(Spoilers present)
Starring: Penn Badgley, Victoria Pedretti, James Scully, Ambyr Childers, Charlie Barnett, John Stamos, Chris D'Elia, Carmela Zumbado, Jenna Ortega
What's missing in Season 2 of YOU is the allure of Beck, the object of Joe's obsession killed off in the season finale of Season 1. Beck, played by Elizabeth Lail, was a sexy, wounded doll of a heroine whose life is nearly as tragic as Joe's, just in different ways. She has now left the scene, Joe has moved to Los Angeles under a different identity, and the show suffers. Beck makes a cameo appearance, and it only serves to let us know how much we miss her.
Joe assumes the name of Will in Season 2 and finds a job at a trendy bookstore specializing in self-help books and juices. He almost immediately finds a replacement for Beck in the form of Love Quinn (Pedretti), and when we hear Joe's voice-over narration discussing "Love", he is not speaking in abstracts. Joe doesn't have the spark with Love as he did with Beck. He says he loves her, wants to be the best man he could be for her...blah, blah, but there is little chemistry. Love, who runs the bookstore with her recovering addict twin brother Forty (Scully), is a nice enough woman with "there there" eyes, but Beck she isn't.
YOU Season 2 only exhibits flashes of what made the first season such a rich surprise. Will/Joe, of course, can't go an episode without tossing someone in the Hannibal Lecter cage which he has dragged with him to LA and kept in a storage unit bigger than some apartments. The dramatic arc of these scenes in the cage, with the victim pleading for his life and Joe halfheartedly promising to let him/her go, contained unnerving power in Season 1 and now border on self-parody. Is this the only way for Joe to deal with those who get in the way of his forever love with Love? As it turns out, no.
A lover from Joe's past, believed to have been murdered by him, reemerges to dangle his past over his head. She is Candace Stone (Childers), who popped up at the end of Season 1 to confront Joe with extreme aplomb. She follows him to LA, ingratiating herself into Joe's inner circle by pretending to be in love with Forty, and we wait for the inevitable scene where Candace is disposed of. Two other women who play important roles are Delilah (Zumbado), Will/Joe's landlord and her younger sister Ellie (Ortega), who makes a nasty habit of hanging out with famed comedian and possible pedophile Henderson (D'Elia). Frankly, Joe has more heat with Delilah, and the writers should've found a way to switch Deliliah's and Love's roles.
I won't reveal too many spoilers, except to say that there were times I found myself tiring of Joe's shenanigans, only to be temporarily reinvigorated by a neat plot twist. Badgley once again does a fine job in a role which must be exhausting to play; the psychotic pseudo-romantic who can't keep his penchant for violence away long enough to even pretend to have a shot at happiness. His past keeps coming back to bite him in the ass, and the list of crimes he needs to cover up becomes extensive.
It is a cruel cosmic joke that the universe contrives reasons for him not to be caught.
The season ends tidily enough, and Joe finds another potential conquest to obsess on. Considering his new circumstances with Love, my interest is perked for Season 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment