Review | ‘You’ season three: a tired portrait of a toxic couple
Netflix’s third season of TV melodrama “You” situates a stalker in the suburbs who has a few wins, a lot of misses and even more kills. Photo illustration by SAM ANDRUS, Photo Editor
A crying baby, a red axe, meticulously iced carrot cupcakes, aconite poisoning, and of course, an ever-present baseball cap: these are the images that permeate the latest season of Netflix’s hit psychological thriller “You.”
Netflix released season three of the series Oct. 15 to audiences waiting to devour obsessive sociopath Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) and his approachable yet murderous wife, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti).
The highly anticipated third season of a show that found its footing during quarantine was met with eager binge-watching — currently second behind “Squid Game” on Netflix’s popularity chart — and inevitable memes that arose in the process. Social media can turn even the darkest of content into comedy goldmines, and this show is no exception: among the highlights are digs at Joe and Love’s oblivious therapist and Swifties’ takes on the apt use of Taylor Swift’s song “Exile” in the season finale.
The season begins with the birth of Joe and Love’s son, Henry “Forty” Quinn-Goldberg, whose middle name takes after Love’s recently deceased brother (James Nicholas Scully). Joe, who was expecting a baby daughter, is immediately furious that the child is not a girl — a product of his mommy-issues-induced obsession with “protecting” women, which once again serves as the driving psychological force behind the season.
Seeing as Joe and Love both harbor their own bloodthirsty agendas, the toxic pairing inevitably resulted in many fans choosing sides within the marriage — some rooting for Joe and justifying his murders while disliking Love, or vice versa. The recurring voiceover of Joe’s inner monologue and his pattern of violence against women make it easy for viewers to fall into the Love camp, as in spite of her own inherent brutality, she at least cares for her child and tries to make friends.
After an inaugural season set in the New York City literary scene and the second set in sunny Los Angeles, the third season opts for yet another location change, this time to picturesque NorCal suburb Madre Linda. The town is full of obnoxiously rich and relentlessly phony residents whom the show aims to satirize, echoing the commentary on hellish suburbia as made (more effectively) by dramatic precursors like “Big Little Lies” and “Little Fires Everywhere.”
The Madre Linda lifestyle is maddening even to serial killers Joe and Love, raising the stakes of what kind of toll the fakeness of an affluent suburban life can take on individuals. Marrying this critique of Instagram-influencer lifestyles with humor about the cutthroat nature of preschool application processes and the absurdity of unapologetic anti-vaxxers into a show about a stalking sociopath could add a compelling layer of relatability to the show. But with such potential for impact, the digs are often too overt to land with the weight they need to.
Sherry Conrad (Shalita Grant), mommy-blogger and queen bee of middle-aged women in Madre Linda is one of the most dynamic characters of the season, yet she is given lines that too explicitly reveal her hypocrisy. At least half of what makes Instagram influencers so insufferable is their expertise in humble-bragging, but much of Sherry’s dialogue, particularly at the beginning of the season, misses the enraging subtlety of the influencer-type’s inflated ego.
Instead of maintaining effortless, Instagram-ready composure, Sherry shrieks loudly when she sees her children eating what Love calls the “gluten-free, sugar-free … happiness-free” cupcakes that she brought to the party. Sherry then explains she doesn’t even allow her kids to eat fruit because of the natural sugar.
Similarly disruptive are the conversations Joe and Love have in couples therapy, which are often too on-the-nose to be believable. At one point, Joe refers to a woman he was becoming obsessed with that Love brutally murdered as a vase his wife broke. At another, the therapist even says “You’re many things, but you are not murderers,” which is just unnecessarily brazen, and not something a therapist would often even have a cause to say.
One successful moment, though, comes in episode three, titled “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” when Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle) — a single-mom and librarian who ultimately becomes Joe’s love interest — reflects on the disproportionate attention from society and coverage from media granted to missing white women when compared to that of missing women of color. The scene feels particularly relevant given the context of the conversation in current society as prompted by Gabby Petito’s recent and tragic death.
Beyond this rare instance of poignant social commentary, “Missing White Woman Syndrome” is arguably the best episode of the season for its needed build-up of tension. In the episode, Joe and Love finally encounter a hitch in their sloppy cover-up of the murder of seductive neighbor Natalie Engel (Michaela McManus) and must scramble to overcome it.
Until the finale, this is really the only major threat to nearly being caught that Joe and Love face. The season’s ridiculously high body count is accompanied by careless attempts to hide the murders — cleaning blood out of a car trunk in front of their house for anyone to see, dragging body bags into cars in broad daylight and rarely utilizing gloves. The idea that the two could have possibly gotten away with the crimes they committed becomes increasingly unbelievable.
Amid messy subplots and unrealistic outcomes, the season is redeemed by acting performances from stellar leads and a knockout ensemble cast. The aforementioned Shalita Grant effortlessly steps into Sherry Conrad’s skin, employing impressive range as an annoying influencer, bubbly best friend and terrified captive. Tati Gabrielle’s Marienne is one of few main characters that seem to have a sound moral compass — though she does, at the very least, border on infidelity, even if her scope of the situation was limited. The real hero of this season, however, is Dante, a librarian played by Ben Mehl who is genuinely the only character on the show that demonstrates selfless compassion.
Badgley's Joe is both chilling and charming, and though the actor’s earnestness goes a bit far for some viewers’ taste, it’s unsurprising that he’s garnered a devoted fanbase even as a twisted villain. Pedretti’s Love is gentle and undeniably likable, and the actor seamlessly slips between the energy of a loving mother and a cold-blooded killer. Despite her impulsive and violent outbursts, it’s hard not to root for her in some sense.
This premise of convincing viewers to side with villains is the clever foundation which “You” is built upon, and it somehow still works in season three, though threads of innocence like a newborn baby, an unsuspecting father and a naive, trusting teenage boy make it far more difficult to support the darkness of our antihero.
Ultimately, the obsessive stalker can only survive and thrive for so long before the narrative grows stale, and in season three his appeal begins to fade, leaving viewers to question the security of his fate in the already greenlit fourth season.