You (2018-): Season 3

Title: You

Year: 2021

Genre:   Crime | Drama | Romance |

Seasons: 1 | 2 | 3 |

Runtime:  60 min/episode

Creator:  Greg Berlanti &  Sera Gamble |

Starring:   Penn Badgely, Victoria Pedretti, Dyan Arnold

Based on Caroline Kepnes’ best-selling novel of the same name, YOU is a 21st-century love story that asks, “What would you do for love?” When a brilliant bookstore manager crosses paths with an aspiring writer, his answer becomes clear: anything. Using the internet and social media as his tools to gather the most intimate of details and get close to her, a charming and awkward crush quickly becomes an obsession as he quietly and strategically removes every obstacle – and person – in his way.

A DESPERATE THIRST TO PLEASE THE AUDIENCE

Few series have created a nuance around its problematic surroundings as You with an obsessed librarian named Joe and a female baker named Love. Even if this couple has moved out from central Los Angeles and moved to the suburbs, it contains, either way, the suspense it delivers during the first episodes.

In the third season, it’s not Joe that’s the psychotic killer only murdering because of jealousy. No. It’s mostly Love and her problematic and neurotic behaviour that creates interesting new situations. Joe tries to contain her instincts and yet he gets in trouble for just doing that. On top of that, they try to fit in well in the community of tech, bloggers and sensitive mothers and annoying neighbours. Plus, that their marriage is toward down in a death-sentence spiral. Often, it’s annoying with the fictitious world where the dependence is always smartphones and social media but in this fictitious world, it seems to work great. It blends in seemingly and tries not so often to overuse it even if there’s a solid tendency for it.

The plot for the season progress in a haste tempo even if there is some indicator of what may arrive in episodes later on. As this plot progresses, it does actually feel occasionally natural even if some scenes play out very quickly and some plot points are very foreseen easily. Some tropes in these psychological thrillers feel at some moments we’ve already seen before.

The acting from the cast is decent and doesn’t really win. It’s easy to binge-watch but it’s not for the performances you watch this series, it’s instead how the relationship Joe has between each character and who will be killed and in what way. With this current approach, it’s like a new remodelling of these characters even if it is not. Moving away or run away, give a new nuance to a series like this, exposing other sides of each character.