Joe is always part of a community - and because You cares about the characters in that community, no matter how charming he is, he is always ultimately a cancer. And while Joe narrates the show, he’s not the only character it follows. Like lots of shows about terrible people ( Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Friends) a lot of the tension in You stems from Joe Goldberg, actual murderer, escaping consequences for his actions for three seasons and counting. Joe’s narration is also an elegant solution to a persistent problem with anti-hero protagonists: the natural tendency to sympathize with - and root for - a point-of-view character you spend a significant amount of time with. How the audience knows this is simple: Joe handily narrates nearly every waking moment.
#YOU TV SERIES FREE#
Over the course of You’s story, that woman changes, because he spends all his free time stalking his latest target, and killing anyone who gets in between him and his fantasy of being with her. And his goal in the grand novel of life? To sweep the woman of his dreams offf her feet. You is a thriller that follows Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg, a bookseller who, maybe more so than most, considers himself to be the hero of his own story.
Netflix’s You, however, bucks this rule with incredible style, delivering a narrator that isn’t just good, but possibly an all-timer. Except narration runs the dangerous risk of proving why showing is superior to telling, sticking that middle finger in a live power outlet instead of towards The Man, and making the rebel much less cool. If storytelling’s golden rule is “show, don’t tell,” narration is the rebel without a cause, sticking its middle finger under the principal’s nose in open defiance of that rule.