Well, well well. I was expecting a bit of the same old, same old here, but this season on You, the writers decided to switch a lot of things up! Not that I was tired of the old formula, but this new route was interesting from the jump.
It seems as though Joe has really changed his ways. Well, as much as he can. Now living in London, he’s renamed himself Jonathan Moore and teaches English at a university. While this is kind of the dream for Joe, it becomes tainted when his fellow teacher and neighbor, Malcolm, adopts him into a rich-kid friend group. It’s clear a large portion of the group aren’t totally buying what he’s selling, but that’s more from an economical standpoint. Otherwise, Lady Phoebe is quite fond of him, therefore, he stays. Joe has to get even more involved with them when, by the end of the first episode, Joe wakes up from a night of drugs to find Malcolm dead on his kitchen table. Oh yeah, and someone is set to frame him.
This new “you” knows too much about Joe’s past life and is threatening him to get his hands dirty or they’ll spill what they know to the rich kids group and more importantly, the police. This means that more people wind up dead over the course of the season. In fact, I believe this season has the highest body count if that’s something you look forward to. Aside from Joe being the one stalked this season, another thing that really changed is his position with the loves in his life. Almost as soon as the season starts we learn that Joe lets Marienne go live her life with her daughter in Paris. It pains him deeply, but he knows it’s the right thing to do to keep her safe from the Quinn family henchman.
A much more reluctant romance blooms with the initially robotic, Kate. She’s Malcolm’s girlfriend, well was, even though he cheated on her regularly. She projects a palpable hatred towards Joe, but eventually he wears her down. He also tries fairly hard to resist falling for her, but look at who we’re talking about here. She’s got a past that messy enough to rival Joe’s, but it takes us a long good while to learn all the bits and pieces of it. I cannot tell you how cool it was that the British version of Ghosts’ Charlotte Ritchie was playing Kate, and it was even cooler that Greg Kinnear was playing her dad! I absolutely love him. So underrated.
Now, this wouldn’t be You if there wasn’t some crazy twist, but I am not going to ruin that at all. That’d be rude and no fun. While it was bananas, overall, the season just didn’t quite click for me like all the others had. I still really enjoyed watching it, but I can’t place it at the top of the list.