Here’s why you can’t hate Joe Goldberg; because there’s a little bit of him in all of us.

SPOLER ALERT: in this blog, I will be spoiling all current uploaded for seasons of you. (P. S: I’m waiting for the last season!)

Introduction:

So, this is one interesting topic to write about. I was debating on whether to review the show “You” which is a show that is available on Netflix, since its main character, Joe Goldberg, is a very controversial one. (Ps: waiting for the last season!)

Most of the time, when I want to watch as many shows and movies, as I can, I either try to skip through them, or watch a summary. For this one, let me tell you, I didn’t want to skip any details. I had seen this edit going, viral social media, were in season one Joe Goldberg tells back that her room doesn’t fit a bed size king. The thing is, no ordinary person could’ve guessed that, and he came up with an excuse that, since it’s New York, no one’s bedroom fits a king. And then cuts into these clips, where there is Joe running, staring at something, having a computer, tracker, and God knows where were the other things shown in the video. The point is, it intrigued me.

I wanted to know more about the show, I wanted to know how did this all start and when did it even start? So I watched all sorts of videos, reviewing every single season separately, and even read some blogs about each episode separately as well. Just trying to really form my opinion on this show and it’s character, Joe Goldberg.

Part one: the show.

The show overall: To be honest, this is probably one of the best shows I’ve ever reviewed in a long time now. Honestly, IMDB, and other review websites are underestimating the goodness of the show. I mean, seriously? A 7.7 only? This, this show was a masterpiece. It truly was. I kept focusing and following up with the show for three days straight, only on this, not watching anything else, because of how hooked it had me. Let me be honest, anything that’s considered Netflix original doesn’t always catch my attention. Because I know, a lot of Netflix originals are just really cheaply. Made movies, with weird, and I hurting right filters, and music that makes my ears bleed. Not all, of course, but a lot of them are this way. The thing is, even the main ideas are usually just re-makes. Even though the show is a lifelong Netflix series, it’s also based by New York’s best selling author, Caroline Kepnes. I mean, call me crazy, but literally every single author in New York is called New York’s best selling author. Am I right? No, but seriously. I applaud her for this. She truly deserves that title.

• The actors: Let’s not forget the actors, right? The way this was so scary yet felt so real at the same time is absolutely insane. Most of these things do not happen in real life, you can’t just kill people and keep getting away with it, or even hiding them in your dungeon of a basement for a really long time without anybody noticing. Not Joe Goldberg, which is why this doesn’t happen in real life. But, it could. Even though this was affection, the actors just made it feel so realistic. Penn Badgley, the main character, deserved an Oscar. If Oscars were ran by me, he would’ve gotten it all day every day. I’ve seen some of the clips from the show, the main parts, and he is just absolutely brilliant. It’s crazy how can someone act like such as sociopath, and then not be that in real life. He seems like a chill and down to earth guy, which freaks me out because if I wasn’t his place, I would’ve started sensing a bipolar disorder coming through between my characters and me. Seriously though, like what is so assuring to me that I might not kill a person in the middle of the night and just wake up to forget about it? Exactly, nothing. Victoria Pedretti too, who also acted as the character love, who is also pretty known to be Joe Goldberg’s wife. She was a killer. I could just watch her and him act so brilliantly in front of me, knowing that act, but still not feeling like it. What makes this so brilliant, is that the scenarios are not very realistic, so we cannot really relate to them, but a way that we can relate to the story is the feelings that are in the story. The jealousy, anger, sadness, grieve, craziness, love and all sorts of emotions. We felt those emotions with some of the characters, at least if not all. Which makes this so relatable, but in a scary way, because it confuses us whether we really do relate to the stuff or we just share the same emotions. I’m here to tell you, we only share the same emotions. I hope none of y’all are fantasizing about killing somebody. If you do, please reach therapy and don’t hide stuff out like Joe Goldberg did.
• The audience, which includes you: I would probably recommend this show to people who want to see a mix of everything. There is not much laughter, but it’s still in the show. There’s a lot of romance going on, mainly the concept of I’d kill for you. Quite literally. There’s also a lot of thriller, mystery, always making you question things and intrigued to know more. Mostly though, this definitely includes a lot of horror scenes, and violence. So, if you want to feel like a witness, a detective, and a human with your emotions, the show is perfectly for you.

Part 2: Joe Goldberg, in the making.

Joe, it’s just a guy that needs to plan and figure out his life. He has a lot of unresolved, trauma and issues that he puts asleep by not actually working through them, and he fills that pain temporarily out with people. Besides, the killing, he’s a human being. He went through a lot.

At first, I felt really bad for Goldberg. I know it’s crazy to admit this, but he seemed like a decent guy to me in the very beginning. He was a guy that loved some good, had an insanely, hilarious, personality, and even was witty and smart. He seems like the perfect man. The movie is always displayed, the guy who never gets any love or appreciation, but then finally gets it, and this girl that falls in love with him, lives happily ever after. The thing is, girls, who end up being with Joe don’t see an after, let alone happy one.

Behind this persona that he portrays people, Joe is a very lonely guy. Besides the parts, where he always claims to be broken, which always irks me to hear, it’s true. Joe was looking for self improvement, but did not know where to start. He wanted to be there for the girls he loved, like he did with Beck. He wanted to be her mentor, to make sure that she was on track with her studies. he wanted to be her dad, and stay with her to cherish the nice moments between them. he wanted to be her friend, whom she 100% trust with her life and soul. Also, mainly, her to be the partner she’s never had before, somebody who loves her unconditionally, no matter what her flaws were.

Besides, this person that he portrays to people, Joe never really showed his genuine side to anyone. Not even his partners. He was an insecure man, who always felt like he was the problem that he was never going to be enough for anybody. He was a kid for God sake, and his only family, his mother, abandoned him without him, knowing the reason. He was taken into care, with this old creep, who locked him in a cage, in the basement of a library as well, as a punishment. So, there’s a kid who is never seen any sort of love. None. Not physical or emotional. Can you really try to convince me that this kid is going to be going up a normal one? Just like everyone else that actually didn’t receive the love had people that cared about them growing up? No.

He was working at a library, as a teenager, well other kids had friends and plans after school. He was bullied by kids all the time, and reminded that even if he has a little bit of hope that his mom would be back for him, he should kill that hope because there’s no way of that happening. He was harassed physically, and mentally. , How do you expect a person to cope with that?

His life revolves around action. Stalking, distracting himself with women, the anger that comes afterwards or even the hatred, the killing, planning after the killings, this was all a distraction to him, so he can focus on himself, or on the growth of his personality. He never really cared about himself, and he never really wanted to. He didn’t know where to start because it seemed like no one was there to hear him out, let alone the fact that he cannot trust people after he knew they did not believe in him, or trust him, or even be there with him.

I mean, we can also refer back to season one where he loved the girls so much, Candace and she cheated on him just like Beck. After he buried her alive, because he thought that she was dead, he decided to move on and continue on his life like nothing ever happened. That’s not how a normal person copes. Even after Beck locking him in that cage, he couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t . So he killed her. I mean, let’s be honest, who’s not getting a rash out a person that kills people for a living besides existing, and has some sort of secret dungeon in the basement of a public library. You’d be an idiot not to.

The only thing he ever wanted was for somebody to love him unconditionally. Somebody that could be there for him at his worst and best moments. Someone that’s not going to abandon him or let anything get in between the relationships, no cheating, no other distraction. Just the two of them that can really focus on each other.

That’s exactly what Love gave him. She gave him, she gave him a second chance, she wanted to be with him after she found out that he was a killer. In fact, she joined him and killed for him as well. The same things that he did for her. I thought they were absolutely perfect for each other because there’s not a lot of killers that you can meet daily, let alone next expect them not to kill you. I thought that was finally going to be a man that someone has not ratted him out and trusted him, and actually wants to raise a baby with him. But, that’s not Joe, that’s when he started to disappoint me.

See, the thing is about him, is that whatever he feels, bored, in a relationship, he changes. He blames his attachment issues, saying that he can’t really get attached to somebody for so long because he believes that they’ll eventually end up leaving him, but Love was different. She was always by her side, and always rooted for him. She really wanted to make things work between the both of them. Even though she was cheating, he was too. He wasn’t giving her any of his attention because he was busy stalking women. Don’t care about the baby or his wife, he went back to his old habits always. Once he’s another woman, and seems perfectly stable, he goes to another. And then cycle just never stops. He’s always with a woman, then a negative thing about her, gets bored, and he thinks you know what? I think I’m better off with another person. He confuses me because he seems like a great person. He helped out Paco in his worst times against his deadbeat, step father, and he helped out Ellie when she needed the money. He worked hard for the people he loved, so my question is, why can’t he be as sweet to women as he is the kids?

The thing is, he wants those kids to grow up stable. Something that he never had. He was mainly in a relationship with his partner, Love, because she was the mother of his child, and he never wanted to abandon his child. The fact, when he thought about leaving her, he thought about taking the child with him, but then he thought of how unstable that child wouldn’t turn out to be if he didn’t have both his parents with him. Even if that meant his parents were both psychos. He cared about that stuff, he wanted to look after those kids. And he wished that somebody would’ve looked out for him the way he did to them.

So what was his decision after feeling bad for his son? He killed his wife by burning the house down and left his child with his neighbors to look after him. Again, Joe decides to escape from reality since that’s a very realistic option to do, it switched a totally different identity by being a professor at a university, and a totally different country. Wow, Joe really took it to another level by moving to a whole different country instead of trying to work on himself and his life. The thing is, John doesn’t really think that much, he overthink about the wrong things, and he ends up, forgetting the important things which makes him take irrational and stupid decisions all the time.

So, in the last season, the only reason why Joe moved to London, was yes, for a fresh start, to also follow Marianne, whom he cheated on his wife for. Obviously, Marianne thought he was absolutely insane and rejected him, which leads to her death in the last season. That’s not why she died, but Joe had locked her in a cage and asked her her kidnapping her and doing so, he went into his other character and less Marianne to starve in the cage.

What’s his other character now? Basically, Joe has started to become friends with one member from this rich and influential group, whose name was Rhys. Afterwards, his friend died, and Joe started committing crimes like a lunatic. He killed people, and he wasn’t aware that he was doing it because there was this voice in his head of his dead, best friend, telling him to commit those things, and then later on, he realized what he had done. Obviously, he also had to kill other people later on to cover up for these mistakes that he did when he killed those people without realizing it.

But hold on, we did not mention Joe love interest in this last season. It’s Kate, his wealthy neighbor. It seems like Joe has developed feelings towards her, even though he came all the way to London, just for Marianne. He couldn’t help it, but fall for Kate, that he had admitted to her his real name (since the real Joe was supposedly dead), and that he has killed people before. Kate feels sympathy towards him, and shows to Joe that she’s not afraid of him, and he decides to start off fresh again, of course, with a new woman, and of course, with a new place. Wait, not a new place, he actually confidently goes back to New York!

So, it always seems like every show ends up with Joe moving to a different place, with a different woman, and a different look too. Joe really takes cosplaying and dress up too seriously! Who knows? On the last season of You, can Joe finish the entire season without killing anybody? Probably not, but we’re going to find out very soon.

Conclusion:

So that’s the twisted thing about Joe. Once you think you have him all figured out, you realize you don’t. You feel bad that he grew up in an unstable environment, which resulted him into continuing behaviors of an unstable person as he grows. You feel bad for him that has partners cheat on him, and that he seems to lose faith in humanity every day. You also feel bad that he has nowhere to go with his feelings, or whom to confess it to. But, you also hate him for how he neglect women and moves on, even without being mentally stable. You hate how he is 99% of the time the reason why innocent people die and that he can’t solve his problems like a man with talking. Hate that he doesn’t actually go to therapy or try to work on himself to improve for him and for others since he claims to be the one that’s supposed to help people out. Hate that he looks at peoples problems, and even with his problems being 10 times worse, he still thinks the other person is worse than him. He is an unexplainable person. This is why there is always going to be a love and hate relationship between me, and Joe Goldberg.

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