This comedian (played by Chris d'Elia) is outwardly funny and likeable, and without getting into spoiler territory over whether or not he is guilty, You operates on the assumption that his fame and affable persona have functioned as protection thus far. Following his move to Los Angeles, Joe finds himself entangled in an investigation into a popular comedian who has a history of hanging out with teenage girls. The #MeToo movement has directly informed the plot of You's second season. Why, Love seems to be asking, would a handsome man need to trick or coerce anyone into being with him? It's a question that ignores the dynamics of abusive relationships, which are based upon notions of power and control, not romance or attraction. That stalking and assault are the purview of unwashed strangers, who have less pleasingly symmetrical faces and hang out in dark alleys. The fact that he's played by former teen heartthrob Penn Badgley means the viewer, as much as his new victim, is lulled into the belief that he is a viable love interest-to the point that Badgley had to tweet reminders to fans following the success of Season 1 that Joe is a psychopath and not a model for romantic behavior.Įven in the wake of #MeToo, after countless women have shared their experiences of sexual harassment and assault by colleagues, when the statistics show that the majority of violent crimes against women are committed by somebody the victim knows, there is a persistent idea in pop culture that it's always some other man behaving terribly. One of the recurring points of You is that Joe is able to evade getting caught for so long because he has the privilege of being a handsome, white, perfectly nice-seeming guy, with a relatively slight physique which makes him appear physically unthreatening. If somebody makes a positive impression on us in one area-say, by being really, really good-looking-we are more likely to project all kinds of other positive attributes onto them.
It's played off as the kind of low-key flirtatious banter that kicks off so many romantic comedies, but even if Joe weren't canonically a psychopath at this point in the series, Love's seemingly innocuous comment still reinforces a dangerous idea: that a handsome man is inherently trustworthy. "Well you might have, if you looked like a skeeve, which I guess is me saying, good choice showering today." "I am sorry if I seem skeevy," he says, having just been staring at her from across the store.
Take this exchange from the first episode of season two, in a scene where Joe first meets the improbably named Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti).
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