Three weeks into Lifetime’s YOU, it’s becoming hard not to feel like the universe is secretly rooting for Joe to succeed. For someone who spends most of his waking hours stalking people, he simply isn’t very good at it, leaving paper trails and sending up literal smoke signals after committing various misdeeds. He may be the luckiest, worst stalker-murderer in this fine network’s long history of stalker-murderers.
Let’s look back at all the ways Joe’s dumb luck saved him this week alone: When the power went out at the bookstore, his co-worker called ahead before having the electrician bust the lock on the basement door, where he would have discovered Benji’s corpse; when the police were looking into his suspicious purchases, they didn’t immediately check the trunk of his car, where Benji’s stinky body was rotting at record speeds; and when Beck asked how he knew her room wasn’t big enough for a king-size mattress, he pulled that recovery line (“It’s New York”) out of his butt. And it actually worked.
Speaking of Beck, she seems to have found a new rival in Blythe, an insufferable girl in her writing class. They have a very Elle Woods/Vivian Kensington dynamic at the moment, with Blythe effortlessly undercutting Beck’s confidence and judging her for not completing required assignments. Tensions are also growing between Peach and Joe, who appear to be the only characters with working noses. Not only was Peach repulsed by the Benji-corpse stank in Joe’s trunk, but she also told Beck that she thinks he stole a book from her library.
Of course, I can’t even think about any of the above after witnessing Joe’s sexual misfire in the final shot of the episode. I can’t say I’m surprised that his first time with Beck ended in under a minute, but I can say that I’ll never get the sound of Penn Badgley’s nervous ejaculation out of my head. It will be with me always.
Also worth discussing…
* Joe bringing Beck a box of pancake mix is super gross, right? Like, arguably the least subtle exploitation of someone’s daddy issues that I’ve ever seen.
* As someone who hasn’t read the book, I’m excited to hear what really went down between Joe and his ex-girlfriend.
Your thoughts on this week’s YOU? Drop ’em in a comment below.
https://pmctvline2.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/you-recap.jpg
