Diksha Sundriyal
Whenever we do something bad, we try to find ways to either justify it, or balance it with a good deed. As soon as the scales of good and bad are balanced, our karma should be fine, right? People do whatever it takes to become billionaires, and then donate their blood money to charities, to quell any revolt in their conscience. Why should psychopaths be any different? ‘You‘ gives its psychopath a chance at redemption too. Just as Joe doesn’t want any trouble falling in love, he doesn’t look for people to be saved. But he finds both these things, and both of them are too important to turn his eyes away from.
You Season 2 Episode 3 Recap
After getting rid of who was very definitely a member of the mafia, Joe’s attention is turned back to the matter at hand. He does seem to be trying his hard to not allow his friendship with Love to become something more, but there is only so much he can do when she is not ready to let it rest. She knows what she wants and either Joe should completely let go of her, or he should stop sending mixed signals and just accept that he has feelings for her. Joe, however, is adamant at keeping his distance.
To provide him with a distraction, Ellie steps in. After learning about Henderson’s truth from Delilah, he is concerned about Ellie, who is currently pursuing an internship with Henderson. When Delilah fails to come through to her teenage sister, Joe decides to do the parenting. He finds a way into Henderson’s house to get his laptop, which then Will hacks into to find out any concrete evidence. But this gets them nowhere, and for once, Joe believes that Henderson might not be a bad guy after all.
You Season 2 Episode 3 Review
Love and obsession are not the only things that define Joe Goldberg. He also loves books and takes care of the people around, most importantly, young kids in desperate need of adult supervision. Last season, he had Paco, a boy with an abusive father figure and a mother suffering from addiction. This season, he has a confident 15-year-old girl, who is also naïve and not as cautious as she should be. How can Joe sit and watch something happen to her? He has to protect her, no matter what it takes. Any good person would do the same. But Joe is not just any good person.
Once again taking the similar route as its previous season, ‘You’ uses two different events to bring out the contrasting colours of Joe. He is essentially a good person; circumstances make him bad- or so you can believe. But do his good intentions wash away all the bad he has done? Does the people he protects balance his karmic scales against the people he has killed? While watching the show, the audience is likely to fall in love with Joe. Who doesn’t want a man like that in their life, just without the murder streak!
I know, the whole point of making the character charming is just that, to make him attractive to his prey. Add to that his righteous sense of saving the ones who can’t save themselves, and you do begin to question if Joe can actually change. To the credit of the writers of ‘You’, they have certainly made this dilemma much more interesting by throwing in a sex offender as Joe’s target. This brings me back to our protagonist’s sense of self. What irony it is, clearly in front of him and yet he fails, or refuses, to see. By stalking, and having even killed women, he has been committing crimes against them. And on the other hand, he is repulsed by a man who drugs and rapes young girls.
If you could just look past the obvious need of the characters to get the consummating of their love out-of-the-way, this episode is a great step in building the character arc for Joe. We just have to wait for him to discover, by himself or through some help, how alike he is to Henderson.
Read More: You Season 1 Ending, Explained
