You 3 series review: Joe and Love make it more tortuous and venomous this season

3/5

In the third season of You, Joe Goldberg and Love Quin, are seen as a married couple who are raising their baby, Henry in a northern California suburb. Here they are surrounded by privileged tech entrepreneurs, judgmental mommy bloggers and Insta-famous biohackers. Although Joe is committed to his new role as a husband and dad, he fears Love’s lethal impulsiveness and the desire of his own heart.

It didn't take time for people to realise that once you start watching You, there's no turning back. The show is all things wrong, which is reason enough to binge-watch every season that releases. The third instalment is no different - it’s messier than ever. The series has taken human obsession to the next level and carrying an axe has become a norm.

As mentioned by Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) in one of the episodes, his and Love Quinn’s (Victoria Pedretti) love language is violence. The third season focuses on Joe, an obsessive stalker and murderer, who has taken the family route with fellow slaughterer Love. They both become parents to a baby boy named Henry Forty, who doesn't make their homicidal life tough at all. Instead, the couple faces challenges in parenting their son than fulfilling their stalking and killing nature.

The makers this time didn't waste time in setting up the premise which happens in the climax of the first episode. Joe attains his target after Love and he shifts to the suburb of Madre Linda. But in no time, she is taken away from him. Although we know who has committed the crime, the viewpoint of other residents of the small town also falls into place, making for a whodunit plot.

However, we have to note that both Joe and Love don't deserve any sympathy for their deeds. But in two bad people, there's always the worse one and we got a glimpse of it in the second season finale.

Joe and Love are seen as a couple who have fallen out of love but can't afford to leave each other. As for them, the ultimate option for leaving each other is to just vanish one another from the face of the Earth. But they can't do that for the sake of their son Henry. Thus they continue by gaslighting and manipulating each other in every minute of their lives.

Their trapped marriage act involve couples' therapy, polyamorous relationships, and of course, infidelity. However, it's wince-worthy, to say the least, that nothing of the sort affects the child but every other human surrounding Joe and Love.

The third season has a lot more disturbing instances which will make you wonder, how's this show even entertaining to watch. But that's the whole point of You, it's the uncomfortable watch that makes the writing and the performances commendable.

But yes, apart from Joe and Love's shenanigans, other characters are good enough to make the season watchable. The couple is surrounded by privileged tech entrepreneurs, judgmental mommy bloggers, and Insta-famous biohackers. All tech-freak people, yet Joe and Love manage to get away with their sins.

The Conrads - Sherry (Shalita Grant), as a mom-fluencer and her husband Cary (Travis Van Winkle), are impressive and how. Their character arc is to look out for in the series apart from Joe and Love's sketches. There's also Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle), a Parisian librarian who has her dark past. Tati's character is well-established and works as a beautiful catalyst in taking the story of the third season forward.

Theo Engler (Dylan Arnold) as a troubled college student is another obsessive character that will leave you scared but also build in empathy for him

This season, the makers take a dig at the 'influencers' who make a living out of every other person irrespective of consent. Moreover, they also show a plot of anti-vaxxer which has become a much important topic of discussion amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Interestingly, the series is set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, but it's only the dialogues and no other presence of the deadly virus.

The creators Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble have made the third season fantabulous in every aspect. They even discuss mental health in one of the sequences, where Joe lauds the current generation and calls them the saviours.

But in a broader aspect, You continues to 'educate' about the adverse effects of a toxic relationship. To be honest, toxic seems to be an understatement when it comes to this series. The couple are cold-blooded murderers with dark pasts which still don't justify their heinous crimes.

This time, the makers go deeper into Joe's past and show it running parallel to his present. But it doesn't work much like earlier seasons, where past sequences build a better foundation for the series.

Coming to the performances, Penn and Victoria are hands-down the show-stealers of You season three. They will scare you, make you uncomfortable and also leave you cringed from the word-go. Be it any scenario, the actors left no stone unturned in getting into the skin of the character as obsessive people who are also cold-blooded murderers.

Now that the fourth season for You has been renewed, the writers surely have something interesting in store for Joe, on whom the actual story is based.

But until then, do catch up with the third season and be prepared to observe discomfort like never before.

You season 3 touches upon the age-old question, "What would you do for love?" and also, "What would you do, Love?" most bizarrely and unexpectedly.