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You 2.10: “Love, Actually” – Bitch, I Told You So

I fear I may have ruined things for any viewer who was reading as they watched, because as Love’s opening monologue reveals, I was absolutely right about every single thing. As a soap opera fan, expository monologues are usually very enjoyable to me because they’re so funny, which is why this one struck the wrong tone. You is normally better at covering its soap opera tracks. Joe has expository monologues, but they’re much craftier. Here we get the who, what, when, where and why with nothing left to puzzle. Maybe it was fun for those who hadn’t already figured everything out. Love admits to killing Delilah, the au pair, and Candace all in the same brand of throat-slashing. Love lays herself bare for Joe to see: a mirror image of himself, with everything inverted. He doesn’t have to wonder what he could have been like if he had been raised with money by his biological family. Poverty doesn’t raise a killer, nor does abandonment, nor does wealth, nor does family. Love has the very same je ne sais quoi as Joe; they are a different sort of twin. In finding his match, Joe experiences the karma the first episode promised. Joe is horrified when Love’s pedestal comes crashing down, but Love has the opposite reaction to Joe’s true self in that she loves him even more because of it, a fact she calls him out on. She’s angry that he only sees a fantasy, but it’s a fantasy she created, a purposefully constructed manic pixie dream girl tailored specifically to his taste. Joe’s not the only one who built his own cage.

Any euphoria Joe felt about having finally been caught has evaporated. He has been bested by a woman, and that won’t stand with him. Of course, he’s still himself, so he twists this situation into a more palatable pretzel; he has to break free so he can save Ellie. He devises a way to kill Love; he’ll slash her throat with the handcuffs he used to dangle freedom in front of Delilah. But handcuffs are not freedom’s tool. When Love arrives with muffins, I’m absolutely positive that she’s poisoned them. Wrong – it’s another red herring. She’s too smart for that. After all, you can’t be a black widow without getting married first. Joe convinces Love to open the cage, and she does – but then she sees the handcuffs in the refection in the glass. He almost goes through with his plan until she says the one thing that can stop him; she’s pregnant. That’s why she HAD to kill Delilah and Candace – to save their baby’s future! Joe grapples with what to do. He had just come to terms with his own punishment, but Love spoon-feeds a smorgasbord of excuses why their murders were justified and why they are good people. She’s such a skilled manipulator that she quickly switches tactics so he can feel as though he’s rescuing her when he agrees not to kill her. She plays the victim and he at least pretends to fall for it. The two are in this strange paradox where their lies allowed them to be emotionally honest with one another, but the truth forces them to lie about their feelings. Neither can truly trust the other now. At the wedding, Joe begins to see how hypocritical it is to hold Love accountable if he’s not going to do the same for himself, and he wonders what kind of father he’ll make. Sunshine’s vows plant the idea that he and Love sincerely are soulmates – they know everything about each other, so theirs could be the most honest love of all. Joe convinces himself to love Love for the sake of his child. After the ceremony, they both receive a flood of texts from Forty as soon as they’re allowed to turn on their phones. Joe is to meet Forty at Anavrin, and Love is warned she is in danger. The two head to Anavrin together.

Poor Ellie. Joe has one plan for Ellie, Love clearly has another. They will not be raising her together, as he would prefer. She may be a kid now, but she won’t be forever, and Love knows that. Ellie has to go. But even Love has a soft spot for damaged kids, so murder is not in the cards. When Officer Fincher shows up at her door at an ungodly hour, Love’s lemony light pours through the windows – her fingerprints are all over this scene. She’s dropped an anonymous tip with the police, telling them Ellie was at Hendy’s on the night of his murder. Ellie is too smart to fall for the cop’s trap, though, which is what Love is counting on in order for her plan to fall into place. As per Love’s plot, Ellie will ultimately have the full resources of the Quinns backing her and she won’t see any jail time, but this failed investigation will somehow keep the heat off Joe. Delilah’s body will be found with a suicide note. Love knows these implausible follies will only work because her family is so rich they can bribe cops indefinitely, and because they are in a soap opera. When the cops follow through on Love’s tip, Ellie calls Forty to bail her out. That only goes so far, because Office Fincher wants to find Delilah. He threatens Ellie with CPS, then tails her himself. Ellie hides out behind Anavrin, but Joe sees her. Joe blames Delilah’s disappearance on the Quinns, and he convinces Ellie to leave town. Officer Fincher watches the whole exchange, but maybe he can’t hear them, because he just sits there like an idiot. Joe brings Ellie inside, empties out the safe, and instructs her to get on a train and start a new life. He knows this is the only way to keep her safe from Love. Joe thinks he’s rescuing Ellie, but again, Ellie is too smart to miss the fact that Joe is responsible for everything that’s happened to her. She’s right; he ruined her life. She hates him, but she must follow his advice in order to survive.

After learning the meaning of the names Forty and Love, I felt so confused by the numerical symbolism. Forty is clearly the zero in the early episodes. He slowly redeems himself over the course of the season, especially when he figures out the truth about Joe. When Ellie calls him for help, he can’t go to the police station himself, because he’s across the country visiting the only living witness left: Dr. Nicky. Unfortunately Dr. Nicky is too Christian to help in any real way, caucasian-ly encouraging Forty to put his faith in the universe instead of trying to actually stop this serial killer. Forty texts Candace to no avail, because she’s in Love’s trunk. This time, she’ll stay buried. Forty heads straight to the wedding after his meeting with Dr. Nicky, desperate to pry her sister away from Joe. Gabe stops him, though, thinking Forty’s just high again. Gabe might be a wizard with acupuncture, but he’s a terrible judge of character. At Anavrin, Forty tries to save Love from an abusive partner, but he is exactly as successful as she was in keeping him sober. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. The previous episode made it seem like Forty was ready to adopt Joe into the Quinn family, but as soon as Forty realizes his actual family is in trouble, Forty rescinds that status. He, too, will do anything for his family, and he proves this by pointing a gun at Joe. Love threatens Forty, claiming he’ll never see her or the baby if he kills Joe. Forty pops off, disgusted she would even have a baby knowing what kind of person she is. After all, Forty knows his twin. The gun is at Joe’s head, but Forty stalls too long and Officer Fincher shoots Forty before Forty has the chance to kill Joe. Forty’s not the killer Love is. And really, from the moment Love arrived at Anavrin, it was clear she was going to have to make a choice between her biological twin and her psychological twin. Fincher walked in behind Forty, but Love was facing in that exact direction. There is no way she did not see Fincher come in with his gun drawn. Love could have told Fincher to stop, but instead she chose Joe. She’s devastated by the loss of her brother, but ultimately she’s the one who killed him. When it comes to Love and Forty, it turns out Love really is the zero after all.

The Jungian flashbacks continue with a CPS worker waiting to remove young Joe from his home while his mother packs his bag. He calls her a saint, but apparently the state believes her to be unfit. The viewer sees the group home Joe lived in before his time with Mooney. The only real new piece of information is that Joe’s mother is still alive when he is taken away. Is this the last time he ever saw her? Alas, the flashbacks are the MacGuffin of this detective story. They seem like they’re going to be the key to everything, but really, there is no key. We’ll probably never know why Joe is the way he is, and the why isn’t important, anyway.

Joe circles back to the concept of karma. He settles on the idea that some people get everything they deserve and some people don’t. “And each day that passes, justice seems more and more like a literary conceit.” Again, I hate it when Joe and I agree. He ties things back to Crime and Punishment, a book I pretended to read in high school. I guess it’s time to pick it up again. Anyway, Joe seems to think he, like the main character in the book, can be redeemed by love. His reaction to his home with Love, calling it a Siberia, makes it clear that her love will not redeem him. This prison of his own making is very cushy, though. And as luck would have it, there’s a brand-new white woman for him to project all his desires onto – someone to stalk and probably to eventually murder. It’s a satisfying enough ending to a show that must have been hedging – good enough to be the finale, but also open-ended enough for a third season. (Hire me!)

The season finale wraps up everything that had been established in the first episode of the season. Viewers will recall the image of Candace lying dead in the street and the relief they felt when it was just an actor on set. In a nod to You’s non-linear timeline, a director yells “we’re going to go again from the top,” and the Candace look-alike rises from the puddle of fake blood. The moment appears to be an allusion to Candace’s coming back from the dead, but really it is a clue into Candace’s grim future. Candace promises to show Joe who he really is, and once he sees that terrible person, he’ll beg Candace to turn him in. While she delivers on that promise in the ninth episode, Love enables him to return to his savior complex, shielding him from the punishment his crimes deserve. Joe wishes for a home in the first episode, and Love provides it in the last. When Forty’s character is introduced in the first episode, Love claims he is starring in his own movie. She’s right in that Forty is the third twin, the one who was snipped off. Aside from a few missteps, this was a well-made season of television. I wanted Joe to get what’s coming to him, but it’s unfortunately more realistic if he doesn’t. An overarching message in this season seems to be about vigilantism. Every character who seeks justice outside the law either kills or is killed. Additionally, every character who seeks justice within the bounds of the law is left to languish in the ineptitude of law enforcement. In the world of You, there is no justice. There can never be justice even if Joe and Love are caught. Those who were killed are gone forever, and no amount of prison time can bring them back. Even individually vivisected scrotums are not enough. But a girl can still dream. Joe’s favorite meal is roasted chicken, so hopefully they’ll all come home to roost in season three.

#you netflix season2 episode10 finale recap

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You 2.9: “P.I. Joe” – Putting the Damage On

The beginning of this episode really had me doubting myself, but by the end I was screaming “I fucking knew it” at my TV. I’ll dial back the glee, because Delilah’s death makes me feel so sad even though I saw it coming. When the handcuffs unlock and her dead hand falls to the ground, it’s an absolute gut-punch to the viewer and to Joe. He sets out to discover who killed her, even if he ends up exposing himself. Last episode’s LSD device provides the means for Joe to have huge gaps in his memory, so he can’t be sure he isn’t the killer. I see now that in order for this plot to function the writers needed to drug him, but I still feel like LSD is such a cheap choice. As someone who’s been accidentally drugged more than once, there are more plausible solutions than a drug almost no one takes anymore. Hire me to hear them!

Is Joe the killer or not? Well, he really doesn’t think so. First of all, he promised he wouldn’t, and more importantly, he would never purposely make life harder for Ellie. But he has killed before, so the morality of a murderer is closer in construction to the straw house than the brick one. As I mentioned last time, his clothes are totally clean when he arrives. Within minutes, this idiot is bumbling around, dropping Delilah’s phone, and splashing himself with blood. He really should be better at this by now. The first suspect on Joe’s list is Real Will, since he’s the only person who knows about the storage unit. A quick call to the Philippines quashes this fear. My suspicious mind thinks Will could have recorded the call to make a case against Joe in the future, but everything Will has said thus far has been truthful, so perhaps Joe is safe in taking what Will says at face value.  When Joe discovers a giant bruise on his back, he remembers snips and snaps of his trip to Anavrin. He heads over there to try and piece the rest together. On the way, he bumps in to Office David Fincher, who he suspects for a moment, then acquits him as soon as he sees how worried Fincher is. At Anavrin, Calvin fills in the blanks – Forty was with him after all. When he gets to Forty’s, Dottie divulges that she knows Joe is privy to damaging information about her family, and that she might be hiding dirt on Joe. Did Joe tell Forty any secrets? As Joe remembers more bits of last night, he begins to doubt Forty’s innocence. Why was the flower Forty was wearing found near Delilah’s body? Forty is acting so shifty, plus he mentions Delilah, so Joe is all but convinced that Forty has done this terrible dead. But it turns out he’s so squirmy because he was actually with Candace. Remember I believed Love killed her? Turns out I was just a little off, but it was worth it to have coined the term “necro-texting.” I wondered if she might have been a hallucination, but no. After Joe leaves, Candace arrives in the flesh. But right before he goes, he briefly grasps at the thought that Candace could be the killer, then drops it. Alas, the killer is always in the last place you look.

Candace, or is it Cassandra, does everything she can to feed Forty the truth about his screenplay in that Joe is the real-life culprit in Beck’s murder, but he just won’t hear it. Joe is family to him now, and once you’re in that fucked up Quinn clan, anything goes. Once Forty mentions Delilah, Candace knows she’s in danger, too. Side note: Forty’s Britney Spear line is killer. His dialogue must be so fun to write. I digress. Candace wants to find Delilah before the worst happens. When she sees Joe’s storage unit in last night’s video from Forty, she senses she might be too late. While it might be too late for Delilah, it’s not too late for Joe’s next victim, whoever that may be. In another karmic shot fired, Candace locks Joe in his own cage. Why don’t characters ever listen to me when I shout at my TV? I told her not to go there. I told her to call the police. But she didn’t listen. I may have gotten the timeline wrong, but I was right about Love. And just like Cassandra, Candace is killed by a jealous queen.

The only plausible answer is that Love killed Delilah. When Joe returns to his apartment, his internal monologue says he’ll “rest when there’s not a murderer on the loose,” and Love opens the door to his apartment at that very moment. She walks back the idea that she will immediately flee the country with him, because presumably she has some murder housekeeping to tend to. When Ellie arrives with the handwritten threat to Delilah, Love is very quick to connect it to Delilah’s article. Why does she know about that? It literally just came out, and she’s not in the business, so why is she reading Variety? While she and Ellie prepare the classic breakfast of boiled carrots, Love tries to act as a parental figure to Ellie, which mirrors Joe’s behavior with lonely kids. Is this guilt-based? When Dottie leaves Forty’s place, her affection for him is so genuine. Why is her relationship with Love so strained if Forty is the one who killed the nanny? My money’s on Love being the killer in that situation as well. Back to Delilah. After Joe realizes he was definitely in the storage unit, he wonders if he can’t remember killing Delilah because he’s “clenching his eyes shut against some truth [he] doesn’t want to face.” Just then, Love calls. Did Joe witness the murder, but he’s blocking it out because he can’t bear knowing Love did it? When Love sees Delilah’s corpse, she doesn’t seem very surprised. As Joe confesses to Delilah’s murder, Love looks more guilty than horrified. She seems sorry for Joe, not Delilah or Candace. As she runs down the hall to escape this nightmare, she vomits. Or is that vomit fake? It’s a Ted Bundy-ish ploy to get in close physical proximity to Candace so Love can slash her throat with a broken bottle. Watching Candace die conjures the image of Delilah, whose death must have been so similar. Love kills. Like I said, I fucking knew it.

The flashbacks continue in this episode, and the viewer finally knows what Joe’s damage is; doing a murder at formative age will probably mess you up, especially if the victim is your father. The genesis of Joe’s secret stashes is revealed when Joe’s mom shows him a gun she hid behind a panel in the wall. While it’s still unclear what happened to Joe’s mother, we do know that Joe was somehow shuffled from abusive parents to an abusive boss/foster father in Mooney (Mark Blum), and we learned in Season One that he didn’t come up with the idea of locking people in a cage on his own. Can his destructive behavior be blamed totally on his childhood? At a certain point, one must take responsibility for one’s own life. The most miserable people I know continue to blame their unhappy adulthoods on their parents and guardians. Of course, none of those people are killers, as far as I know. And then there’s the very obvious fact that not every person who had a traumatic childhood becomes a mass murderer. Something else is at play, and I don’t know if anyone truly understands the reasons why one damaged person kills, but another doesn’t. You seems to connect this elusive reason to the concept of external blame. Will Joe’s killing spree end if he stops blaming others for his actions? That remains to be seen.

Joe comes to terms with the notion that he is a killer, and as such he should be punished. It’s as if he’s reached an inverted state of Nirvana, and this enlightenment about his true identity eases his burden. The truth will set him free even if he must be confined in a prison for the rest of his life. Will Bettelheim was not his only fake identity; the Joe Goldberg he constructed for himself was never real, either. He confesses everything to Candace and Love. He believes that Love is good and he is bad, and therefore he is not worthy of her. Soon enough he’ll learn the truth about Love. Will she set him free? Damage has certainly found its match, but when Joe can no longer keep Love on a pedestal, will he still want her? Will both of them make it out of this season alive? So many questions and only one more episode. See You next time!

#you netflix season2 episode9 recap

[tanyaodebra]

You 2.8: “Fear and Loathing in Beverly Hills” – And Hunter Wept

I’m obsessed with this show and I am definitely going to keep watching, but COME ON. As a Passions fan, I’m truly down for anything – a monkey who’s a nurse, a witch who controls a town through a caldron, simultaneous pregnancies that are not twins, an evil doll that comes to life – select any flavor of soap opera madness and I will shovel it into my gaping TV-holes as long as it adheres to the tone of the show. But a drug episode? Really? This is tonal chaos. Anyway, we pick up right where we left off, with Delilah trapped in a glass case of emotional torture. David Fincher calls again and when Delilah lies in order to gain Joe’s trust, she says they’ll go on a date soon, a lie that cuts deep. Joe does indeed act as though he’s going to free her – he purchases plane tickets, says his goodbyes, and sets up Delilah in time-release handcuffs (which are real, because fetish people) so she can let herself out after he’s on a plane. And then we hit the first in a series of clichés – he sets a timer for sixteen hours so he is literally fighting against the clock. It’s a little much, and it telegraphs the idea that he’s going to fail.

Love is looking crazy-eyed in her lemon palace, and her team of enabling friends give her permission to do what she really wants, which is obviously to get Joe back. Dottie, egged on by her shaman, makes an unexpected appearance, and the two share a dysfunctional dinner. Love brings up the au pair, and Dottie hisses that she “did what she had to do.” Was Dottie involved in the murder, or just the cover-up? Love drunkenly storms out. When Love can’t handle her liquor, Dottie swoops in to take advantage of this moment of vulnerability.

We hit the second cliché when Forty and Joe are kidnapped. It felt so out of the blue that it totally took me out of the story. In fact, Joe even says that if this were a movie, he wouldn’t believe it. Things feel a little more planted in the world of the story once it becomes clear that Forty had planned it. Forty needs Joe’s help writing his screenplay and they will remain hotel room hostages of gun-toting Russians until they finish. I guess Joe is getting a taste of his own medicine, which hearkens back the first episode’s promise of karmic retribution. Forty’s back on the ‘booch, but this time he’s mixing it with Dexedrine. Not a great sign, because last time he was drinking kombucha he went hog-wild at Hendy’s. He spirals very quickly after Ellie’s honest notes and he jumps out the window into a dumpster, then absconds to a bar. Joe is obligated to follow him, and the clock keeps ticking. Joe finds Forty seated behind a sea of empty shot glasses, swimming in the blues. Apparently Forty is still texting Candace, which would lead a normal viewer to believe that she is alive and well. Lucky for you, I don’t trust anything or anyone, so I feel certain that Love is necro-texting from Candace’s phone. Fueled by tequila, Forty throws a drunken grenade into a nearby couple’s wedding reception by reenacting a watered-down Indecent Proposal – he kisses the bride in exchange for ten grand in cash. At his wits end, Joe attempts to leave the bar with or without Forty, but Forty grabs his arm and pens “8:52” in Sharpie. You see, that’s the time Joe started drinking the seltzer Forty dosed with four hits of acid. There it is, the third cliché. Literally anything is plausible now, which feels very, very cheap. Poor Joe has never taken LSD before, so he is about to have his ass handed to him. He is, to say the least, displeased. But then he bumps into Love – she “put two and two together,” aka stalked him or had him followed, and chose to have dinner in the same hotel where Joe and Forty were writing – when he starts tripping HARD.

Joe’s trip is a kaleidoscope of flashbacks about his childhood and imagined conversations with his mother. She provokes him, coddling his worst impulses. Forty uses the trip to get inside Beck’s head, which sends Joe spiraling. Forty narrowly escapes being choked to death by kneeing Joe in the balls during a roleplay gone wrong. Joe is freaking the fuck out, and rightfully so. Four hits of acid is a stupidly high dose for anyone, let alone a newbie. Forty allows him to use the safe word (I don’t know if this is a cliché, but it’s a really crazy plot coupon) to get moon juice (is this some LA thing I don’t know about, or is it a fictional Anavrin thing?) and snacks. Forty can’t come, because he’s conveniently peaking. Joe blacks out and finds himself standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom. Did he ever leave? There’s blood on his hands. He washes them, then all the blood disappears. Was it ever there? When he returns to the living room, Forty’s drinking moon juice among a gaggle of grocery bags. He confirms that Joe definitely left and brought this stuff back, but he doesn’t know how he got there or how long he was gone. Weird, since it seems like Joe would not go back to that room on his own. Dmitri (Adi Spektor), the Russian bodyguard, affirms that Joe came back with clean hands. Joe hears Love’s ringtone in Dmitri’s pocket, and he freaks out until Forty bribes Dmitri with cash for the phone. This phone call is a fishy dish. Love claims they can figure out whatever he’s running from together. Why does she know he’s running from something? Running implies guilt. After what Candace told her, why wouldn’t she want to stay far, far away? Joe says the magic words that Milo never would have said – they can take Forty with them on their escape tour. Maybe this is something James never would have agreed to? After another mommy-induced blood cry, Joe seeks solace in Forty, who has actually cracked his story. The beat board is organized and ready to go. The key was in figuring out who the real killer is, and it’s not Dr. Nicky. According to Forty, it can only be Beck’s unnamed ex-boyfriend, because he’s the one who truly loved her. Just as Joe is about to slash Forty’s throat, Forty reveals that he can empathize. His au pair didn’t kill herself – Forty killed her in a jealous rage. He claims to have blacked out, then awakened to see himself standing over her corpse. Their parents made it look like a suicide. So, Love’s weirdness around that story could have been the simple fact of lying about it. But the detail of Forty blacking out has me doubting… Maybe he didn’t kill her. But maybe he did. We’ll see. Either way, Joe is immensely comforted by this story and in turn, he comforts Forty. The two seem solidly bonded by this experience.

The next morning, Forty is MIA. Joe has exactly one hour and twenty minutes to resolve his situation with Delilah. The plan is to negotiate with Delilah so he can live happily ever after with Love. He makes it to the storage unit with seconds to spare. There’s just one problem – Delilah’s dead. Did Joe kill her? I mean, it would make sense. He’s the only one who knows where she is. Except she’s lying in an ocean of blood, and his clothes are totally clean. There is no way someone who is peaking on four hits of acid could have gotten it together to murder someone, then either change into an identical outfit or wash the one he had on. Not possible. And that both Forty and Joe killed someone in a blackout is weird – I’m willing to bet that either it’s true in both cases or false in both cases. But if Love’s detective has been following Joe this whole time, as I suspect, a garden of possibilities blooms. See You next time!  

#you netflix season2 episode8 recap

[tanyaodebra]

You 2.7: “Ex-istential Crisis” – Jelly Doughnuts

Okay, so Love didn’t take Joe back as quickly as I had thought, but that’s only because she’s playing a truly superior long game. She has Lonely Boy in full single-teen-on-Valentine’s-Day mode, complete with stacks of pizza boxes and daytime jammers. Love is 1000% aware that Joe can see all her comings and goings, so when a fresh hot biscuit arrives at Love’s door knowing her keys live in the fucking bird box, it is clearly for Joe’s benefit. Joe has placed this woman on such a colossal pedestal that he believes her choice to keep the curtains drawn is an attempt to save his feelings, when any bitch worth their salt knows she is trying to stoke them. Love flaunts her anatomically correct Ken Doll at Anavrin, drawing the disgust of both Joe and Forty. As soap opera regulations would have it, Milo Warrington (Andrew Creer) turns out to be Love’s late husband’s best friend. Nothing like being in a Love triangle with a dead guy! Forty actually knows his twin inside out, so he calls her on her little performance and tattles to Joe that Love does, indeed, get very jealous. The writers really tickled me this week with Forty’s quips – didgeridon’t, salami nips, and Vagemite did not disappoint. Because he has the absolute worst instincts, Forty hates Milo and loves Joe, so he campaigns hard for Love to put away childish fuck toys. When Milo shows up with literal jelly doughnuts in a box that literally matches the color of his shirt, Joe still doesn’t realize that the sole purpose of Hunkin’ Donuts is to make him jelly! Apparently no amount of d-words will entice Love to get serious about Milo, because she drops some serious hints that he should definitely fly to Bali instead of trying to land her. That doesn’t stop her from keeping him on that string, though. Once again, Love’s fresh lemons are present, but this time they’re in a trial run of a wedding cake. Milo is clearly Love’s Karen Minty – he calls her babe, and she hates it. He’s also a super sweet, totally genuine person, and therefore completely undeserving of Love’s bullshit. Love blames Forty when she rejects Milo’s LA gambit, but Milo sees that for the co-dependent cop-out it is. He should bail right then and there, but he doesn’t. Ultimately, Forty and Joe succeed in running Milo off. He knows he’ll never beat Forty in a match for Love. Before he goes, Milo proves his command of the situation; if Love had been less self-centered, she would have noticed James was sick sooner – a statement so cruel it must be true.

Meanwhile, Joe begins his journey to win Love back, and he starts with the wilderness of online dating. Swiping through his options, he waxes poetic about olden times when he could ride horseback and drink tea and not bone his date. Yeah right. Tell it to the panties you stashed, the bushes you jerked off in, or the four actual women you fucked over the course of this show. Obviously his dates are disastrous, but he Instagrams them anyway. And this strategy is working, because Love can barely contain her green-eyed fury. He doesn’t recognize this, though, so he decides to fall back into old habits. Milo better watch his back, because Joe’s got his baseball cap on! Joe seems to have lost his knack for creepin’, because he keeps getting caught – this time by Love’s BFF Gabe. Milo lives to see another day, and Joe is thrust into the world of alternative healing. Gabe’s magic needles are Joe’s kryptonite – after being transported back to his childhood, Joe transforms into a puddle of tears so desperate and raw that he’s willing to do anything to recover. Gabe recommends follow-up affirmations and a celery juice fast – the former for Joe’s good and the latter probably for Love’s revenge. In the end, it’s Joe’s friendship with Forty that begins to thaw Love’s frost. Maybe things will blow over by the next episode.

Delilah and Joe are once again airing their dirty laundry together, and Ellie is not having it. Joe’s advice to write her Hendy story paid off, because Variety wants to publish it. This leaves Delilah feeling a little generous, so when Joe projectile vomits a thousand gallons of celery juice all over her then passes out cold, she’s inclined to take care of him. After reviving him with a burger and fries, she takes him on a whiskey-drenched walk where she proves that the first impression is the best impression – she admits she thought he was a weirdo when they met. As the savviest character on the show, she should have stopped right there and never budged. But little by little, this fucko has manipulated his way into her life. Delilah is bit vulnerable after exposing her Hendy story, so their little stroll down whiskey lane turns into a dick-down in front of a dumpster. Doing sex in public is illegal, and police can be such killjoys. Delilah thinks her fuckbuddy cop (whose name is David Fincher, lol) might be able to get them out of jail, but he’s apparently been eating those jelly doughnuts, too, because he’s having none of it. Joe makes a call to Forty, who gleefully saves the day. Lucky for Joe, because there’s a certain jar of urine floating around in Peach Salinger’s orbit, and if it was discovered Joe will definitely be linked to her murder if his fingerprints are put into the system. But David Fincher remembers Joe from the limited-edition headphones, which he later ties to Henderson in a phone call to Delilah. Delilah rejects his murder theory out of hand, but when she considers all the weird coincidences connecting “Will,” Hendy, and herself, she gets suspicious. As we’ve seen in earlier episodes, Delilah is a dog with a bone, so she can’t stop herself from using her keys and rummaging through his apartment. After getting inches away from Joe’s secret stash behind the painting (her instincts are so fucking good), she discovers the keys to a storage locker. Why, why, why didn’t she bring David Fincher with her to Joe’s storage unit??? She has the sense to contact him immediately after realizing what was in there, but she doesn’t reach him and it’s too late anyway. Joe’s nanny-cam tipped him off to her snooping. Delilah uses her one bit of leverage, Ellie, to bargain for her life. He claims he’s going to make some arrangements before he returns her to Ellie. We’ll see…

Delilah is the only character I could imagine myself hanging out with, so I really hate this for her, but I knew it was bound to happen. Whether by Joe or Love, Delilah’s had a target on her back. Maybe David Fincher, and, yes, I will only be using his full name, will be able to track her down through her last call. Or maybe the real Will Bettelheim will make a return trip. Joe did name-check the Philippines at the beginning of the episode… Excuse me while I watch this next one real quick. See You next time!

#you netflix season2 episode7 recap #really well

[tanyaodebra]

You 2.6: “Farewell, My Bunny” – Who’s Zoomin’ Who?

Sorry, it’s been a minute. Life. Let’s dive right back in. Well, folks, Henderson is still dead. Apparently any rando can show up at his funeral, but also Kathy Griffin is delivering the eulogy. They really should have upped that background budget so we could feel the fantasy. Or they could have dressed some of those extras as security. Help us out here. Inexplicably, the whole gang is in attendance – well, it’s inexplicable until they explain theme of this episode: the seven totems to true Angeleno status. Once a person sees these seven things that are supposedly unique to Los Angeles, they can never leave. One by one, Joe sees them all. This does not bode well for Lonely Boy; I’m starting to wonder if he’ll make it out of this season alive. Joe and Love continue to wolf the shit out of each other, so we’ll eventually see who the top dog really is.

Looks like Joe’s not the only one hiding a secret stash. Love opens a locker at Anavrin to reveal her collection of mementos from her deceased husband – or are they trophies? A series of flashbacks clues the audience in on Love’s married life. Her husband, James (Daniel Durrant), wants her to take his last name (Kennedy), but does not seem interested in having kids as per her wishes. Side note: James is deaf and there’s no plot reason to have a deaf character – he just happens to be deaf. Kudos to the writers for making this choice. Two sets of flashbacks about James are triggered by her situation with Joe – the first one deals with their distaste for her money, the second ties together the ways they both hid important information from her. It turns out that James’s reluctance to procreate is due to his terminal illness – a reality he’d been hiding for eight weeks. In classic Love fashion, she’s able to turn the lie into the important part of the conversation. She’s been wronged, and that trumps his imminent death. He must console her instead of what should be happening, which is that she should be consoling him. Love finds a way to center her own pain in every situation. If Love is responsible for James’s death, as I believe she is, the fact that she binds James and Joe together puts Joe in a very precarious spot.

Joe is none the wiser, though. He’s too busy tracking Candace’s scent trail. He brings up Raymond Chandler AGAIN – they’re really hammering this LA detective story. But the tables are turned when Joe realizes he’s not actually the detective, because there’s an undercover cop seemingly everywhere he goes. Doesn’t feel great, does it, Joey? The Chandler motif continues when Ellie points out the book Joe’s reading – Farewell, My Lovely. I’d love to make some connections here, but the plot summary on Wikipedia is too complicated. There is a woman who’s lying about her identity, though. Joe tricks Forty into handing over enough info to track down Candace’s address. When Joe turns up at her place, the undercover cop is there. Joe bolts, but is somehow still hours late to a doughnut date with Love – this is the second time they’ve tanked their plans to leave town. The undercover cop is now at Anavrin, but according to Love, she hired him to follow “Amy.” Time will tell if she’s telling the whole truth. Love’s mask slips a bit when she defends her decision to use her vast resources to protect her family. Talking about her wealth is definitely a flex, but she walks it back and promises she’ll can the PI. But when the detective has news about “Amy’s” connection to “Will,” Love’s two-faced nature surfaces as she smiles at Joe during her deceitful phone call. Love’s mask slips again near the end of the episode. She claimed in an earlier episode that baking is her love language, but apparently it’s also her revenge language. She feeds Joe a sabotaged sticky bun after the truth about him has been uncovered. I have a feeling baking will play a role in whatever she ultimately does to Joe.

So many detectives! Let’s not lose sight of Candace, who came here on a mission. Taking a page from Joe’s playbook, Candace obtains Joe’s address from Forty’s production paperwork. Girlfriend is skilled, because she convinces Delilah to rummage through Joe’s apartment solely by her superior room-reading skills – she trashes Hendy after Delilah brings up his funeral. As Delilah hunts for a fictional pair of earrings, Candace unlocks a window for later. Joke’s on Candace, though. Joe’s not home later. Love’s sitting at the kitchen table when Candace breaks in, and she knows it’s Candace, not Amy. Candace loses the ruse and tells all about Joe’s true identity, as well as his penchant for murdering his girlfriends. The audience knows she’s telling the truth when she says she’s trying to protect Love, but does Love believe her?

No detective story is complete without a red herring, which is what Joe’s break-in at Candace’s Airbnb turns out to be. Just when it looks like Joe is going to do exactly what we expect him to do and murder Candace, he gets whacked upside the head and knocked out cold. Getting clunked on the head is classic detective story fare, btw. The viewer assumes it will be Candace finally and rightfully extinguishing her burning bed, but alas it’s the Airbnb host (Madeline Zima). Did you stare at this actress forever, unable to place her but weirdly able to conjure up what she looked like as a small child? Me too! She’s the kid from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle! Well, she’s all grown up now and she trusts no bitch, which is evident from her stack of books about martial arts and rope bondage. You go, girl! Anyway, it all adds up to a big fat zero, since Rachel sets him free.

The penultimate scene is a reckoning between Joe and Love. She knows everything, but Joe convinces her that some of Candace’s story is true, but not the murders. Of course, not the murders. But where is Candace? Candace could have been waiting for Joe alongside Love in a show of solidarity, but she’s notably absent. Love says she paid Candace to stay away. I say Love killed her. It’s weird that Love would bribe her instead of going to the authorities. I guess Love is blind after all, because by getting rid of Candace she’s implicitly buying Joe’s side of the story before she even hears it. If Love is obsessed with Joe, Candace is a very inconvenient element and killing her is the only way to ensure that she stays gone. Love is playing a very advanced game here, so she uses the time-tested tactic of breaking up in order to exert control. Gosh, it just tramples her heart to have to do this, but she absolutely must end things with Joe. In the end, it’s Forty who patches things up on Joe’s behalf. Certainly, Joe will feel that he must earn his second chance. The leash is bound to be very short now. But lest we forget, Joe is a narcissist. Joe does what feels good in the moment, regardless of how his choices may affect others, so he literally thanks Forty for getting him a second chance with Love one minute, then fucks Delilah the next. He’s like a toddler with no object permanence – if the object of his affection is not in front of his eyes that very moment, it does not exist. And, of course, this creep shoots his shot by consoling Delilah about her rape! Ugh, I will really enjoy his murder if/when it happens. Delilah is in definite danger now, though. When Love gets wind of this, and she will, Delilah is toast. Get ready for the “we were on a break” defense from Joe. You hate to see it. Until next time!

#you netflix season2 episode6 recap

[tanyaodebra]

You 2.5: “Have a Good Wellkend, Joe!” – Halfway Home

Five down, five to go. Ugh, it’s so hard to only watch one of these at a time while I write each recap! At the end of the last episode, Forty was trying to secure a plane ticket from Austin to LA for his new girlfriend, Amy. Looks like they decided to drive instead, or perhaps Amy’s ID says Candace and she doesn’t want to blow her cover. Candace isn’t as skilled at having a fake identity as Joe, because she’s not an actual fucking psycho like he is. When Candace’s ride stalls in Arizona because her car needs a charge, Forty dials up a private jet to whisk them back to LA – his mom doesn’t like it when people are late. I called it! It’s time to meet the Quinns! Quinn must be an alternate spelling for coin, because damn. These people have “we met at Esalen” money. Dottie and Ray Quinn (Saffron Burrows and Michael Reilly Burke) are renewing their vows for their 30th anniversary, so the gang is in for a whole weekend, aka Wellkend, of hippie bullshit that will culminate in a wedding ceremony officiated by Love. Okay, so when the invitation reads “abundance,” that’s apparently code for flaunting that cash. Got it. From the get-go, Dottie’s a little handsy with Will, and then she tries to conceal her cold reception of Love. Hmm.

Now is the moment the viewers have been waiting for: Candace and Joe face to face. This shit is on. Will looks like he’s going to vomit, but he manages a remarkable recovery. The two engage in a verbal tango, each doing their best to trip the other. A little while later, they end up alone at an outdoor bar where she divulges how she found him – she happened upon video of Forty’s outburst at Hendy’s, and Joe was in the background. Candace trolls Joe during a group session, claiming she wants to fulfill her life’s dream of traveling to Italy. Viewers from last season will remember that Joe hacked her Instagram to post postmortem photos of a fake trip to Italy in order to cover his tracks. Joe counters by forcing her to hug him in front of everyone. It’s too much for Candace, so she excuses herself to her yurt. Joe has the nerve to follow her, thinking they can somehow call a truce. He has convinced himself that SHE is the crazy one. Candace attempts to defend herself with a knife, but he’s stronger than she is and he easily disarms her. They find themselves alone again after the wedding, and Joe cautions Candace that he’s not afraid of her – she doesn’t actually have anything on him or she would have used it. Candace knows him too well, so in her eyes all she has to do is wait; he’ll fuck up sooner or later. Joe knows she’s right.

The word is out about Hendy’s death, which has been ruled a suicide. But the police are still dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s, because they check in on Ellie since she was the last person he was supposed to hang out with, according to his IMs. Delilah gives them the run-around, so they never actual speak to her. Ellie’s doing some snooping of her own, because she found the homemade underage porn-stash Delilah’s been hiding. Delilah comes clean about the real reason she didn’t want Ellie hanging out with Hendy, but Ellie doesn’t believe any of it. Later on, fuck buddy cop shows up. Delilah’s whole dynamic with him reinforces the idea of an inversion of Joe’s New York life. Delilah is so together, unlike Ray’s mom. And the cop is actually a good guy, unlike Ray’s mom’s boyfriend. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I love this cop. He’s so genuinely invested in Delilah’s happiness and well-being. Anyway, he’s back for the photos so he can try and nail a motive on Henderson’s suicide. Delilah tries to hand them over, but Ellie snatched them earlier. With a little help from Joe, Delilah tracks down Ellie at a Raymond Chandler film festival. This is the second Chandler reference, but unfortunately I’m not very familiar with his work. Something about detectives, maybe? Or maybe it has more to do with Double Indemnity which I haven’t seen or read, but seems to deal with mistaken identity of murderers and faked suicides. Either way, Ellie has finally come to terms with Delilah’s sexual assault. She apologizes to Delilah and convinces her to burn the photos. A savvy internet teen, Ellie knows Delilah’s photo will follow her forever if they were made public. Delilah agrees and the two flush them down the toilet. Ellie seemed very sincere, but I can’t help but feel a little suspicious about this choice.

Love is slowly showing more signs that she is not the person she’s pretending to be. The Big Bad Wolf metaphor has been extended to this episode, and our sweet little Love is not being painted as Little Red Riding Hood – quite the opposite. First, she pulls a wolf toy out of the gift bag, and as Joe heads to Forty’s yurt, she tells him not to get lost out there. There’s a real live wolf at one of the activity sessions and Joe tries to approach it, but it growls at him – we’re dealing with more than one Big Bad Wolf. Our Little Red Riding Hood might actually be Candace. Each time Love walks in on a conversation between Candace and Joe, she seems mildly displeased. She drills Candace about her relationship with Forty and catches her in a lie about her job. Again, Candace is not at Joe’s level when it comes to catfishing, and you’ll recall that Love can name every fish in the market. If I were Candace, I’d watch out for Love. During a fight in their yurt, Joe accuses Love of throwing him to the wolves: her family. After Forty takes another giant leap out of sobriety, his mother’s reaction to his stoned antics at her wedding reveals more of Love’s damage – Dottie slaps her after accusing her of not protecting Forty. Joe attempts to form a trauma bond with Love by sharing his own childhood abuse. Love ups the ante and discloses Forty’s sexual abuse at the hands of their au pair. Turns out the au pair committed suicide after having been exposed and subsequently fired. Weird that so many people adjacent to Joe and Love tend to die. As Joe consoles her, Love pulls the wolf toy from under herself and shoves it into Joe’s neck, growling maniacally. He’s not put off by this – in fact he sooths her with kisses until she confesses her love for him and he reciprocates. They decide to come up with a new word for love to separate it from her name. Love tells him she “wolfs” him – he “wolfs” her, too. They officially join each other’s pack. But viewers know that Joe will never be a part of a pack; he’s a lone wolf. If Love is a mirror image of Joe, what will happen when two lone wolves pair up?

Finally, the audience gets filled in on the whole Candace situation in this episode’s flashbacks. I’m glad they’re shown from Candance’s POV. One thing I loved about the first season was that we got both Joe and Beck’s separate POVs. There must be a reason we’re not getting Love’s POV, and it’s got to be that she’s a stalker and/or killer, too. But Candace’s flashbacks are deeply disturbing. After they break up at his apartment, Killer Joe abducts Candace and keeps her tied up in the back of the van of every woman’s nightmares. I don’t even need to describe it, because we all know it’s a plain white van with no seats in the back. He’s made them a picnic so she’ll take him back. She plays it cool, then runs as soon as he puts her outside – the dumb-dumb only tied her hands. She doesn’t get far before he catches her and smashes her head against a downed tree, accidentally killing her. Or so he believes. In one of the most disturbing moments of the season, Candace emerges from her own shallow grave. Seeing a woman in a shallow grave hits me hard. Not only is it common in real life, it sends the message that she’s not worth the effort of a full burial. That she’s disposable. That no one will care to figure out who she was or where she came from. This concept is reinforced when Candace tries to report the crime at the police station. The (female) cop (Cara Mitsuko) seems totally uninterested in helping Candace – if she has no corroborating evidence, there’s really nothing that can be done. But what appears to be a lack of concern might instead be realism. This cop knows Candace’s assailant won’t be punished; he’ll get off with nothing but a restraining order. Off the record, the cop tells Candace that the best thing she can do if she wants to stay alive is to pretend to be dead. I fear this cop was right, and that Candace should have followed her advice.

The episode ends with a postcard from Will. Looks like he’s in the Philippines, blissed out with Gigi. Maybe Joe’s safe on that front after all. Or maybe Will got someone else to send it. The note is in the style of the hangman game. I’m not counting Will out yet. Side note: am I crazy, or is Love constantly handling lemons at Anavrin? I digress. Lest we fool ourselves into thinking our would-be Little Red Riding Hood is totally lost in the woods, Candace shows Joe she’s still on track. Forty’s latest filmmaking gambit will be an adaptation of the posthumous autobiography of none other than Guinevere Beck. If murder hasn’t followed Joe on its own, Candace is giving it a map. That’s a pretty big bomb to drop at the end of the episode, but somehow that isn’t the end. PS – the police think Henderson was murdered. Candace is right on top of this shit. She knows immediately that Joe is the culprit. I hope she gets to nail his balls to the floor, but I have a terrible feeling that she won’t live long enough. If the saying is true, Love trumps all. See You next time!

#you netflix season2 episode5 recap

[tanyaodebra]

You 2.4: “The Good, the Bad, & the Hendy” – A Finished Basement

Before I begin this episode’s recap, I want to give a hat tip to my friend Trina who explained that love and forty are the lowest and highest scores in tennis, respectively. I will never know a sports reference and I’m kind of offended they would sneak one into my program. You was originally slated to be on Lifetime, so our touchstones should be solely comprised of femme shit for an audience of gaydies! But to my original point, Love and Forty’s parents must really be assholes, because naming your kids after tennis is an outrage. They might as well have named them Standard and Poor. Also, whenever anyone is like, “aw, it’s so sweet that your name is Love, your parents must be hippies,” she has to be like, “actually, it means zero in tennis, because my parents are rude yuppies.” Eventually we’ll meet these parents, probably in some sort of vile display of their blood money.

Let’s crack this shit open, starting with the fellatio interruptus. Love is about to pour herself a cup of Joe when Forty calls. Instead of simply chatting real quick then getting back to the best part of waking up, Love decides to multitask. NEVER WOULD I EVER perform a sexual act of any kind while talking on the phone to my brother. Gross. And due to the magic of twindom, Forty clearly knows she’s hooking up with Joe in that very moment even though she’s been keeping their relationship secret. Double your pleasure, double your gross. Post coitus, Love discovers Joe’s telescope, pointing out that her apartment can be seen from it. The big bad wolf simply states the truth; all the better to spy on her with. Seems like she should have pushed the issue, but maybe she’s into being surveilled. Later on, Love delivers her own no-no, albeit not nearly as frightening as Peeping Joe’s – she springs a surprise meal with her friends on him. Forty initiates a brunchus interruptus and flips his shit about Love’s secret boyfriend. Joe decides the only way to keep Love happy is to keep Forty happy, so he pretends to go whole hog on the ménage à twin. Luckily Forty is a simple soul, so he easily accepts Joe’s writing, brunch and beach offerings.

Our teen queen reigns supreme, having discovered the spyware on her phone. But Ellie missteps, though she doesn’t realize it; she blames Delilah instead of Creepy Joe. No problem – Joe keep tabs on Ellie via Henderson’s jacktop instead. With a little help from Will, Joe busts into Hendy’s apartment and locates his trophies, a cigar box filled with Polaroids hidden under a loose tile in the sex dungeon. Then he pulls a classic dude move, which is to believe he knows more about a woman’s profession than she does. He plants Hendy’s photos at Delilah’s doorstep, assuming it’s all she needs to expose Henderson’s pedophilia. Wrong. According to her fuck-buddy cop (Danny Vasquez), the photos have no context, especially since Delilah doesn’t want to out herself as one of Hendy’s survivors. In white-knighting a capable woman, he’s royally fucked up the whole operation. Joe’s sexism led him here. Had he trusted Delilah to do her job herself, perhaps Henderson would have faced the consequences his actions deserved. Instead Hendy got some bullshit vigilante punishment, which is a deeply unsatisfying ending for his victims.

I’m not ashamed to admit when I am wrong, and I was definitely wrong about Henderson’s fate. Creepy Joe does not have the self-awareness to understand how similar he is to Hendy – how he, too, stalks, grooms, drugs, abducts, and takes trophies. Joe believes that because he doesn’t rape, he is somehow better than Henderson. They are both total fucking scum, but one rapes and the other murders. One of these things is way worse than the other, and if you believe rape is worse, you might be a sexist monster. Henderson uses his celebrity to lure Ellie, the teen Joe is stalking, to his rape pad. Joe has already broken into Hendy’s house when Ellie arrives, so he’s able to witness Henderson’s slick technique to manipulate Ellie into practically forcing her way into his place whilst all but guaranteeing she’ll never tell anyone she was ever there. It’s painful to watch Ellie; I never listened to the older women in my life when I was her age even though they were right and I was wrong. She makes every classic mistake: hanging out alone, staying late, and accepting a beverage. She thinks they’re friends. She has never come into contact with such a good liar before. She hasn’t yet learned that no amount of cool, smarts, humor, or good taste will stop a predator. She doesn’t know how charming predators can be. Just like Joe, Hendy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A scotch for himself and a juice for the young lady makes Henderson seem like the perfect gentleman – until the GHB comes out. Joe creates a distraction so he can drug Hendy’s scotch, too. Once Ellie and Hendy are out for the count, Joe sets up shop in the sex basement. When Hendy comes to, he’s been blindfolded and tied to a chair. Wearing a Hendy mask, Joe attempts to force a confession from Henderson, but Henderson isn’t a dummy. He tells Joe about having been molested as a kid, and says he can tell Joe went through something similar. He tries again and again to draw parallels between the two of them, but Joe won’t have it. Henderson manages to knock over the chair and escape, but only briefly. As Henderson runs up the stairs, Joe grabs him and flings him back down the stairs, accidentally smashing his head against the cement wall. Hendy is dead.

The clean-up for this little mishap is very messy. A little blood drips out of Joe’s nose, but before he can clean it up, the robotic vacuum is taking a crack at the puddle under Hendy’s head, which mixes their blood together. Joe does his best to mitigate the mixing by mopping the edges to make a smaller blood-pool, and he dashes off with the plasma-soaked robo-vac as well as Hendy’s headphones. Is jay-walking a big deal in LA? As a New Yorker, I definitely wouldn’t have known this and neither did Joe, because he gets nabbed on the way to the dumpster with a trash bag full of evidence. Oh-oh. The cop is Delilah’s fuck-buddy. Joe gets a little reprieve when the cop looks no further than the top of the bag where Hendy’s limited-edition headphones rest. Joe, claiming everything was going to Goodwill anyway, offers them up to the officer, who accepts and cuts Joe loose. Hopefully those headphones will come in handy later.

Back in the secret room of Joe’s own earlier in the episode, Will negotiates his severance package. Will promises to flee to the Philippines, never to speak of any of this again. But how can Joe possibly believe him? Once again, Will attempts to prove his loyalty by assisting Joe – this time by disabling Hendy’s security system. He tries to get Joe to see that killing Henderson is an act of a deeply disturbed person, telling Joe that he’s confident he won’t kill Hendy, because he’s not a bad guy. He’s definitely smarter than I originally gave him credit for, because he plays on Joe’s need to be perceived as being and doing good. And after Joe kills Hendy, he’s pretty desperate to prove to himself and to Will that being a killer does not preclude him from being a good guy. Joe takes Will’s advice and does the one thing that will prove that he’s good – he releases Will. Is Will really going to be so content with freedom that he doesn’t turn Joe in? Sounds like Will has some pretty shady shit in his past, so it’s possible he doesn’t want this kind of heat. Maybe he’ll just slink out of the country in order to avoid the spotlight of a high-profile court case. But what name will he use now? How will he deal with the consequences of identity theft? Maybe Will won’t go gently into that good night after all. We’ll just have to wait and see.

This episode also has a series of dreams and flashbacks about Joe’s childhood. Looks like dad’s a beater and mom’s a cheater. After mom takes a four-hour “date” when she’s supposed to be grocery shopping, Joe winds up on the receiving end of dad’s ire. Mom rewards Joe for keeping her secret, and she promises Joe that one day she’ll kill his father. I’m relieved the audience won’t be able to simply heap all the blame on the mother, and I’m curious to see where this is going.

When I saw Ambyr Childers’ name in the top-of-show credits I knew we were in for a fun time, and luckily I had forgotten all about it by the end. Joe sends Forty to SXSW Pitch in order to extricate him from Love’s time and immediate vicinity. This move backfires when Love hops a plane in order to be Forty’s sober companion. While in Austin, Forty makes a romantic connection and insists that he and Love need to get a third plane ticket to bring this woman back to LA. Is this a ghost I see before me? No. It’s Candace. Or, rather, Amy. So, it looks like Candace is indeed alive and well and not just a figment of Joe’s imagination. I am not totally ruling out a collaboration between Love and Candace, but it’s looking more unlikely now that Forty’s in the crosshairs. I cannot wait to see what this bitch is up to. See You next time!

#you season2 episode4 netflix recap

[tanyaodebra]

You 2.3: “What Are Friends For?” – A User’s Manual

Our favorite male feminist opens with Nora Ephron’s notorious When Harry Met Sally line about men and women and their incompatibility as friends, and I wanted to slap her name right out of his mouth. You know what never happens in a Nora Ephron movie, Joe? Murder. You are no Harry, and Love, high-maintenance as she may be, is no Sally. The episode’s title made me realize that Joe has no friends. We’ve never seen him hang out with anyone besides a victim, her inner circle, or coworkers. The nearest he’s gotten to friendship is his relationship with each child he’s grooming, and that is definitely not friendship. Throughout the opening montage, Joe deludes himself into thinking he’s such a great guy for holding Love at arm’s length in order to protect her when we all know good and goddamned well that he’s doing it so he can stalk her, because the stalking tickles his pickle, not the relationship.

Oh, Love. Crazy, stupid Love. She is simply too cute to be chasing someone who won’t fuck her. She lives in LA where dudes plentiful! There is no excuse for this. Unless, as I suspect, there’s something not quite right about her. Here she is again, boundary-free and waving her own red flag, baking for a boy who doesn’t deserve it and demanding to make her friends’ wedding cake. Girl. Don’t use emotional blackmail to foist your services upon your dear friends’ wedding. Maybe they don’t like your cakes. Maybe they don’t want to feel like they owe you something. Maybe they don’t want to mix business with pleasure. No means no. I got to thinking about Love’s last name: Quinn. Is this an allusion to Harley Quinn, a woman so hell-bent on loving the wrong guy that she makes a literal fool of herself? At some point Love finally summons enough shame to stop leaving treats in Lonely Boy’s locker. And when Joe invites her over for a mixed-message meal, she quickly puts the kibosh on his wishy-washy nonsense.

Poor Will. Playing hangman with his own real-life hangman. There’s no way he makes it out of this alive. Who knows? Maybe he’s smarter than I think. He has the sense to humanize himself to his captor, and later on he successfully gets a laptop with Wi-Fi into his chamber, even if it is under Joe’s supervision. Hopefully that little misstep will bite Joe in the ass. Once again, Will nails it with a spot-on observation; Joe doesn’t understand how friendship works. Lest we think Will’s got all the answers, he gives us a little glimpse into his life outside this box. Will has a Filipino catfish of his very own, who he insists is his fiancé even though they’ve never met. All of these characters are so good at observing the patterns of others, but totally unable to clearly see themselves.

Guinevere Beck claimed her parents were assholes with the names, but Love and Forty’s parents are so much worse. Is Forty short for anything, or is that just it? Maybe his middle name is Ounce, because he sure gets himself in a mess of trouble. He starts a dubious friendship with Joe by dragging him into an evening of my least favorite comedy genre, improv. I hate it when Joe and I agree. Surprise! Hendy drops in with a secret set. Forty attempts to get back into Hendy’s good graces but is, in the words of another clueless fictional character, brutally rebuffed. Forty may be a dumb-dumb, but he’s a sweet dumb-dumb. When he asks “who bakes for the baker,” he reminds Joe that Love is a human being with actual needs. After Joe scams his way into Hendy’s party, Forty scams his way in too, albeit in a much more benign fashion, then he relapses hard. When Hendy shit-cans his party in order to send Forty home safely, Joe can’t help but feel a little bit of respect for his new would-be rival.  

And just what is Ellie doing hanging around with Hendy? White Knight Joe tries to butt in again, but Ellie is too smart for him. She calls a spade a spade, loudly exclaiming that everybody wants to fuck the fifteen-year old. When Delilah calls Joe out for withholding this information from her, she reveals her plan to pull a Ronan Farrow on Hendy. Once again, Delilah warns Joe to stay away from her sister. Prediction: Delilah’s not going to make it to the end of this season. Any time someone gets in the way of Joe’s desires, they tend to get got. Back to Ellie. Did anyone think that phone was a simple gift? Because of course it wasn’t. Joe loaded her cellie with spyware so he can watch her every move. So far, he sees nothing to fear in her texts with Hendy. The texts might be squeaky clean, but Ellie turns up visibly inebriated on the front patio. Did she accidentally eat an edible, or did Hendy feed it to her on purpose? I think we know the answer to that question even if the show has left it in a grey area.

Man, these writers really nail the granular details of Joe’s personality. They give him the most snide and self-congratulatory dialogue, clearly culled from the internet’s most sapiosexual corners. “Ouroboros?” “Kill it with fire?” No matter how many times I see or hear these terms, the person delivering them manages to slap on a sense of ownership that is so obviously unearned. Of course Joe regurgitates these quasi bon mots in what passes for wit in his own mind. And his sense of humor is… terrible. That chef’s hat? Just so, so unfunny. If I were Love I would have died of secondary embarrassment on the spot. That actually might be the ultimate revenge, because what a case of blue balls for Joe if he doesn’t get to kill her himself.

Everything’s coming up Joeses at the end of this episode. Joe and Love finally bang it out, and she unfurls the “crazy chicks are kinky chicks” trope. Joe’s gambit for Ellie’s trust is panning out – now that he has some dirt on her, she’s eating right out of his hand, gifting him the first film on the list she’s made for him. Joe’s friendship with Forty is also proving to be fruitful, because Forty finally has a deliverable even if he doesn’t realize it; Hendy has a secret sex dungeon. I’m really torn on Hendy’s fate. Clearly Joe wants to take him out, but he can’t help but like the guy. Hendy is able to hide his kinks in plain sight, which has got to be very attractive to Joe. But Joe’s savior complex might trump his desire for true friendship. Then again, we might get to see the bro code in action. Any brush with Joe is a brush with death, so we’ll just have to wait. See You next time!

#you netflix season2 episode3 recap

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You 2.2: “Just the Tip” – Of the Iceberg

“Just the Tip” opens on a fish market, because so many things about both Joe and Love are very fucking fishy. Catfish, anyone? (The penis-y title paired with a vaginal allusion has not gone unnoticed, btw.) Our resident cool girl saunters from table to table loudly demonstrating her seafood savvy, so I’m holding strong to the idea that she might be baiting our antihero to serve him on a platter. Unable to stay in reality for two consecutive minutes, Joe takes a stroll down memory lane to the moment he believes his Love story began – one whole week ago with his arrival at LAX. There he spots a celeb to whom he immediately and favorably compares himself by employing the ultimate backdoor brag, praising himself for being so humble. Must be tough to be perfect.

The next stop on Joe’s journey to Love brings us to the inception of his new identity, where the real Will Bettelheim shows just how much he deserves everything that’s coming to him by daring to bitch about GMOs and the state of animal farming in Joe’s presence. Joe has hired Will to scrub his identity, but that’s not good enough for our Joe. As usual, he wants what he can’t, or shouldn’t, have; in this case, it’s Will’s identity. In a moment of cosmic irony, Will blurts out the whole conceit for You, that no one ever suspects white guys. He quickly feels the consequences of his own miscalculation as Joe cracks his skull with a cement brick. The timeline jumps ahead close to where we left off at the end of the last episode, when Joe is trying to figure out who Jasper is and why he came looking for Will. Shocker, the guy Joe hired off Craigslist and who had to scrub his own identity is into some shady shit. Looks like Will owes Dark Web Jasper three large for services never rendered. This is no sweat for a professional book counterfeiter like Joe, especially since LA is full of dumb-dumbs who will buy anything. Something about this feels a little too easy.

Back to the fishmonger’s ball where Love, who is serving major Liv Tyler in Empire Records vibes, demonstrates that she has absolutely zero healthy boundaries by kissing Joe for the first time completely out of the blue. A sucker for “romance,” Joe takes his own slapshot in this game of tonsil hockey and gets nothing but net with the catch of the day. Uh-oh, look out. Is that… Beck lurking in the shadows? Ex-girlfriends, amirite? They just don’t know when to stay dead and buried. Lucky for Joe, she’s vanished as swiftly as she appeared. In the meantime, Joe the daydreamer has missed Love’s proposition: lunch with her friends. If memory serves, Joe wasn’t too fond of his old girlfriend’s pals. In fact, he even murdered one (RIP Peach Salinger). That Love is pressing Joe to meet her buddies so soon might be another hint that she is fucking with him. Or maybe she’s a big old roll of cling-wrap attempting to cover the world’s deepest black hole, and now he’s going for a walk on the stalk-ee side of the street. Either way, it’s pretty karmic.

Out at the dumpster behind Anavrin, an affable fellow calls out to Joe, or rather, to Will. Jasper (Steven W. Bailey) isn’t nearly as scary as we may have imagined, and it seems Joe will be able to pay up and be done with the whole messy business – that is, until Joe discovers Will owes fifty grand, not three. And here’s where the joke in the title of the episode pays off. Jasper cuts off the tip of Joe’s pinky finger, throws it on ice and keeps it as collateral for the balance of the debt, all with a smile on his face. Looks like Joe should have listened to his mentor, Ellie, when she called the guy a creep. When Joe circles back to the plexiglass prison where he’s storing the real Will, he finds a sniveling mess in dire need of his meds. Even though Will can barely function, he’s somehow able to recall a fifty thousand-dollar IOU Joe can claim. In order to hunt those ducats, Joe must cancel his lunch date with Love and her squad. Upon receiving the news, Love, who knows no bounds, returns a text with a fucking phone call. Like, I don’t believe in The Rules, but come on. Show a modicum of chill. Of course, Lonely Boy doesn’t have any boundaries either, so he finds this adorable. He comes up with an alibi blaming Forty, which Love does not seem to buy, and decides to go to the lunch anyway in the capacity of a cap-wearing creep peeping from behind a plant. To Joe’s surprise, the group decides they like the sound of him, and he reciprocates with his own stamp of approval. It seems Beck’s ghost does not approve of Joe’s happiness, because here she is again, cockblocking from the other side.

Remember Joe has a severed finger? He finally does, too. Joe must endure a noontime LA party to find Will’s debtor, Rufus, endearingly named in a nod to Penn Badgley’s Gossip Girl father. Guests at the party just will not believe that Joe is not John Mayer, and they honestly might be right. Dude looks EXACTLY like John Mayer, a true fact that I hadn’t noticed before. As he traipses around the party, he spots the celeb from the airport –  a comedian named Hendy (Chris D’Elia). Guess who else is at this party? Delilah the landlady. Small world made smaller by the fact that she knows Rufus, and also Hendy. When he notice’s Joe’s hand, Hendy recommends the same microsurgeon as Jake, which shores up Joe’s good opinion of Hendy earlier earned in a brief Google search. Delilah vehemently disagrees, storming out of the party. We learn later that Hendy raped her when she was seventeen. Delilah points to this experience as the reason she sees right through Joe’s bullshit – she knows he’s bad news and she warns him to stay away from her and Ellie. Back at the party, Joe finds Rufus who hands over a huge bag, not of money but of pills – Will’s meds.

Joe doubles back to his (or Will’s) place to tend to his wound, and of course Love turns up uninvited, and she is displeased. You guys, I fucking love soap operas. Guess who Forty is to her? Her fucking TWIN BROTHER! I live for this shit. According to common knowledge, twins share everything, so now Love knows Joe lied about his reason for bailing on her friends. While Joe spins some wild yarn in his head about doing all this crazy shit so they can be together, she whips out the dead husband card in order to emotionally strongarm Joe into being her boyfriend. And since this is exactly the type of shit Joe lives for, everybody’s favorite ghost steals the scene again, which makes Joe flip his lid. It’s like, can’t a guy do a few little murders and then live in blissful peace? Love draws the line at yelling (boy is she in for a surprise if she gets to see his true colors) and hightails it out of there. Perfect, because Joe really needs to see to that finger.

Joe meets Jasper at the storage unit. Seeing that he’s never going to raise his dough from the whimpering puddle otherwise known as Will, Jasper lunges at Joe. But Joe is a seasoned killer and he takes Jasper out lickety-split, butchering him Sweeney Todd-style and ditching trash bags filled with his ground-up body in a dumpster. Right alongside this scene, Love hacks away at a rack of lamb with a large butcher knife. As she prepares the rest of her dinner, she cracks a couple of eggs with one hand. Vivisected balls much? Joe shows up at Love’s door – even that psychopath knows to text first – and he bravely drops the knowledge he learned from Beck’s ghost; it’s not that he’s afraid of getting hurt, it’s that he’s afraid of hurting her. Love does all the heavy lifting for him and warps this loud siren into whatever she wants to hear, which is that they need to be in a relationship. Let me remind you once again that it has only been ONE WEEK. Love pulls the classic high school move of claiming friendship when her motives of partnering are so, so transparent. Both are playing this game, though, so Joe is delighted by her willingness to wait for him. Aw! Gross!

And just like that, old Joe is right back in his comfort zone – panty-snatchin’ and trophy-hidin’. This is a pretty high bar to set for episode two; Joe’s only been in LA for one week and he’s already got a body count. Can’t wait for episode three! See You then!

#you netflix recap season2 episode2

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You 2.1: A Fresh Start – The Bitch Is Back

Confession: I fucking LOVED Season One of You – so much so that I decided to write recaps of Season Two! What does this say about my feminism? JUST LET ME LIVE, OKAY??? Let it be known that absolutely no one asked me to do this. I recently moved back to Brooklyn full-time after finishing my degree in Northampton, MA, so I’m using my (hopefully brief) interval sans a jobby-job (please hire me) to write about a show that my partner detests, so now I “have” to watch it. Should I be working on my play or screenplay? Duh. Should you be doing your job or otherwise improving your own life right now? Duh. Let’s call a truce and just enjoy ourselves. Cheers to me and You.

This first episode is a very strong start to the season, and I’m genuinely psyched to watch the rest of the show. Right from the jump we can see that Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) is back on his bullshit. A Class-A manipulator, Joe crafts the recap of his Season One misdeeds into a cozy quilt of blame and white knighthood under which he can forever smother the memory of his former lover/victim Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail). At the end of Season One, I wasn’t sure if the reappearance of Candace (Ambyr Childers) was a figment of his imagination or the result of too many blows to the head, and to be honest I’m still not totally sure since dear Joe is so deeply delusional, but real or not, Candace has incited a cross-country move. If we can trust the public locale in the Candace flashbacks, it appears that she is real, and she is super pissed that not only did he tried to kill her, but he succeeded in killing someone else. Of course, Joe would rather be anywhere other than Los Angeles. A perpetual proctor for the purity test of life, Joe detests the vapidity he equates with LA, which is why it’s the perfect selection for his illicit hideaway. But even Joe Goldberg isn’t immune to the seductive qualities of LA in that perhaps even he might be given a fresh start. Wait… Did he just say his name is Will Bettelheim? Squeaky clean credit, no social media presence -- this will be a very fresh start indeed. And yet… whoever lived in the apartment before Joe/Will seems to have left under some duress – all the furniture is still there. I already have that no-so-fresh feeling. Also, am I sniffing glue or is Lonely Boy meeting cute with the landlady (Carmela Zumbado)? Do we have our next victim? Maybe, maybe not. But what I am sure about is that perv-y Joe shipped himself a huge fucking telescope, and he’s allowed himself ten minutes a day to creep. So, we’re definitely not turning over a new leaf. We’re just turning that very same leaf over and over in our dirty little hands.

This new season of You is a series of inversions and remixes of the life Joe had in New York. On the sunny left coast, Joe/Will has a new child sidekick in Ellie (Jenna Ortega), but instead of acting as the mentor, Joe appears to be the mentee. Unlike Paco (Luca Padovan) from Season One, Ellie has a guardian who cares, a fact Delilah makes crystal clear with her delicious threat to “vivisect” Joe’s “individual balls” if he lays a finger on Ellie. (If that was a hint at Joe’s future, I will be so happy.) And though he slips back into a job at a bookstore like a pig on a shit-hill, it’s at a joint with a backwards name: Anavrin (Nirvana). Here we have the first of the literary Easter eggs, the almost too symbolically on-the-nose copy of Crime and Punishment that lands him his gig. On his first day, Joe shelves books about chakra-clearing and the Akashic Record. Does this mean his karma will finally catch up with him? Perhaps it does in the sense that Joe’s new boss, Forty (James Scully), is basically a reanimated Benji. After a weird vegan showdown about Carl Jung, Lonely Boy once again has trouble separating real life from fantasy. He appears to be having a very steamy encounter with the actual meet-cute from the previous scene, but it’s all a very vivid day dream. In real life he commits the very fire-able offence of beating off in the stock room. (Let me just say – and I’ve been seeing your shit online, so I know you’re out there – I don’t know how any of you hoes think this guy is doable. He is the definition of a skeezeball.) Joe is a hetero-normative, lackluster Dr Frankenfurter, creating his own world where he can be a sexual king. He’s determined to not just dream it, but to be it. Make no mistake, both will kill to make their dreams come true.

Let’s talk about Love. Not the state of being, but the female character who seems positively manufactured to capture the attention of one Joe Goldberg. Is it me, or is she a honey pot working for Candace? Is Candace’s game so good that she set all this up before even meeting with Joe at the bookstore? Love (Victoria Pedretti) has the girl-next-door look he loves, and she seems to exist in order to fulfill his every whim. She appears out of nowhere to give him a hippy sunburn cure, she reads books he’d approve of had he read them, she takes him on what is basically the best date ever, a hunt to discover his favorite LA dishes, and ultimately she cooks a meal tailor-made for him. And then there’s her backstory. Her baggage is not a series of shitty exes. Oh, no. She’s a widow, which means she’s perfect in that her love can only be snuffed by death itself. Love is exactly who Joe is looking for. Or… Is she the karmic repayment this episode has been hinting at? Is Joe about to get a taste of his own medicine? She gifts him Joan Didion’s Play it As It Lays, which, according to Wikipedia, is a novel about an LA transplant from New York who goes crazy. But Love had only established at the beginning of the night that Will had never read Didion. When did she get this book? How could she have known ahead of time that he hadn’t read it? Come to think of it, what, precisely, killed her husband? We have nine more episodes to find out.

Even in the face of Love, I am so nervous about Joe’s relationship with Ellie, who is, frankly, a teen so cool I would be honored if she just gave me dirty looks all day. After a very gross exchange where he causes her phone to go careening off a rooftop, Joe apologizes with an expensive bouquet of flowers otherwise known as an iPhone. Men: do not, and I can’t stress this enough, give expensive gifts to teenaged girls. If you fucked up her phone, figure out how to replace it through her legal guardian. Ellie, savvy as she seems, is still just a materialistic child who doesn’t know better, and who is satisfied with the transactional token of being owed a favor in return for her social media tutorial. It sure looks like Ellie has got Lonely Boy’s number when she claims that the only reasons to post online are love and revenge. But Joe/Will does what he always does and lies, lies, lies, claiming those are not his motives. Later, Joe gives off very strong Humbert Humbert vibes when Ellie tells him to blow on her toenail polish. Lo and behold, captured using the very gift Joe gave her, an image of an obviously unwanted guest rests in Ellie’s hot little hands. Thus begins the final twist of A Fresh Start.

Rewind a clip. In an even more Jungian display than the junk pile jerk-off, Joe dreams of his mother leaving him alone at the beach. This is the first glimpse the audience has gotten of Joe’s childhood besides his time with old man Mooney. She is a mash-up of Candace, Beck, and Love – beautiful, charismatic, and a bit of a manic pixie dream girl. Here we find the origin of “you” as a moniker for Joe’s love interests; it’s what his mom calls him during a guilty turn of maternal love mixed with abandonment. She asks young Joe to build her a sandcastle, and in a sense that is exactly what he has done with his life – just don’t dig too deeply underneath, because that’s where all the bodies are buried. I hope we get a little more nuance if these flashbacks continue. It would be a real bummer if the audience ends up neatly being able to blame Joe’s mother, when Joe is actually the criminal.

Back to the final chapter of this episode. Creepy Joe is up to no good, as evidenced by the baseball cap he only wears when he’s creepin’. Turns out you can take the boy of the secret locked room in the basement, but you can’t take the secret locked room out of the boy. Everyone, meet the real Will Bettelheim. So, it wasn’t an identity Joe invented after all. And there was no real meet-cute with Love – he has been stalking her from the get-go. Neither was there a coincidence at the job interview – he planted Crime and Punishment in his backpack to land a job where Love works. The new Joe is the old Will, who just happened to be Love’s neighbor conveniently in telescope-shot of Love’s apartment. And just who is Will? I’ll never tell. XOXO, Gossip Girl. Not really. I’m totally going to tell as soon as I know. See You next time!

#you netflix season2 recap

[tanyaodebra]

For anyone who lives here, New York City can feel like the greatest, most exciting place in the world. When it’s great, there’s truly nothing like it. But when it’s bad, it can be miserable. Sometimes in the midst of struggling just to get by, we can forget what it was, that magic, that made us...

[tanyaodebra]

I accompanied someone to the police station to report a sexual assault, and this is what happened

A regular client turned good friend was sexually assaulted and asked me if I would go with her to the police station to make the report. Here is what happened.

Things to note:

1. There may be some triggers around sexual assault, victim blaming, and incompetent police officers.

2. My friend gave me permission to write this and actively encouraged me to do so, as a learning opportunity for all of you. However her name has been changed to LC for this post.

[tanyaodebra]

After Cory Monteith was found dead in his hotel room I tweeted: "Love to Cory Monteith. If drugs/alcohol are killing you, there is help available. I got sober 11 yrs ago at 25. It can be done."

I got three types of responses. The first were variations of “Thanks for saying that." The second...

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BREAKING: Supreme Court rules that gays can marry as long as blacks can’t vote #DOMA #VRA

— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge)

June 26, 2013

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Race matters.

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This is so horrifying. I can't believe this poor family had to go through this.

My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court

I’ve been sending out some impertinent tweets about Progressive Insurance lately, but I haven’t explained how they pissed me off. So I will do that here as succinctly as possible. There’s a general understanding that says, “insurance companies— oh they’re awful,” but since Progressive turned their shit hose on my late sister and my parents, I’ve learned some things that really surprised me.

I’ll try to cleave to the facts. On June 19, 2010, my sister was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit my sister as she crossed the intersection on the green light.

Read More

[tanyaodebra]

I am so fucking sad to hear about David Rakoff’s death.  I last saw him when we both performed in Rachel Shukert’s “Everything’s Coming Up Moses” at 92Y (he played God), and, despite his sincere belief in the power of negative thinking, he was just the most positive, uplifting person to be around — excited and encouraging about other people’s lives and projects, outwardly lighthearted about his own deteriorating condition.  I remember thinking, “If I am ever faced with a life-threatening illness, I want to confront it like that.”  David Fucking Rakoff.  I wish I’d known him better.  What a loss.