard container. Oh, sorry, we’re not done, we’re off to the Anavrin for Love to prepare an exquisite roasted chicken.
That is his perfect bite.
Why is she so close? Metaphorically, but also physically, she’s practically climbing into his lap and I don’t know if you’ve seen Joe with a sunburn but he looks like MegaMan after a trip to Mars.
Why is she so up in his grill?
She spills about her marriage; her husband is dead, oh. He got sick and died and it left her sort of othered. People their age don’t get married, typically, let alone widowed. My mom was widowed at 26, it certainly wasn’t common then either.
It’s given her a second sense now, though, the ability to recognise when someone has really loved and lost someone.
If only there was a psychopathy range on that particular radar.
She gives him the gift of Joan Didion and off he rolls. He arrives home at 2 am to find Ellie waiting for him, someone named Jasper came by looking for Joe to give something back.
We’re off to the storage unit, where Joe has an enourmous unit (heh) full of…not much. Oh! Except for the huge locked glass box from the basement of the bookstore in New York and it’s full of: Will Bettelheim. The actual Mr. Bettelheim. But there’s more!!
Everything, from Joe applying to work at that particular store, to Crime and Punishment, to the DMV, to that apartment, it’s all been set up by him so he can cross paths with Love. He wasn’t exactly an unreliable narrator, he just left out the details of how and why. This is what he was looking at through that high-powered telescope!
Damnit, I forgot Joe was a psychopath even though I typed it right up there! He’s so dang likeable, that’s the worst part! I hate that I always root for him, almost against my will. This pre-planning also explains why she was so oddly affectionate, he’s super good at setting up situations so that people trust him.Paragraph
We’re oot, I hope you enjoyed my first foray into You (that sounds gross, sorry) from Netflix for the fabulous WERRRK.com, see you next time! I recap all kinds of other shows on my home site, www.gingesbecray.com. You might want to check it out if you’re into British dramas or baking shows where everyone is nice to each other. Cheers!
You S2:E02 “Just The Tip”
Hello! Welcome back to You season two from Netflix where everyone has ridiculous names and Joe’s the same old stalker dirtbag he always was. Let’s find out the ways after the break! Rolling into You S2:E02 “Just The Tip”.
Okay! To catch up on the last episode, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgely)has moved from New York to LA and assumed the identity of Will Bettelheim (Robin Lord Taylor whom I thought was the creepy baby from Game of Thrones and the flying floor, but turns out is just a dude from Gotham). I figured Joe creeped a graveyard or something, but turns out that Will is an actual person, currently trapped in the giant acrylic cube from the New York bookstore locked in a storage unit.
Joe’s met some new people, including new target Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) and her brother Forty (James Scully) because apparently those are names in Los Angeles. Joe is being hunted by someone else for a change, his ex-girlfriend Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers), who we were pretty sure Joe killed before he even met Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) from season one. Surprise! To be fair, Joe also thought that. Moving on!
Joe stalks Love through the Los Angeles Fish Market waxing philosophical about his optimistic personality. He’s thinking about the story they’re going to tell their kids! He’s always been like that and yap yap yap he goes but all I keep thinking is… where is your Baseball Cap of Mystery? She’s going to SEE you, have you any idea how big your melon is? It’s like an orange on a toothpick!
One thing. The real problem with Love’s name is that it either sounds like you’re asking an English person for a cup of tea or to Jennifer Love Hewitt in the 90s. That’s what they called her! She asked them to! It’s not right.
Hey, now we getta find out how he got obsessed with, erm, Love! Well. After we watch him craft his new identity and stuff. He meets Will because of his Craigslist ad for documentation, the funny part was when Will was holding forth at great length about not keeping animals in cages. “No cages are best.”
Will has spent ten years creating his employable identity; Joe’s thinking he doesn’t have time for none of that shiznit. Better just grab Will!
Ahhh, this isn’t the same cube from the New York bookstore basement, Joe built a new one. I don’t think Will cares either way, he would just like out of the box, pees.
There’s this new problem of a guy named Jasper Krenn (Steven W. Bailey);Will took $3,000 dollars to help him and then just kept it after not even meeting. The not even meeting means Jasper doesn’t know Joe is not Will, and since he’s flashing that ID everywhere, Joe’s gonna be in trouble.
Joe forges a book for some moola and we’re back at the Fish Market. Oh. Joe’s WITH Love, who invited him to show off her pescatarian skills. So it’s okay if she sees him. Now the kissing!
But he sees Beck lurking by the back of the market. Is he cracking up? That’s the technical term and maybe! Because he’s just been invited to meet Love’s friends.
Back at Anavrin (nirvana backwards and I legit have to write it out every time the right way first because that’s just STUPID), Love’s brother Forty (like the alcohol?) makes a weak joke before launching into his new marketing plan. Let’s get rid of the Women’s Literature display (that’s sexist!) and set up a Books / Movies diorama with a screen playing said movies all day every day.
Forty is super duper creepy and cheesy and NAMASTE.
Out behind the store is a jovial looking man, this is Jasper? He looks so friendly! Joe hands over the $3000, guess what? It’s actually $50,000 that Will owes Jasper and he’ll need that today. Still cheerful and friendly, Jasper cuts off the tip of Joe’s finger and provides specific instructions for its re-attachment. He’s going to hold onto the tip, he’ll give it back when Joe hands over the other $47,000 within the next 10-12 hours.
That was such a well-executed maneuver, if you’re not Joe, you’re clapping right now!
Will asked for his meds earlier, Joe and I didn’t believe him but now we do! He’s a hair’s breadth from a full gibber.
One of Will’s contacts owes him $50k, Joe’s gonna pick it up between 12-2, so he won’t be able to go for lunch with Love and her friends. Awwww.
So weird how this “love” story is mixed in with all this other shite. He’s running from people, he’s being mutilated, but he’s still pissed he’s going to have to miss lunch with his target.
*Also: once I cut off just the tip of my finger, I wasn’t wandering around making lunch plans after that. Hurt like a motherhumper for a week.
He gives the bad news to Love, absolutely loving how she handles the disappointment. He’s off to stalk her luncheon with her friends, ooooh, one is Charlie Barnett from Russian Doll!
Okay, okay, we’ve got Sunrise (Melanie Field), Lucy (Marielle Scott) and Gabe (Charlie Barnett!)settling in for lunch as Joe creeps around in his baseball cap. Joe wants to know how much influence Love’s friends exert over her; Beck’s friends were NIGHTMARES.
Sunrise and Lucy are a couple, Gabe is a pansexual acupuncturist because of course he is and they’re actually all very nice. Especially Gabe, Love’s oldest friend who does something to women on yoga pillows that sounds uncomfortable.
Joe listens to their conversation, her friends are awesome! He sees Beck again, what’s that about?
Candace came back from the dead to hunt him like the predatory animal he is, but we know for sure Beck is dead, right?
RIGHT??
Joe’s meet is scheduled at a pool party, running between 12-2 on a Tuesday hahaha. He gets taken for John Mayer more than once.
I guess like if John Mayer had a tapeworm and was trapped in a dark room with no natural light for at least a month?
…why are there men in stripperkinis? You can’t really swim in those, boys. They’re more for laying out. A comedian, Henderson (Chris D’Elia whose name I know from…somewhere) is cruising the party, Joe saw him at the airport when he first arrived giving out selfies with fans.
Hey! Will’s landlady Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbado) is at the party too! How many million people are there in LA? Ballpark? Like lots? In an even more startling coincidence (blink blink), Delilah and Hendy are friends! By friends I mean that he’s much more excited to see her than she is to see him. He calls her smart AND knows of the same doctor Jasper recommended to Will, so maybe he’s lost a digit a time or two.
Jared Padalecki has been mentioned twice, I assume he means something in Delilah’s life or work as an expose journalist. Annnd maybe in other people’s lives, he’s an actor. I only love him because of his middle name. Will tries to find out the source of Delilah’s animosity towards Hendy so she writes Joe off as a sheeple star-humper.
Who’s Rufus? Why is everyone inside where it’s dark at a pool party? I’m a ginger, so that’s my natural habitat but you’d assume all these LA people would feel more fondly about melanoma.
Rufus (Jeremy Kent Jackson) is even farther away from the sun, he’s downstairs in a robe playing some sweet vintage Air Supply vinyl. Strip please, Will! I love how A) Rufus recognises that Will doesn’t look anything like the guy on the “app” and B) doesn’t care and still wants him to take his clothes off. I like his can-do attitude! Play it as it lays, boys!
Will would like the $50k instead of a memorable beej to “Lost In Love”, fanks, even more so than an envelope full of pills, which is what he leaves with.
Remember that Will said he needed meds? That’s what these are, Canadian (holla!) bi-polar meds and hmmm. I thought he looked more physically afflicted than mentally, but I guess it could do both!
Will’s not taking the meds, no way! Joe has to tap into the homicidal part of him he keeps hidden under pithy observations and scare Will but still: he doesn’t have a way to get the money he needs and his anger started the blood flowing in his poor amputated digit.
Love comes to Will’s apartment but whatever confrontation she had planned is moved to the back burner when she sees bloody finger detritus everywhere. Not for long, however, what’s the deal with lying about why he couldn’t come to lunch?
He was stupid and used her.twin.brother as an excuse, I mean. She’s trying to understand why he would lie to her and he doesn’t get why she’s moving so fast but the real problem is that every time they get physically close, he sees Beck. He has to shout to get Love to stop touching him and understanding.
She leaves and Beck finally gets to speak! Yay! Imagine being an actor and your whole job is to stand around with fresh hair not saying anything but looking portentous. Like Brad Pitt’s early career, basically, but with a bigger ‘do.
Beck is some sort of manifestation of his consciousness or insecurity or psychopathy, we don’t know yet! But Joe now has a plan after yelling at her and we’re back in the storage locker, this time with Jasper in tow.
Joe introduces himself and offers Will in return but Jasper’s not biting so Joe has to kill him, cleaning it up on some handy dandy 6mm plastic. Beck shows up to explain her purpose; she’s Joe’s fear that he’ll hurt Love.
Joe has surgery, heps himself up on goofballs and dismembers Jasper while Love prepares a lovely meal. I stopped watching long before Joe started grinding Jasper’s appendages into chuck, but it sounded kind of squishy.
He dumps bags of Jasper in dumpsters all over town and heads over to see Love, who was cooking that amazing meal for him.
Love has assumed that Joe doesn’t want to get into a relationship with her because he was badly hurt by an ex, but he explains that it was him that did the hurting. She pushes him to admit that he didn’t WANT to hurt his ex, but. Is that true? He could have walked away at any time to not hurt Beck, but he kept going further and further until there was no choice but to have to kill her. So.
To clarify: we have a serial killer protesting that he hurts women and a woman insisting that sometimes you just gotta put on your big girl pants and deal. She even says “You can not hurt me.” They make a pact to not hurt each other, which would be adorable if one of you wasn’t Dexter.
I think I have BEEN this woman! Except for the murdery parts.
They’re going to be friends! Until Joe’s really sure Beck’s gone, really gone. They’re an Us now!
Joe’s so uplifted by this idea that he even tries to make friends with Delilah. Delilah isn’t having it, but she tells him why she hates the comedian Henderson. He *may have* *probably did* roofie and rape her when she was underage. She didn’t report, but tried years later to write about him to find that it was only people like her that were attacked: underage non-white strippers and none of them were about to go on record.
Thanos turns her laser focus on Joe next, don’t think he’s getting a pass. “You act nice because you’re not.” She’s not fooled by anything he’s doing and he better stay away from her and her sister.
Back to see our Will in the box, Joe asked what he did with the money he bilked Jasper for and Will says he spent it on a woman who needed it. Joe can understand that!
Ten bucks says we already know that woman! Apparently there are only 9 people in Los Angeles.Paragraph
Joe murdered Jasper in front of Will, whom he’s been drugging. When Will mentions that thought he imagined that, we know that’s the timer on his life clock clicking on. It’s been nice getting to know ya, Will!
Joe performs a goodbye ritual with Love, sure, that’s totally how you exorcise the demon of the ex-girlfriend you murdered.
He muses to himself about the nature of his changing story with Love, deciding “the past is prologue”, while he hides trophies of his current kills behind a painting on his wall. One of those is a pair of underwear he stole from her laundry, you know you can just ask for those, right?
Joe’s optimistic and we’re oot!
I do love how his apartment is an absolute shithole, just like most cheap apartments everywhere. I hate it when they throw people in million-dollar apartments on part-time retail salaries.
The conundrum of Joe is this: so many of his actions seem connected to remorse but then… psychopath. He truly can only see things one way, HIS way, but doesn’t the appearance of the spectre of Beck mean otherwise? WHY DOES HE SEEM SO NORMAL? Except for the murdery grindy bits?? Until next time! Cheers
You S2:E03 “What Are Friends For?”
It’s time for me and You from Netflix, are you ready?? I said, ARE YOU READY?? WOOOO! We’ve got layers and layers in here, but I still feel like Joe is going to out-psychopath everyone else and still convince himself (and us) that he’s mostly the good guy. Let’s find out what’s shaking in You S2:E03 “What Are Friends For?”
We open at Anavrin (I HATE THAT NAME so much) with our anti-hero Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) making googly eyes at his “friend” Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti); Calvin (Adwin Brown) sliding over to mock.
Love bakes food gifts for Joe every.single.day, which is absolutely what I do for people I am friends with. Joe’s pushed Love away, afraid that he’ll hurt her the same way he *totally murdered* his last girlfriend. And tried to murder the one before, but she’s not dead, surprise!
Awww, they even watch baking shows together and make platonic jokes during.
Just.friends.
Joe discusses his love life with his captive Will Bettelheim (Robin Lord Taylor) whom he stole for his identity. Some people just steal identities, but Joe took the whole guy! He’s a big picture person.
They play Hangman, Will setting the puzzles from inside his cage with ketchup dashes while Joe waxes poetic about not smashing Love. Will is desperate for contact, being locked in a box in a soundproofed storage locker being fed french fries is no place for a conspiracy theorist Californian. Surely Joe could rustle up a heritage grain bowl at the ridiculous Namaste grocery store, yes? Gluten and GMO free?
Love meets up with her friends Lucy (Marielle Scott) and Sunrise Darshan Cummings (Melanie Field) who have good news: they’ve set a date for the wedding, yay! The only thing they agree on is that they don’t want Love to bake their wedding cake, she has to beg: baking is how she expresses her love!
*Same!! If I bake for you, I like you!
Her friends know her better: she cooks when she’s happy, she bakes when she’s frustrated, which is what Joe’s doing to her. Does he even exist? Is he into her, really? I love her friends, they give excellent advice but she’s not going to listen anyway.
Joe’s enjoyment of next day’s treat is interrupted by Love’s douchey twin brotherForty (James Scully), unshaven, unshowered and be-kimono’d with many ideas about the book department Will runs. Journals!
Joe forgot he’s in Los Angeles, Forty isn’t interested in him, he needs Joe to be interested in him. Being surrounded by narcissists must be like hiding in the corner of a very noisy bar, hard on the ears and isolating but ultimately fascinating, at least for a little while.
Joe’s decided to try and win Forty over, since he and Love were close as kids before they became polar opposites. Forty invites him to an improv show and Joe starts his deep dive into Forty’s online presence.
Forty is a writer/producer/director/something else, known for movie short “Third Twin” and he’s talent scouting at the show which hurts Joe’s brain. It’s not just improv, comedian Henderson (Chris D’Elia) is there for a secret set! That’s who Forty is there to see.
Since we know he probably sexually assaulted at least one underage girl, Joe is not as excited to see him. Less so again when he sees 15-year-old Ellie (Jenny Ortega) stroll into the VIP area without being checked.
Joe has a protector-complex while also being a total psychopath, so he doesn’t follow Forty out and instead hangs around making sure that Ellie doesn’t leave with Henderson.
It was Ellie’s sister Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbado) who was most likely assaulted by Henderson, that’s why it’s even more weird that Ellie is chasing after an internship with him.
Cut to Joe dropping off food for Will in his box, Will wants to share the relationship wisdom he has gleaned from his experiences. We’re all trying to date our moms/dads and recreate parental dynamics?? Are we?? I want to think I’m intellectually superior and be alone? That sounds awful. Think I’ll take a pass on advice from the man engaged to someone not comfortable meeting, but totally cool with accepting $50,000.00 worth of “help.”
Joe gets to work to embarrass himself over the food gift he has not received, whoops! An awkward conversation follows, let’s break this down:
- She likes him, so has been leaving a specially baked treat in his locker every day, sometimes with suggestive notes about “moist”
- He hasn’t acknowledged said treats until
- Now that he expects baked goods to be placed in his locker daily, she has ceased
- She doesn’t want him to expect it
See what she did there? She created a need where there wasn’t one, then withdrew it to create a dependence. Genius. Not super manipulative at all.
Forty watches all.
He approaches Joe after, what are his intentions with his sister? Joe tries to deflect, but once again, there is no need. Forty only sees everything through the very narrow lens of his own experience, he thinks Joe’s in some kind of program (involving at least 12 steps) like him and moves on to pitch a thriller set with the backdrop of celebrity rehab.
It takes Joe five minutes longer than I to come up with a solution, he needs to bake for the baker. Duh. Or throw her a salami sandwich, that’s what she’s really looking to chow down on.
Joe watches Delilah fight with her sister Ellie before Delilah storms up to his apartment to scream at him for…stalking? Helping? Who knows. But she’s planning an expose on Henderson to take him down (she’s going to “Harvey” him – aww, Weinstein is a verb! Shouldn’t it be Ronan Farrow him?), Joe has a more direct plan in mind.
Earlier, he accidentally broke Ellie’s phone so gifted her with another one on which he installed spyware because that’s kind of what he does.
Joe doesn’t see anything alarming in Ellie’s conversations with Henderson (aka Hendy) and proceeds to his plan to appease Love. He’s made her a crap breakfast out of junk, just like when she and her brother were neglected children, awww!
She appreciates the thought, kissing him deeply to his dismay. He didn’t think excavating deeply personal memories from her childhood and serving them on a platter of concern and thoughtfulness was romantic.
She asks what we already know: is he some kind of sociopath?
YES. Love, YES.
She storms out and Joe sees Ellie puking into a plant. That innocent get-together with Hendy he saw in her texts turned into her blacking out and losing time, just like what happened to her sister. Joe will be taking action.
He asks Will how to hack a celebrity, but Will wants to talk about Joe’s motivation. Does helping this kid make him feel like he’s a good guy after all? Joe’s not in the mood to be analysed; does Will really want Joe to think he’s a bad person by not helping?
Will can help, but he needs a laptop with wifi, which is like handing a hostage a gun to shoot you with.
Love and Forty fight over tennis, she hates his hanging-on-ness but he thinks it’s a his getting close with Joe (who they think is called Will).
Joe researches Henderson. I snorted when he saw his voting affiliation: “Libertarian? F*cking sleazebag.” Hendy’s house appears impenetrable, he’ll need to be invited in, perhaps by one of his fringe friends. NOT Forty, who has beef with Hendy’s manager.
Joe sets his sights on improv performerFreddy (Eliot Schwartz), musing on the nature of “Yes, and” and its role in Me Too culture, indoctrinating women into fame via being “game.” I think men have to “yes, and” in improv and fame, too but it’s an interesting idea.
Joe bullshits his way through a perplexing conversation (I know those words individually, but) with Freddy and gains entrance to a party at Hendy’s, to be followed in by Forty lurking outside.
Forty is ready to pitch! He approaches Hendy’s agent Tina (Kether Donohue) but while Tina is willing to listen for 30 seconds, she’s not willing to set up a meeting.
Forty doesn’t have a work ethic, see. So here’s Forty, disappointed and upset, ostensibly sober and surrounded by booze and drugs.
Joe searches Henderson’s bedroom then finds Forty downstairs holding forth drunkenly. Love tells Joe to get her brother out of there, but here’s where earlier concerns come in. Joe tries to talk Forty down, but they’re at a celebrity party and people are taking pictures that will probably be posted somewhere. Joe doesn’t have his Baseball Cap of Mystery!
Henderson intervenes, throwing in the party so Forty will go home and not feel badly about it. Joe is confused by the sudden rush of good acts committed by Hendy, including speaking kindly and paternally about Ellie.
Joe takes Forty to his place to sober up, Love shows up to bolster his spirits and I fell asleep. I mean, I’m trying to care about their sibling relationship or Forty at all but I dooooonnnnn’t.
Joe and Love bond some more over boring Forty and his boring storyline, she defends her sticking with Joe’s broken soul but now we know why. She’s used to co-dependency.
Joe kisses her and they fully commit to this unfortunate and inevitable path. They have muffled sex in the same room where his telescope is set up, you know, the telescope trained on the back of her house.
Forty wakes up all perky, Joe’s even willing to make this thrupple work because apparently he doesn’t know what a thrupple is.
Wow, Joe trusted Will with wifi in his cage and Will was able to hack Henderson! There just wasn’t anything to find. Hm.
Or is there?? Joe asks Forty why he and Henderson fell out, seems Forty spewed all over Hendy’s “secret toy room.” Maybe that’s why Joe didn’t see anything weird in Hendy’s bedroom and Will didn’t find anything on Hendy’s computer. Hm. The room caters to those into “kid stuff” and possibly sadism. WHY did this not make Forty say something? And we’re out! Until next time, cheers!
You S2:E04 “The Good, The Bad and the Hendy”
Hello! Welcome back to Netflix’s You, where we hate ourselves for cheering on a cold blooded killer because schawwwww, he’s so nice except for the murdery bits! Let’s dig a little deeper into Joe’s new life, it’s getting more complicated by the minute. Rolling You S2:E04 “The Good, The Bad and the Hendy” after the break!
We open in bed with Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) – currently using the identity of Will Bettelheim – waking up from a bad dream about his neglectful childhood. Luckily, his latest obsession, You, aka Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) is right there to take his mind off things with a trip below the border. That’s interrupted by her brother Forty (James Scully) calling but not only does Love answer the call, she doesn’t miss a beat.
I’m trying to think of something grosser than shaking hands with your boyfriend really quickly while talking to your brother but I came up blank until Joe returned the favour at the same time and I lost control of my facial muscles.
Ew.
Forty’s calling because he thinks he has a shot at pitching a show to trendy comedian Henderson/Hendy (Chris D’Elia), he needs Love’s support and Joe’s big fat brain. After Love hangs up so she and Joe can properly have sex while she’s clothed in a giant sweatshirt, Forty immediately starts texting Joe. Forty and Joe will be hanging out all weekend instead of Love and Joe banging it out in Santa Barbara. Oh and nobody can know they’re dating because it’s not completely obvious to anyone with one working basic sense.
Hahahahaha the part where she’s looking through the telescope he set up in his bedroom so he could spy on her every move: “hey! You can see my house from here!”
Joe does his laundry and eavesdrops on the sisters who live/run his building. One is Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbado), older sister of Ellie Alves (Jenna Ortega) who is doing her level best to keep her little sister away from the comedian Henderson mentioned above. Henderson has a bad habit of roofie-ing underage girls and getting away with it, Joe’s stepping into the fray to do his version of helping out.
He loaded spyware on Ellie’s phone but she found it so that’s a no-go. He did manage to steal Henderson’s laptop (jacktop?) during a memorable party so he has access to Ellie and his conversations anyway. For the record, Ellie is 15.
Joe decides to be the man Love would want him to be, because clearly what Love and everyone else wants is a breaker-and-enterer. He’s going to sneak into Henderson’s house tonight to find Hendy’s secret room as the comedian is out of town screening The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in New Orleans. People really post all that shite online.
Joe’s got one problem to sort out first: Will Bettelheim (Robin Lord Taylor) who is sitting in a box in a storage locker because Joe needed his clean identity. “Clean” ish.
Joe promises Will that he’ll let him go to live a happy life with his imaginary internet girlfriend (I are one!) just as soon as he figures out a way to prove to Joe that he will never, ever turn him in.
Kind of like in season one when Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) wrote a whole book suggesting her hawt therapist was responsible for murdering everyone Joe killed. It was a peace / loyalty offering and it worked! Until she tried to run away and…she didn’t make it.
Will helps Joe disable the security system at Hendy’s house and we’re inside looking for the Dungeon Toy Room! Joe finds the “super villain-y” entrance and we’re downstairs in a very tasteful looking sex room.
For one thing, it has a Roomba patrolling and this is the cleanest looking sex dungeon mattress ever.
He finds a bunch of photos of unconscious women in states of undress, one is Delilah and he knows exactly what to do with these. He drops them anonymously under her door mat and heads off to brunch with Love.
Love and her friends, that is! She had wanted him to meet them before, but he bailed and spied on them instead because
- First and foremost: Joe is a coward
- Joe’s a control freak
Now Lucy (Marielle Scott), Sunrise (Melanie Field) and Gabe (Charlie Barnett! From Russian Doll!!) will be joining Love and Joe to discuss a series of almost-ailments that can’t really be dealt with because of course: it’s past-life trauma. Joe and I snort (I’m a bad Buddhist), but apparently that wasn’t a joke so he’s on the spot.
Ah but he brings it around, they love him blah blah Forty walks in mad. He knew they were hooking up (duh) and now he feels left out.
Imagine being a grown person and being that co-dependent on someone else. We all do that, right? Worry about someone else past any reasonable boundary? I mean, when you’re young and/or bored and/or have nothing else to do, you do things like stare at your phone while baking and think about texting your brother’s sponsor.
Joe suggests they include Forty in a monthly standing brunch date and will start working with him on his stupid screenplay because when it comes to co-dependency, the more the merrier, amirite??
Delilah has some super disassociated sex with effbuddy (they’re doing that wrong, that’s supposed to be FUN) David Fincher (Danny Vasquez) whom she asks for advice about the photos. He’s a cop and offers to get them viewed by the right people.
Back to Joe’s dreams of his childhood, where his mom is now stepping out on his dad, who hit her in the last dream. By stepping out, I mean she met a Random Guy in a Business Suit at the grocery store and left with him a minute later with Joe waiting in the produce aisle.
Was that…for money?
Forty is in Joe’s apartment to get his hair cut, yay, Love already told him that Joe was going to help him. Forty manages to wiggle his way into Love and Joe’s plans and yeah: yikes.
Joe has some time on his hands, so he approaches Delilah about the pictures he dropped off. David told her they couldn’t be used because Henderson isn’t in the pictures and the backdrop could be literally anywhere. Had they been left in place, there was a chance, but now there’s no way to tie them to Henderson. Whoops!
Joe heads to Anavrin to hold Forty’s hand, eventually sending him to SXSW in the middle of the night to start a bidding war on Forty’s piece of shit screenplay.
Back to dreamland! Joe’s mom Sandy (Magda Apanowicz) left him at the grocery store for FOUR (4) hours on her date with Random Business Suit Guy then went home to face the music from Joe’s dad . Joe learned from his dad Phil (Billy Lush from Kingdom! I really need to finish recapping that, it was so completely different from everything else I do) that pain can make people truthful.
*You know, relationships are complicated and all that but why…would you stay with someone who you know is cheating on you and getting mad about it over and over? I know the better question is why would you stay with someone who is jealous, controlling and hits you, but I know the answer to that. Just not why you’d try to hit, control and be jealous over someone.
Joe gears up to attack Henderson for a taped confession; Will checking in to make sure they aren’t prepping for a murder or anything. Will is still working on how to help Joe trust him so he can let him go without killing him, but that’s not a puzzle that’s going to be solved today.
Joe really needs to hear that, almost as much as Will needs to not die.
Love’s pisssssed that Joe sent her brother to SXSW to get rid of him, she’s flying out with Forty as his ‘sober companion’, so it holds that no good deed goes unpunished.
Ellie heads over to Henderson’s for the screening, which has been cancelled, nobody else is there. Joe listens as Ellie talks her way into the house then screens her short for Henderson. She pushes her way into pitching as Henderson gets up to roofie a drink for her, so the game is afoot. At least Joe is there! He puts a double dose of GHB in Henderson’s drink and now we’re to it.
Henderson wakes up in his basement while Ellie sleeps it off upstairs. Joe tortures Henderson into agreeing to do a confession but it doesn’t go as planned. Henderson wants to talk about the abuse he suffered as a child. He thinks Joe is like him and Joe is so enraged that he removes his mask.
Great. Now he has to kill Henderson.
So he does. But, you know, accidentally. And bleeds at the scene so has to clean up, waking up Ellie in the process. Then the Roomba smears both of their blood together.
Joe cleans as best as he can, grabbing the Roomba and bloody rags to dispose of at home. He’s groggily crossing the street late at night on his way to his apartment when police officer David pulls up. What’s in the bag, man? Luckily, the first layer is only Henderson’s headphones. David walks away with them and no more unfortunate questions are asked tonight.
Joe needs to test himself some more, he needs to know he’s the White Hat. He’s the Good Guy, not the bad guy who kills people for no reason! There are reasons! So he releases Will and we start a countdown to when he’ll have to kill him, either accidentally or because Will did something he didn’t agree with.
Joe can relax now, he knows he’s the good guy and the man Love needs him to be! Good thing, since Forty just met Joe’s ex-girlfriend Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers) at SXSW and is in lurve. That’s super awkward since she’s looking hard for our Joe, what with him thinking he left her for dead a while ago. No way that’s a coincidence! We’re out.
Hm. As usual, Joe frames everything around “You” / Love – being perfect and how his love for her is making him a better person. He likes to put the pedestal up suuuuuper high so when they fall it speeds up the process of murdering them. They deserve it!
There was an extended vignette when Henderson argued with Joe that he was just trying to make himself feel better about what happened to him by what he was doing and that nothing would. Nothing would ever make him feel better about the abuse that he endured as a child, but Joe countered that Love could. Henderson called love fake and now I have to wonder if that was foreshadowing. Joe always thinks his partners can save him, they just have to be perfect. Easy peasy! Until next time!
You S2:E05 “Enjoy Your Wellkend, Joe!“
Howdy! Welcome back to You and the confusion that abbreviated title always brings. What’s that? You’re planning to stay in and binge You all weekend? That sounds messy. Just like Netflix’s You! You has just been renewed for a third season, see, it even destroys grammar! Woooo! Rolling into You S2:E05 “Have a Great Wellkend, Joe!” after the break!
We open in Arizona with Forty Quinn (James Scully) trying to book a private jet (or P.J. as he calls it because of course he does) for new paramour Amy aka Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers) who’s discovered that driving a Tesla Model X through Arizona has some serious drawbacks, like the lack of charging stations. They’re in a hurry, Candace/Amy is gonna meet Forty’s mom and she doesn’t appreciate those that are tardy to the party.
Candace is focused on meeting Forty’s sister Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) and her new boyfriend Will Bettelheim/Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) as Candace has been looking for Joe since he thought he killed her.
It’s…complicated.
It’s not just Candace meeting the Quinn parents, so is Joe, but he’ll be fine. He does his research!
*Research is what we call “stalking” on You.
Ray Quinn (Michael Reilly Burke) and Dottie Quinn (Saffron Burrows) are Love and Forty’s parents and owners of the Anavrin chain of grocery stores, where Joe and Love work. That’s right, they’re responsible for choosing the names LOVE and FORTY as well as Anavrin – Nirvana backwards – sooo. They even have a family motto, hashtagged of course: #TransparencyAndRealness.
It’s their 30 year anniversary so they’re having a Wellkend. Get it?? It’s like a weekend, but with wellness. Joe and I would prefer to be shot in the face, but he’s going! Anything for Love.
Forty and Love keep us up to date on the latest, Joe just killed comedian Henderson “Hendy” (Chris D’Elia) kinda sorta by accident, word on the street is that it’s suicide. Joe had enough forethought to choose to cut Hendy’s wrists while torturing him, so, “sorta” by “accident”.
Love’s worried that Forty’s on the edge of a spectacular derailing, he likes to meet women, get too attached then flip out and go off the rails when his parents are skeptical. Co-dependent twin Love is left to pick up the pieces, but this time she has Joe to help. He’s great with parents!
*Great with parents means “manipulative psycho” on You.
The police looking into Hendy’s death haven’t got suicide quite locked down, they’re still interviewing people like Joe’s landlady Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbado) who hated Hendy for sexually assaulting her when she was underage and also getting close to Delilah’s little sister Ellie (Jenny Ortega).
For the record, Ellie doesn’t believe anything her sister says about the now-deceased Hendy.
Off to the Wellkend! Love’s friends are there too, hai Sunrise (Melanie Field), Sunrise’s fianceé Lucy (Marielle Scott) and Gabe! (Charlie Barnett). Joe meets the parents then Ammmmmyyyyy.
He forgets how to breathe.
Some superficial yet tense banter later, we get Candace’s flashback of what Joe did to her. They fought, she said she never loved him and left, he snatched her and drove her out into the woods at night so they could talk. He brought a picnic for them!
She ran off when his back was turned and he accidentally caved in the back of her head while trying to calm her down.
Back to the present! How did Candace and Forty meet? She was giving him “stalker eyes”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
and there was something about queso. Anywho, what’s more important is how she found Joe and it’s JUST LIKE I SAID! Wooooo! When Forty lost his shite at Henderson’s party, there was Joe lurking behind him with a tonne of people filming.
*But. I mean. That seems super random.
Love’s stressed out about her vow renewal script, so Joe offers to chill in Forty’s yurt for a bit, to be sidetracked by a conversation with Dottie, Love’s mom in the Truth Yurt. She insists he smoke up with her.
*That reminds me of when I was dating this one particular fella, who smoked up alllll the time. All the time. Even though I’m from British Columbia, or maybe because I am, I’m totally anti-even-fun-harmless-and-now-legal-drugs so I would always refuse to partake. I met his whole group of friends at once, and was offered a celebratory joint from a woman who was extremely miffed that I passed. Apparently she was smoking for me, so I should have lightened up and acknowledged her welcoming gesture. All I knew was I worked somewhere with random testing and liked my job more than her OR my boyfriend, so. This is what Joe is being pressured into!
And to talking about his girlfriend’s mom’s privates and what age does to natural body moisture.
I have no jokes re: her vagina (Hai Goop!) because A) I’m probably not far from the DrySisterHood and B) I have a friend who went through a horrific experience with that; it’s not just about sexual readiness, it can be about not.being.able.to.sit.down.
Dottie continues in this vein until Joe passes her test by singing Love’s praises. Then we’re on to the rest of this carefully scheduled Wellkend. Candace isn’t scoring as well as Joe with the ‘rents, but Love wants Joe to help. Damnit.
We’re kneedeep in hippie hoohah when Joe gets his chance to help Candace, but she has to force herself to let him hug her as part of an affirmation ceremony.
Side note: HOW does Joe get around whatever world he’s in looking like he rolled a homeless person for clothing?
Joe follows Candace into her yurt for a chat, to be met with a sharp knife and complicated call and answer outside safe texting scenario. He’s still pretending to himself that he’s a good guy, so he disarms her carefully then offers her the knife back to stab him. She can’t.
It’s a lot more difficult than it looks. Even to put your hands on someone!
Forty and Love interrupt, Love staying behind to talk to Candace about her obvious discomfort. Love’s perfect, of course, but Candace is not. She gets caught in a lie right away, so Love’s antennae are up.
Will gets to sit in on an excruciating talk between Forty and his dad, who is sliiiightly skeptical about Candace. And Forty, for that matter.
Joe heads back to see Love, who is conflicted on how to handle Candace now that she knows she’s not as accomplished a liar as Joe. “I know we’re not in the Truth Yurt but we can still be honest” made me snort Diet Pepsi out my nose.
Love has sensed that something’s up with Joe, who tries to blame his weird affect on her insane family.
Hello Pot? This is Kettle and that was hilarious.
They part ways with Love angry and disappointed.
Joe’s usually pretty good at this stuff, it’s super easy to be the perfect boyfriend when you’re not telling the truth about anything.
The police aren’t giving up their investigation of Henderson’s death without a fight, at least the cop Delilah’s been bouncing on isn’t, anyway. Patrolman David Fincher (Danny Vasquez) shows up at Delilah’s looking for the pictures of underage girls passed out that Joe stole and passed on to her. They’re checking every possible motive for suicide, but Delilah’s sister Ellie already stole those from her sister.
This meant nothing, really, but I love how Carmela Zumbado uses her face.
Joe finds Forty smoking up in a yurt with Open (Connor Tillman) which has to be included because OPEN.
Joe wrangles Forty to the ceremony in time to hear Love give a personal, funny and lovely speech about her parents, but Forty’s high and wrecks it in the middle with some less funny truth.
Dottie is a shitty hippie mom, blaming Forty’s failure on Love and slapping her when she disagrees. She didn’t say namaste ONCE. Joe bonds with Love after about the abuse he suffered as a child but Jaysus, we get Forty’s backstory.
When he was 13, he had his first sexual experience with a 19-year-old au pair. That’s straight up abuse and when his parents found out, the au pair was dismissed and subsequently killed herself. Forty found the body. That’s …a lot.
Joe swears to help Love help Forty and then they’re kissing and they love each other and awww but they don’t call it that, they say “I wolf you.”
Quick break to re-stabilize my blood sugar and we’re with Ellie and Delilah discussing what to do with Henderson’s illicitly taken photos. They decide to destroy the pictures instead of handing them over to the police. This is bonding?
I’m a traditionalist, I like to bond over beverages and shittalking, this sounds way way less fun.
We’re back in the past with Candace reporting her abduction to the police, who do not believe her.
Officer Alaina (Cara Mitsuko) can’t offer much consolation for Candace, who has no evidence at all showing her attempted murder, but suggests if Candace is that afraid maybe she should stay “dead.” That’s a form of safety.
Erm.
Joe finds Candace at the party, he’s not afraid of her any more. If she had something, she would have used it already. She counters that she’s not afraid of him, either which confounds him. Why would the woman he kidnapped and thought he murdered be afraid of him? She’s decided to fight, to watch everything he does and wait for him to mess up. “Murder has a way of following you around” is probably the understatement of this episode, behind “stalker eyes.”
We’re back at Anavrin with Love, Joe, Forty and Candace, who’s just come up with a great idea! She and Forty are going to make a movie about the book “the dark face of love” by Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail).
Joe killed Beck after he thought he killed Candace but before he came to L.A. and starting wolfing Love. Beck wrote the book as a Please Don’t Kill Me offering to Joe, he used it after her death to blame her murder on her dishy psychiatrist played by John Stamos.
We’re interrupted by a news alert that Henderson’s death has been reclassified as a murder, Candace knows exactly what that means. Because of Henderson’s death, the police won’t stop until they know who did it.
We’re out! Wooo! That got dark and not even in the fun way we’re used to. Boooo. Until next time! Cheers.
You S2:E06 “Farewell, My Bunny “
Rolling back into You on Netflix because it’s Saturday wooooo!! Or whenever you read this, it’s all good. Last we saw our murderer/kidnapper/full-on psychopath Joe Goldberg, he was in a showdown with an ex-girlfriend that wasn’t going all that well. My money is still on your dreamy boyfriend Joe (seriously, people LOVE this guy), let’s find out how he twists it this time! You S2:E06 Farewell, My Bunny after the break!
We open with Kathy Griffin (I LOVE KATHY GRIFFIN) eulogizing recently murdered comedian Henderson (Chris D’Elia) in her own special way as Joe Goldberg aka Will Bettleheim (Penn Badgley) watches with girlfriend Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). Love’s friends Lucy (Marielle Scott) Gabe (Charlie Barnett) and Sunrise (Melanie Field) stand with them; did all these people know Henderson? If he was this famous, why aren’t more people/fans there? Weird
*Joe totally accidentally murdered Henderson because Henderson was a creep who preyed on young girls, Cosbying them and taking photos. Joe has to murder bad people every once in a while to balance out his more prosaic killings.
Of course Love’s brother Forty Quinn (James Scully) *that’s a NAME! and you thought Love was bad!* is there with his new girlfriend Amy aka Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers) who used to be Joe’s girlfriend before he thought he accidentally killed her.
In this scenario, she would be the king and he came for her but didn’t kill her so now he’s trying to stay in the game while figuring out what to do to get her to shut up and go away. You know, besides murdering her because Joe thinks he only does that when he *has* to.
Forty is a mess, thankfully Amy is there to help him keep the pieces together. Just look at Candace and Joe. Being a fake partner is WAY easier than having skin in the game! You get to plan out all your moves, you know what’s going to happen and you have all the control over when it does happen. It’s brilliant! This is probably what every single golddigger/gigolo thinks right before they sign on the dotted line. It just rots your soul a tiny bit.
Forty is consoled by Candace and her sharing of her worst day (when her ex attacked her – GUESS WHO she’s talking about?? NO, GUESS??!!) prompts him to ask her to move in with him right after the funeral. Love steps in, suggesting he shouldn’t make any sudden and huge moves while grieving but that just earns her Forty’s ire. He storms away like the toddler he is, Candace trailing to pick up the mess because hey: fake girlfriends know shit all rolls downhill.
Love’s friends start screaming about something, ahh Lucy has just seen one of seven Los Angeles totems! Gabe explains that once you’ve seen all seven, you’re a true LA-er and can never leave. Just what Joe wants! The totems are:
- A rollerblader in booty shorts
- A ghettobird? What’s a ghettobird? A police helicopter!
- Two starlets wearing the same dress (that’s what they were screaming about)
- A peck of coyotes
- A dog in a stroller
- An off-brand superhero
- A palm tree on fire
Joe spots his landlady Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbado) drinking at the funeral, she was one of the girls Henderson roofied. The cop Joe saw the night he killed Henderson is there too. Celebrities (and white celebs) get a lot more police attention so he’s worried.
Love checks in to work at Anavrin, her locker is full of reminders of her deceased husband James (Daniel Durant). Huh. He didn’t die recently, that would be a hella depressing thing to look at every day. Ohh and he was deaf, that’s maybe why Love knows sign language. Maybe the locker is bad but so are the memories of planning their lives together, the whole place is steeped in it.
Joe watches Candace and Forty cook together at Anavrin, wondering about the state of their relationship, whether they’re sleeping together or maybe even really in love. Really he’s assessing for weakness.
He follows her and gets the second totem, an off-brand full grown man dressed as Robin, woooo! He’s distracted by a cop and loses her.
Back at his apartment, young Ellie Alves (Jenna Ortega) appears to critique his book choice, he’s reading Raymond Chandler’s “Farewell My Lovely” and thinks Elliot Gould is the hottest Philip Marlowe ever.
Elliot.Gould. Elliot Gould?
I like them smart and unconventionally attractive and my basement is corkdry even at the thought. Young people are weird.
Shouts from inside draw them both inside. Delilah burned herself because she’s pissssed that everyone is going to make Henderson a hero now. Somehow she thinks Joe’s to blame for same so she takes another verbal shot at him while Ellie tends to her.
Forty has set up an office as D-Fol Production’s headquarters and bugs Joe who is working on the book display for bisexual pescaterian authors. I love that my spellchezk does not recognise that word.
D-Fol is Dark Face Of Love, the movie Forty and Candace are making based on the book written by Joe’s old girlfriend Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) whom he murdered right after she finished writing.
Joe as Will is getting a producer credit on the movie, he uses a signing opportunity to ask for Candace’s address and gets a vague location. Close enough! Joe’s great with research.
He finds Candace’s Air BnB with no problem, throws on his Hat of Mystery and heads over for a recon. He spots possibly the same plainclothes officer from the other day and scrambles to hide, but he’s not paying attention. Isn’t it more likely that they’re checking up on Candace? He’s been following her or looking for her both times.
Hey! We just saw a ghettobird! Hai police helicopter! Now I’m wracking my brain trying to remember if there was a rollerblader in booty shorts in the first couple of episodes and I think there was. Dang it!
Woooo we hear a pack of coyotes!! WE’RE ALMOST DONE! Someone set a palm tree on fire!
Okay, I’m a stinking liar. Joe gets stuck in traffic and stands Love up for their doughnut dinner date (not dinner) and upon arrival he sees the detective again, this time talking to Love. Well. She could have hired him to check out Candace, so I could maybe still not be wrong!
Love is pissed he’s so late but yes! She did hire detective Alex Grigoryan (David Paladino) to check out Candace, wooooo! Love is angry and defiant, Joe doesn’t know what to think.
Love is back in the past with her husband who didn’t want to have children yet, it was a big fight. He was still dealing with addiction, maybe that was part of hie reasoning but most of it was about being broke and not wanting to be beholden to her parents.
Love sees how maybe this private detective thing is slightly over the top, she’ll call him off tomorrow. She brushes him with egg wash and they make up, awww.
*Herk*
Candace is doing her own detecting, she’s got Joe’s address and manages to talk her way into his apartment by trashing Henderson to Delilah who clearly doesn’t understand her role as Building Manager. She tries to keep Candace physically out of the apartment, but Candace is able to open one of the windows for later.
The private detective clocks all of that, he’s not off the job yet so now it’s up to Love to decide whether to listen to what he saw or not.
Candace introduced herself as Joe’s ex-girlfriend, so of course the whole apartment building is abuzz with that news.
I beg your pardon?
Time to assemble the murder kit! Duct tape, rope, pliers? Check! Joe thinks the detective isn’t watching Candace any more, so he set off for the Gothic Barbie Mansion Air BnB in his Hat of Mystery to be knocked the eff oot.
Candace has been studying up on the art of tying rope! Or has she? NO! This is not Candace! Because Candace is climbing through Joe’s window to meet…
Love. Love knows she’s Candace and lots of other stuff. Love thinks this is about rooking the Quinn family for that sweet, sweet kwan, but what’s the deal with messing with Joe? Candace plays her trump card but the problem is anything she says now is tainted. For one thing, Joe has a much better cover for sure.
Candace tries.
Joe tries too, but he’s working from a deficit, being hogtied and beaten up by a determined Rachel (Madeline Zima) who owns the house where Candace is staying. He manages to convince her that his murder kit is really a rape fantasy kit; she counsels him to stick to his lane.
And finally, releases him back to the wild. He returns home to find Love icing cinnamon buns in his kitchen. Which did she do when she was stressed out? Baking or cooking? I think baking was for frustration. Anyway, she switched out the sugar for salt.
*baker alert: I used to be a baker and the idea that you could switch out a leavening agent for what’s considered a liquid ingredient is ludicrous at best and I know that’s not the point so I’m shutting up but this is ANARCHY
“It sucks being lied to, doesn’t it??!” She hands Joe a picture of him and Candace. He owns up to his name being Joe Goldberg and blames everything on Candace being mentally unstable. Her time at a mental hospital supports that, so Love calms down and waits for the rest of the explanation. Joe even finds a way to explain Beck, writing her off as a woman he went on one date with and pointing out how weird it is that Candace even knew about that.
Somehow, Love buys all this garbage.
Neither has she, which makes breaking up with him so hard.
Good call, Love!! Solid choice! You’re totally not over your dead husband, either, FYI.
She heads back to the kitchen at Anavrin to cook away her anger, reliving the moment she found out that her husband was dying.
What did I just say??
The next day, Joe heads to work to drop off his apron and nametag but Forty tells him it’s not necessary. He can stay, he just needs to stay away from Love. It’s Forty who sticks up for Joe, he appreciates Joe’s “realness.”
Erm.
Joe heads home to see…a dog in a stroller! Woooo! We’re so close to done I can smell the booty shorts. He gets dragged in to help calm Delilah down, she’s working on a story on LA enabling rapists and it’s driving her over the edge.
*It’s so weird to see/hear this much about LA and harassment/rape without Harvey Weinstein being invoked even once. It’s like on The Walking Dead where they never say “zombie.”
He comforts her, first with a hand on her shoulder then…with his privates? What?? I got zero sexual chemistry from these two, now they’re about to throw down on a synthetic 4 x 8 area rug covered with rapist names on post-it notes?
They just wanted to feel good for a little while.
After, but before sponging off, Joe suggests she write a first-person type of exposé. Maybe it would encourage others to come forward. She reads this as mansplaining and condescension, and throws him out.
*I love her.
A burning palm tree warns Joe that he’s stuck in LA for EVER (there were booty shorts earlier!), maybe he’ll stick around for a while, press his luck.
We’re oot, cheers!
You S2:E07 “Ex-Istential Crisis”
We’re almost done with this LA-spackled second season of You, with what, only maybe two tiny little murders? Three? Okay, and a kidnapping, that’s about par for our Joe Goldberg, let’s find out what he’s up to now in You S2:E07 “Ex-Istential Crisis” after the break.
We open with a depressed Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) moping about latest girlfriend Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) breaking up with him, just because he was lying about his identity, the identity of his ex-girlfriend and also maybe tried to murder said ex. Gar, she’s so UNREASONABLE.
Joe’s still able to watch Love from his apartment, but he’s not seeing anything he likes. As in another man wandering up to the back deck.
He runs over to “save” her to find Love in the throes of sucking face with Milo Warrington (Andrew Creer), oh, not a break in at all.
That was a total throwback to Joe finding out the object of his affection Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) was dating someone else in season one, same head tilt and everything!
Joe gets to watch them at work at Anavrin, too, Love is all over her new boyfriend in front of everyone.
This is a woman who didn’t date for years after the premature death of her husband, now she’s moved on so quickly, Joe’s hair is blown back. Uh huh. Maybe boyfriends are like peeing while drinking, once you break the seal, you can’t stop!
Love’s brother Forty Quinn (James Scully) is Joe’s boss and a great source for information about Milo, who was Love’s dead husband James’s best friend. THAT’s not creepy, nor is the fact that Milo spent two years hiking across Asia spreading James’ ashes. He’s also been periodically spreading Love, which her brother knows FAR too much about.
Forty thinks he’s friends with Joe, so he’s off to prove to Joe that Love is just healing herself, inside she’s really upset about breaking up with Joe. Forty confronts Love while Joe cyberstalks Australian travel blogger Milo. His parents own Patagonia!
Both Joe and Forty think Milo’s a fraud, and really: they both should know. Love doesn’t because she still has faith and shite in people.
Joe and I are confused: why is Forty helping him? Joe lied to everyone and mixed them all up with his ex-girlfriend Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers) who just wouldn’t stay dead. But in the way of Bros Of Long Past, Forty is on Joe’s side.
I mean. He’s not wrong, but Candace wasn’t lying!
Forty wants to set him up with some online dates to make Love jealous, store manager Calvin (Adwin Brown) helps them brainstorm. (I did not understand about the Magnolia app. Girls troll on there looking for WHAT?) Sounds like Flinger or GoldLeaf will be the winner, a quick review of dating terms (I am an OLDDDD), what’s the deal with a pixie cut?
But like, for real, what’s the deal with the pixie cut?
Joe runs into Ellie Alves (Jenna Ortega) in the laundry room, she is NOT happy about his hooking up with her sister Delilah (Carmela Zumbado). She tells him to rebound on Flinger instead, so does Delilah when she enters a minute later. That’s four people telling Joe to get on Flinger in one day! Do they work for Flinger?
Ellie doesn’t really hate Joe, but she hates what’s gonna happen, because of course it’ll go south. He’s just a lot more murdery than she knows. She sends Joe some dating app links (WHERE were these people when I was single??!), he likes Sonnets2Me for book nerds like him and me!
He uses his assumed identity Will Bettelheim for the profile, I wonder how Will (Robin Lord Taylor) is doing, anyway! Joe stole Will, the whole person, for his safe identity and then let him go after keeping him in a storage cube for a few months. I’d wager we haven’t seen the last of him.
Horrible dating montage, except there’s one nice lady, let’s see when she bombs out! Right after the fourth giant swig of wine, that’ll do it.
The dates are just for pictures to post to Instagram to make Love jealous, but Love isn’t engaging. She’s seeing the posts, but not responding. Milo walks up while Joe is staring at Love staring at pictures of Joe’s dates, Milo has sex-crime doughnuts, is thinking of moving to LA and wants Love to be his girlfriend.
In case you were wondering, you never want to hear something like “I don’t want you to make that decision because of ME” when you ask that question.
Later Love asks Joe what name he’s using for online dating; Joe or Will? He tells her Will, somehow this convinces Joe she’s not jealous so he sets out to stalk Milo in earnest. This is about the time he gets stabby, so watch out, tall hunky Aussie!
Joe suits up for a run/stalk of Milo, awww, he remembered to sunscreen his ears! This is not something a ginger ever forgets. He’s keeping up alright until he accidentally runs into Love’s bestie Gabe (Charlie Barnett) on the hiking trail. Gabe doesn’t want to hear anything from Joe about the coincidence of he and Milo being on the same hill.
Love values honesty above all else, she caught Joe in “a f*cking whopper.” The reason Love likes Milo? He works on himself. Joe whispers “but what if I’m damaged?” Gabe will show him the way.
Show him the way to aligning his chakras with stones and acupuncture, wooooo! Oh but it’s much more emotional and involved than that. Gabe draws the truth out of Joe; he is afraid to be honest with Love because he believes he is unworthy of Love. And love. He breaks when he realises it’s all connected to his relationship with his mother.
He comes to crying like a baby while Gabe puts it in a nutshell for us: Joe has been searching for someone to love and care for his whole life. What if that someone was him? He makes Joe repeat it after him: He is all he needs.
As per MamaRu:
Joe thanks Wizard Gabe, but this is not the cure, this is a practice! There will still be dark thoughts, they need to be followed with “and I’m okay with that.” Time for a 7 day celery cleanse!
Ellie shows up at Anavrin, what’s she up to? She introduces herself to Forty, that’s actually a good fit for work. She’s a junior filmmaker and he does technically do something like that, and at one time he even did it well! That’s exactly why she’s there! She auditions her film knowledge for Forty, did you know OJ was supposed to be The Terminator but James Cameron didn’t think he looked like a killer?
I bet he still dines out on that.
Ellie’s their brand new intern!
Ellie’s sister Delilah is TOTALLY never thanking Joe for suggesting she write her own piece about what now-dead comedian Henderson (Chris D’Elia) did to her as an underage dancer, but she’s gonna be published in Variety!! He thanks her for the news by throwing up all over her and passing out.
That’s the celery cleanse *sage nod*. She calls bullshit and orders burgers and shakes.
Love and Milo are testing wedding cakes for Lucy (Marielle Scott) and Sunrise’s (Melanie Field) wedding, but he’s got more weighty things on his mind. He’s found a little bungalow and he’s ready to move to L.A. but…she’s not ready. She uses Forty as an excuse, but like a real grownup that wants to have an actual relationship, he calls bullshit on their extreme co-dependence. Joe’s better at pretending he’s good with whatever.
Joe and Delilah are getting along really well, like suspiciously well…he thinks she’s beautiful and did he really just switch that fast? Wait. She’s his new Karen Minty!! (Natalie Paul) how did I miss that?? In the first season, after he and Beck broke up, he dated a woman named Karen who was a friend of one of his neighbours. He was being “good.” He even referenced Karen earlier in the episode, saying Milo was Love’s Karen Minty but that’s EXACTLY what Delilah is doing for him!
They walk and talk and drink and make fun of what a weirdo Delilah thought he was when they met, but.
“Damage seeks damage.”
Then the outside sex and the police pulling up, fingers crossed it isn’t Delilah’s effboi cop David Fincher (Danny Vasquez). It’s not, but he’s not willing to help her either, once he hears what the charges are. Joe’s trying not to climb out of his skin at the possibility of having his fingerprints taken, he killed a BUNCH of people back in New York under his real name.
They are sprung minutes before processing thanks to Forty, woooo!
Ellie finds them saying goodbye and freaks out because: teenager?
Joe’s too tired to do anything but fend off Forty’s gossip advances at work, they watch Milo bring Love roses and smirk. Love hates roses and hates surprises more. Forty wonders how Milo can “not even be trying but he’s still trying too hard?”
It devolves into a physical fight, Milo punching Forty in the face before it gets really nasty and personal. Let’s just say that Milo is no longer a problem for Joe.
What IS a problem for Joe is that Delilah’s cop friend has remembered that he saw Joe the night of Henderson’s murder and has actually connected seeing him to that death.
*Joe totally murdered Henderson kinda sorta by accident.
Delilah writes this off as jealousy, but since she was the one who told Joe about Henderson’s predatory behaviour with underage girls, she has to be wondering.
*Is it wrong that I miss the first season where Joe seemed much more organized and in control? I mean, if our hero is going to be a killer, he could at least be GOOD at it.
She does some quick checking online, managing to connect Joe to Forty to Henderson and runs up to his apartment to have a look around. He’s moved his stash of goodies behind a painting but there’s the keys to his storage locker, just sitting there…
Oooooh noooo, she’s found the storage cube with all it’s creepy accoutrements!
She…should probably not go in there taking pictures. I don’t think he’s going to let her out, it’s like one of those Roach Motels. Joe has been using a Nanny Cam after Candace and finds her just after she discovers Henderson’s laptop and some other trophies. Good thing her Cop David didn’t answer when she called him from inside the Cube!
We all know Joe was going to kill Delilah as soon as she opened the door to the storage locker; he’s already convinced himself that it’s her fault and not his need to appear perfect to his chosen target. He was going to ask her to dinner that night! Then she had to ruin it all by being one of those meddling kids!
She begs; what about Ellie? Don’t let her grow up alone!
Joe flashes back to the rest of his childhood memory. His mom (Magda Apanowicz) told him they two were running away together, nobody else, but she showed up with some guy named Dale (Ramsay Philips) and he didn’t want to go.
Delilah wakes up inside the box with a bandage on her head and Joe on the outside. Can she just trust him? He needs a little time, then she can be with Ellie and everything will be fine. Can she do that?Paragraph
And we’re out! Cheers, mates!
You S2:E08 “Fear and Loathing in Beverly Hills“
We’re in quite a pickle on You from Netflix, what will Joe to resolve this new wrinkle in his plan to win back the second, I mean third Love of his life? Will he Joe it out as he’s done before, aka “accidentally” murder the problem, or will he run away like a little girl in the field? There’s only one way to find out, let’s roll You S2:E08 Fear and Loathing in Beverly Hills after the break!
We open where we closed, in Joe Goldberg’s (Penn Badgley) ginourmous storage locker, now containing sometime effbuddy and always landlady Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbado). She found his ‘human aquarium” along with all the evidence that he killed comedian Henderson (Chris D’Elia) earlier in the season but didn’t manage to tell her other effboi, cop David Fincher (Danny Hernandez) before Joe found her snooping around.
Now she’s in the box and he’s scrambling to come up with a plan that doesn’t involve murdering her, especially since he feels responsible for Delilah’s little sister Ellie (Jenna Ortega). He tells her he’ll figure something out by the next day, so she has 24 hours to come up with some way he can buy her off.
Joe’s not even doing this for himself, he’s convinced himself it’s all in tribute to being in love with Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) who broke up with him when the first ex-girlfriend Joe tried to kill showed up. He packs a bag and books a plane ticket to Mexico, in the name of his perfect fake ID, Will Bettleheim. The real Will Bettelheim (Robin Taylor Lord) was a catch and release by Joe, I keep waiting for him to reappear in spectacular fashion.
Joe makes a few arrangements and heads back to see Delilah in the aquarium. He’s got food and a pair of time-release handcuffs, they’ll open as soon as he’s safely away.
That seems…unsafe for Joe.
She eats and we’re at 16 hours left and counting until his life as Will Bettleheim blows up!
The object of Joe’s affection, Love, is obsessively testing wedding cake recipes for her best friends Sunrise (Melanie Field) and Lucy (Marielle Scott) and not thinking about Joe at all, no siree! Except she thinks she let a good one get away while bouncing on her usual rebound buddy Milo Warrington (Andrew Creer).
Her friends counsel her to go after him but he is not a good one! He’s the exact opposite of a good one and she should run screaming in the other direction. I mean, I’m sort of rooting for him, but that’s Netflix’s fault.
Joe watches her relief and happiness after her decision to Get Her Man, he leaves a sappy letter in her locker then is attacked by her brother Forty Quinn (James Scully) about the movie he’s making. By that I mean Forty’s making the movie with Joe; a successful recent pitch means they’ll be rewriting the script right now!
*Obvious plot device is obvious*
The really fun thing is that the book they’re basing the movie on is the one written by Joe’s last object of obsession; Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) wrote it as an offering to Joe so he wouldn’t murder her. Then he murdered her anyway and the book was used to pin the murder on her dishy (John Stamos) psychiatrist, whom Joe was also seeing.
During script review, two men pull up out of nowhere in a black SUV and kidnap Forty and Joe. Joe’s mentally reviewing the list of people he’s killed and feeling bad for dragging Forty into his mess when Forty apologizes to him for this small gambling problem.
But that’s not real either, because nothing Forty does is real. Except really hire two swarthy Russians from AA or NA to pretend to kidnap them and bring them to a fancy hotel room to work on the script. He’s even paid them to shoot either or both if they try to leave.
SHOOT
EITHER of them
Forty.
Honestly.
Oh and Ellie’s here too! She’s their script assistant and everyone but her is trapped. Joe stares hard at the fireplace pokers but no! No, he can fix this script!
Love is at work reading Joe’s final missive to her, her mom Dottie (Saffron Burrows) interrupting to mend their familial fences as Shaman Kevin has advised. They’re going out for cocktails later!
Forty is an addict in recovery, but also slamming dexadrine for his focus because he’s been diagnosed with adult ADHD.
Ellie is a good script consultant, too good as she takes their effort and stomps on it with her tiny little cloven feet. They need to start over from the female perspective! Forty jumps out the window, wooooo only two floors down. Get out there, Joe! You’ve got a plane to catch and a life to rebuild! If only Dimitri (Adi Spektor) hadn’t taken his passport. Joe follows.
He finds Forty in a bar slamming tequila, oh hey, he’s been talking to Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers) who was pretending to be his girlfriend to get to Joe, who “accidentally” almost murdered her when she tried to break up with him.
You know, Joe murdered Beck when she broke up with him, maybe the fact that Love is still alive speaks to Joe’s personal growth! Or we just haven’t gotten there yet.
Forty approaches a newlywed couple with An Indecent Proposal; he offers them $10,000 for him to kiss the bride. Joe watches and that’s the point. He’s found Forty pathetic, pitiable, useless, entitled and many other things, but now he sees Forty as dangerous and that’s all the justification he needs to murder someone.
Joe has a complicated relationship with his own murderous nature, he needs to feel as though he’s justified in removing someone from the earthly plane.
Speaking of, Joe’s about to leave said earthly plane, as Forty’s dosed him with four times the usual amount of LSD.
There are 11 hours left in this day without end, Love’s dining with her mom and trying not to bail early. But Dottie has other news, Love’s dad has been cheating again, that’s why she’s posting selfies of her and Love. A vicious family fight follows, Love bailing early.
Joe’s looking for Dimitri at the hotel he was dragged to, but Love’s here to say goodbye. Midway, Joe starts to trip and Love vomits drunkenly. Dottie leads Love away as Joe’s younger self (Aidan Wallace) appears to draw Joe into the funhouse.
Even Candace is there in Joe’s acid trip, but really she’s Dimitri beating the shite out of Joe. Love and her mom somewhat talk things out, but Dottie is just SUCH an arsehole.
Joe comes to back in the hotel room with Forty reworking the script again, they’re going to re-work the story from Beck’s perspective! Forty’s playing Beck, Joe’s tripping out of his head and I think he might confess to murdering Beck OR murder Forty.
Joe chokes Forty almost to death, thwarted by a knee to the groin.
Forty gives Joe dietary recommendations and the safe word to leave, Joe leaves crying and…comes to again with his hands covered in blood in a hotel room. Or is there blood? He looks for clues but what. He’s back in the hotel room with Forty, he left, went to Anavrin to get supplies: why did he come back??
Why come back??
Why did Joe come back to the hotel room and not keep getting ready for his trip to Mexico?
Love calls to FaceTime then; she refuses his goodbye! She grew up with conditional and toxic love and she doesn’t want that anymore, she wants HIM!
(Basically, he’d have to kill Delilah.)
Joe tries to talk Love into running away with him, let’s take Forty too! They’re going to make it work!
A vision of his brutalised mom (Magda Apanowicz) snaps him out of it, she and we know he’s already trying think of ways to murder Forty “accidentally.” For Love, of course. “So many accidents can happen in a hotel room, can’t they?” She’s Joe’s nature, his truth and she knows he will murder Forty and Delilah and anyone else in his way.
Now I’m wondering if Joe actually did release Will after all, did he Unreliably Narrate that so we wouldn’t think he was the psycho he totally is?
Whoops, Forty’s actually figured out that Beck’s ex-boyfriend murdered her, (that’s Joe), not Dr. Nicky (John Stamos) the dishy psychiatrist she was sleeping with. Look, that’s another reason to kill him!
Joe picks up a shard of broken glass and advances on Forty, Joe’s mother whispering words of support in his head while he stares at a line on Forty’s neck. Things take a sharp turn when Forty confesses to murdering the au pair he was in love with as a teenager.
That does sound super tough, to have to live with the knowledge that you killed someone. Not maybe as tough as being murdered, but maybe I’m splitting hairs.
Joe forgives him, they bond over their Not-Monsterism and they hug.
Now to kill Delilah.
Joe wakes up with one hour and twenty minutes to go, he races to the cage to find Delilah has already been murdered, still handcuffed to the table where he left her. Did he do that? He stares at his hands and we’re out. Cheers.
You S2:E09 “P.I. Joe“
We’re back with Netflix’s You and its trippy complications; are we gonna know what really happened? Unreliable narrator is unreliable, but if there’s anything I DO know about You, it’s going to be twisty but beautifully tied up at the end. We’re on the penultimate episode of the second season, let’s roll into You S2:E09 “P.I. Joe” without further ado!
We open with a horrified Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) contemplating the horror he has surely wrought upon landlady/lover Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbado) who has been murdered in a gruesome fashion in Joe’s solitary confinement box.
Did he do it? Do we know? Does he know? He’s been on an acid trip for the last few hours, waking up at least once with bloody hands but neither he nor we know if that actually happened or if it was part of the hallucinations.
I’m going to go ahead and assume he did murder Delilah, if only because there are only two people alive who know about that box and the other one is presumed far, far away. Joe stole the whole identity and person of Will Bettleheim (Robin Lord Taylor) to use in LA, stashing Will in his plexiglass playhouse until he could decide what to do. He eventually released Will after extracting loads of promises, so I’ve been waiting for him to show up. But did he actually release Will? That’s the conundrum and laziness of using an unreliable narrator. I enjoy smoke, mirrors, misdirection and some tricky slight of hand, but I think flat out lying to the viewer is bullshit.
HOWEVER. The point I am making is that only Will and Joe know about the box and I don’t see Will sneaking back into a locked storage locker to secretly murder someone Joe wants dead.
Because Joe totally was going to kill Delilah, he was just trying to work up the nerve and a way to not feel bad about leaving Delilah’s precocious teenaged sister alone on the big, bad streets of LA.
He diagrams his night, using the walls of the box as a whiteboard, trying to outline what happened and where. Already people are looking for Delilah, like the cop she was also bouncing on, David Fincher (Danny Vasquez) and the aforementioned sister Ellie Alves (Jenna Ortega) have been texting her cell.
Joe uses Delilah’s face (ew) to open her smashed phone then gives in to some paranoia, what if it was a setup? The immediate problem is smell, so he stacks bags of ice around her (yuck like really) and does some of the thinking I did above, wondering if Will came back to frame him.
Personally, I don’t think it matters who killed Delilah right now, Joe needs to clean his party palace the hell up.
So he calls Will, who is happily shacked up with Gigi (Haven Everly) in the Philippines. We thought maybe Gigi was taking Will for a ride, but they look happy! Will gave Joe his real number because he knows Joe does some bad things (things like murdering people, or kidnapping and containing them against their will for periods of time) but he always tries to do the right thing.
Joe asks Will for help, using a complicated spider scenario that doesn’t hold up under Will’s scrutiny. Will figures out right away that Joe has contained another person and that person is now dead, now I actually think Will could have done this, just to mess with Joe. Interesting.
Joe heads back to his apartment in time to greet Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), his current object of obsession that he’s using to excuse all of his murdery behaviour. You know, so he can be the perfect man. She was drunk the night before and he was high af, somewhere in there they made plans to run away together.
Guess who no longer has a need to run away now that his problem is packed in ice in the middle of a plastic cube?
Ellie pops into the apartment, she’s received a threatening letter from a fan of Henderson (Chris D’Elia) who Delilah wrote a first-person expose about. This was right after Joe murdered Henderson kind of sort of not really accidentally.
Joe’s not sure what to do about Ellie’s future, now that her caretaker is melting in the middle of a plastic cube, he flashes back to his own violent and troubled childhood where his mother Sandy (Magda Apanowicz) has come to a point of taking matters into her own hands. She had left young Joe’s (Aidan Wallace) dad because of physical abuse, but is now back with a stashed gun for security.
That…does not sound safe exactly.
Back in the present, Joe finds a bruise on his back, a flash of Calvin (Adwin Brown) whacking him with a rolling pin in Anavrin explains that. So did he have enough time to get to the cube still if he DID go to Anavrin?
Cop Other David Fincher is outside as Joe leaves his apartment, he’s already fingered Joe as a suspect in Henderson’s murder so Joe will have to kill him too, when he has time.
Off to Anavrin, where Calvin tells a highly entertaining tale of an extremely out of it Joe shouting about the basement (which means the box) and Flaming Hot Cheetos for Delilah. AND Forty Quinn (James Scully) with him. Huh. How could Joe murder anyone with Forty in tow?
Joe texts Forty frantically while Love gives Ellie cooking lessons and there we have our solution: Love and Joe will take care of Ellie from now on. Perhaps Joe will even think killing Delilah is a good thing.
Ellie and Love bond over cutting up (unpeeled) carrots, Ellie and Delilah’s dad died, they hated their mom and here we are now.
Joe looks for Forty at his mom Dottie Quinn’s (Saffron Burrows) house, she’s a piece of work. Forty confessed under the influence that he had murdered the au pair who abused him as a teenager, instead of the public story that the au pair had killed herself. Dottie makes sure Joe knows that his secrets will be held in under the same veil.
But what did he tell Forty? Did he tell Forty he murdered his previous girlfriend, her boyfriend, another friend and a half dozen other people besides?
Forty is relatively his (douchey) regular self, until Joe asks where they went after Anavrin. Forty gets antsy, turns out he did not murder Delilah, but rather booty-called Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers) after Joe called Delilah.
Backstory: Joe dated Candace before anyone else we’ve met and thought he accidentally murdered her before she showed up vowing vengeance. That vengeance took the form of screwing Forty, which feels more like penance, and inserting herself in to Joe’s relationship with Love.
I get why Forty would sleep with Candace, but not why she would sleep with HIM.
ALSO: How is it possible that Forty was totally okay with Joe calling Delilah for a booty call when he calls Joe his family because he’s in love with Forty’s sister?
Forty and Igor (Andrei Runtso) dropped Joe off by the storage place; how could Forty leave Joe all messed up on the streets of LA? The flower Forty was wearing and gave to Joe was in the blood by Delilah, so.
Joe wonders if Candace had anything to do with the murder to frame him, and that is possible. Forty video-chatted with Candace with Joe and the storage place in the shot, it’s absolutely a possibility that she banged Forty then ran across town to set Joe up. Girl is motivated.
Love calls; Joe has to get back to the apartment right now. Ellie’s flipping out, convinced that something terrible has happened to her sister, she’s not answering texts.
Ellie is taking her sister’s disappearance very personally, why does everyone keep running away from her? Aw man. He holds her as she cries and he ponders his essential goodness/badness.
Back at the Quinn headquarters, Candace shows up all excited about Forty and Joe’s script, but I’m fixated on the living room. DID THEY ALWAYS HAVE A BOX IN IT?
Seriously! That’s just like Joe’s box, but with better decorating and superior lighting.
Anyway, fighty words/fighty words, Forty’s had his orgasm and enough of Candace, he has fully bought Joe’s story that Candace is a crazy ex-girlfriend.
Remember the script she’s so excited about? It’s based on the book written by Joe’s other ex-girlfriend Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail), which she wrote so Joe wouldn’t kill her. She wrote a plausible story of all the crimes perpetrated by Joe, blaming them on the therapist she was screwing on the side. Everyone bit, but in their acid-charged script review, Forty and Joe somehow wrote that it was actually Beck’s boyfriend Hector, who is clearly based on Joe.
Joe totally killed Beck anyway when she made a run for it back in the bookstore basement in New York.
Forty’s interest is tweaked enough that he pulls up a Google search on Dr. Nicky (John Stamos), the man Beck fingered as her stalker in her book and who was subsequently convicted of her murder.
Joe’s waited all day for darkness, he slips on his Baseball Cap of Mystery and heads back to the cube. Candace heads to see Delilah, who very much is not home. She goes through her messages and pics of Forty, one is the video he shot of Joe outside the storage locker so I’m guessing that’s where she’s headed next.
Somehow, in that ten minutes between her watching the video and realisation, she makes it to the storage locker, opens the locked door and gets the jump on Joe, who is busy apologizing to Delilah’s dead body.
Candace hits him with mace, gets his phone and texts Love while locking Joe in his own box. Bravo, Incredibly Unrealistic Moves Woman!
She’s going to show him who he really is, and Love too.
Candace waits while Joe in the box flashes back to murdering his abusive dad when he was a child.
Love shows up at the storage locker, she actually gives Joe the benefit of the doubt but he tells her the truth. He’s so deep into his own garbage that he still sees all of this as an act of devotion to Love.
He confesses to killing Henderson and Delilah, but I’m pretty sure now that he didn’t kill Delilah. Love runs away.
Joe muses the nature of his life, how would it have been different if he’d had different parents? Not a former Soviet prison guard as a mentor?
His mom was initially angry at Joe when he shot his dad to death, but recovered and reassured him that it was okay, he was protecting her. He didn’t kill anyone.
Joe has a key to let himself out of the box, but he decides to give up that option and take his punishment. He pushes the key through a speaking hole and Love throws up in the hallway. Candace follows her, rubbing her back, Love repays this by turning around and slashing Candace across the throat with a broken bottle.
WHAT.
WHAT???
Love murders Candace to keep Joe’s secrets??
Joe is similarly surprised to see Love return by herself.
And we’re out! Wow. That was a huge twist, even though I wondered if Love herself was a stalker initially, I had no idea she was of the murdery type like Joe. Interesting! Until next time, which is the last time until they drop season three! Cheers.
You S2:E10 “Love, Actually”
Hello! So yes, we’re really gonna do this thing back to back! Welcome to the very last recap of Netflix’s You second season, are you ready to find out what’s shaking with that crazy twist at the end of episode 9?? I mean: GAMECHANGER. Let’s find out what I’m talking about after the break in the You S2:E10 “Love, Actually”!
We left our hero/murderer/kidnapper/hopeless romantic Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) sitting inside a plexiglass prison of his own making, trying to comprehend the fact that his girlfriend Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) has just murdered Joe’s ex-girlfriend Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers) to save him.
To recap briefly; Candace was exposing Joe as a murderer to first Love, then the police, she THOUGHT, but instead ended up on the wrong end of a broken bottle held by Joe’s new defender, Love.
Candace and Joe used to date and she was the first woman he thought he killed, he did eventually get better at that.
By the way, Joe is sitting in his storage cube in his plastic playhouse with the dead body of his landlord and sometime lover Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbada). He confessed to Love that he’d killed her and everything (I’m not sure), so it’s not like Love didn’t know he totally is a murdery, murdery dude. She’s just happy to do her part for their relationship.
A big part of how Joe deals with being a stone cold killer is by pretending he’s doing it for the greater good or to save someone or usually in service of his All Consuming Love for whomever he’s currently obsessing over. So the fact that Love did a risk benefit analysis on slashing Candace concerns him.
Love explains; Joe did not kill Delilah: she did.
WHAT?
That was out of left field. WHAT?
That literally never ever occurred to me, even after we JUST watched her cut someone else’s throat as Delilah was killed.
Love explains, taking us back to her childhood, which was an affluent version of how gross Joe’s was, but with more child abuse of her brother Forty (James Scully) by the au pair Sofia (Brooke Johnson). Their parents didn’t pay any attention, but Love knew Sofia was sexually assaulting her teenaged brother; it was she who murdered Sofia while Forty was passed out.
*Extremely unrealistic murder scene alert*
She framed Forty for the murder, knowing her parents would cover it up and they did. She kept Forty close, but their family didn’t heal so she went looking for a new one with her husband James. When James died soon after they married, she started to lose faith but now she has Joe! Who will do anything for love! And Love.
She was checking him out just as much as he was checking her out in the beginning, and it didn’t stop there. She’d had her family private investigator looking into him after Candace left so she knew all about the storage locker and even researched his ex, Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail).
Love adores his storage locker, that made her love him even more. He’s crafty! He’s a creative genius and that’s how those people react when in a toxic relationship.
She even credits Joe for Beck’s work, he brought that out in her!
Honestly. Joe. Stay in the box. You’ve just been out crazy-ied.
Love followed Joe the night of the acid trip, I hadn’t thought she was as drunk as everyone was saying and I guess I was right. She found Joe leaving the storage locker all out of his mind, coming in to see Delilah begging for her life and cutting her throat to help Joe.
Joe is me: what.the.fuck. And what about Ellie Alves (Jenna Ortega), Delilah’s sister that has been orphaned. Love has a plan for that! Starting with a soft frame for Ellie for murdering comedian Henderson (Chris D’Elia) who was actually killed by Joe. Joe is not at all happy to hear that Love’s plan, already in action, involves Ellie being arrested.
Ellie herself is being questioned by her late sister’s lover, police officer David Fincher (Danny Vasquez) got an anonymous tip from Love that Ellie was there the night Henderson was found dead.
Love’s done a lot of work on this, but Joe just doesn’t feel the same about Love anymore. Love questions him, she knew exactly what she was getting, she made sure of that. Joe was too busy adding glitter to her aura.
But this is who she is: take her or leave her.
His answers did not please her, so she leaves him fully locked in a box. This is very reminiscent of when it was Beck locked in a box begging him to let her out, to believe that she means what she says about loving him and forgiving him for decimating her social group with a hatchet.
He’s left alone to review whether or not he thinks Love has Ellie’s best interests at heart. A glance at Ellie’s dead sister on the floor tells him NO and just like that: he’s over Love. Honestly.
Ellie calls Love’s brother Forty for help getting out of jail, but he’s flown over to New York to talk to the person convicted of murdering Beck: Dr. Nicky (John Stamos). How could he possibly still be so dishy?? Actually, maybe not, his skin is sort of grey and his eyes are…
Anyway, Dr Nicky doesn’t want out of jail, he hurt a tonne of people, including his family and all the other patients he slept with and he’s doing penance in jail, with Jesus. Forty tries to bait him into biting for his new movie plot twist, he even throws up a picture of Joe for Dr. Nicky to identify.
Dr. Nicky STILL doesn’t want to be part of Forty’s Get Out of Jail party.
Ellie is sprung from jail by the Love family attorney, but she doesn’t have anywhere to go. Cop David threatens to call Child Protective Services if Delilah doesn’t show up shortly, Ellie calls Forty and everyone is heading to Anavrin.
Love shows up at the cube with muffins to talk to Joe about his mom, but the bonding is interrupted by a miscommunication over whether there is poison inside. She finally opens the door, Joe has her by the throat in seconds with the handcuff against her throat but she gasps out “I’m pregnant.”
This is another gamechanger for Joe: Love isn’t crazy! She’s a good mom, protecting her young and her baby daddy!
Joe snaps back into line. He has to be the kind of father he never had.
That was a gorgeous interplay of manipulation and see-sawing emotions and internal conflict aaahh just awesome.
And now we’re at Lucy (Marielle Scott) and Sunrise’s (Melanie Field)‘s wedding and Joe got a fancy new haircut! Joe is still trying to work out whether or not he loves Love or not.
Outside the wedding, Love’s best friend Gabe (Charlie Barnett) is running the door and keeping Forty from ruining this sacred day. Sunrise’s speech to Lucy is perfect for Joe and Love, Joe re-commits to Love and they’re together awww, so he can protect his unborn daughter (you can’t find that out at that point, but why spoil the moment?).
*Note that he doesn’t say he “wolfs” her, which is their code for more than love.
They’re together on their way to see Forty at Anavrin, which he’s just shut down thanks to Calvin (Adwin Brown).
Ellie is outside Anavrin, she has no idea where to go and what to do. Cop David is watching as Joe talks about protecting her, Delilah is not coming home. He steals all the money out of the Anavrin safe and tries to convince her to get on an east-bound train but she’s a teenager, so before she goes, she says she hates him, he ruined her life and he should burn in hell.
I don’t know if that last part is exactly usual teenspeak.
Ten bucks says Ellie is Joe’s new nemesis in season 3!
Love is working on her part of the deal, trying to calm Forty down. Joe enters and I’m measuring the distance between Love and Forty, because that’s where the real danger is for Forty.
Forty pulls a gun on Joe, Love has to tell him he’s about to be an uncle. He’s shocked, but not for the usual reasons, how can she bring a child into this world that might be like them? He may know she murdered the au pair instead of him.
Joe is made to kneel on the ground in front of Forty, he still doesn’t understand that she’s trying to choose between them.
A gunshot is heard, but it’s not Joe dead after, it’s Forty. The cop David shot him, which is about right. Joe comforts Love, now he will be her whole world.
They’re sort of perfect for each other.
We’re several months later, Ellie is alive and elsewhere and Joe is pondering whether embracing exile will save him and the woman he loves.
The police decided to look at Forty for Henderson’s murder, which means Ellie is relatively safe. A very pregnant Love and Joe are happy in their new home. By that I mean he feels trapped and is already creeping on the attractive female neighbour through the fence.
“See you soon, Neighbour” and we’re OUT! Woooo! Joe, you scalliwag, I was wondering how they were going to extend this series beyond you meeting your perfect match! I guess, for some, it’s not love that matters as much as the murdering and kidnapping to win true love, the journey. Enjoy every step, Joe, until next time! Cheers
TalksTooMuch talks too much about pop culture and television, you should gather a snack before reading. Maybe a bottle of water, too. Check out her site for even more recaps!
