*Caution: Spoilers*
The tragedy, in “You” is seeing the most interesting characters be extinguished each season. Before plunging fully into the series I asked my roommate, who had seen it, if Joe kills Beck- just to know what I was getting into. She refused to tell me, because it was the whole premise of the show.
I honestly find shows depicting murder to be quite predictable. I expected Beck to be killed. I just wanted to mentally and emotionally prepare for seeing a woman killed on screen. Again. The disproportionate violence towards women depicted in the media seems comparable to the disproportionate violence women face in real life. Sadly, a case where TV reflects reality.
Beck was an aspiring writer, getting her MFA at a good grad school in the best city in the world. Joe seemed to think her life was a “mess.” That was hardly the case. It may have been mess-y, but it wasn’t a mess. She had gotten her BA at Brown and was on her way to a promising writing career, albeit with the occasional struggles with writer’s block, and toxic boyfriends & friends. I think that Joe resented her for being on the verge of “making it.” She might not have come from an elite background, but she was creating a successful future for herself. Was Joe uncomfortable with the friends she was choosing, because she met them in certain spaces that were inaccessible to him? He has such a hatred for the elite/wealthy. He also has such underlying hatred for women. He “murders for love” and goes through a “hero’s journey” (similar to the characters in his beloved books, as my roommate pointed out) for Beck, in order to “save” her, yet she never needed or asked to be saved. It’s patronizing, and problematic. It’s failing to truly see the woman for the brilliant, beautiful, messy human being that she is, and letting her have her own journey.
Honestly, I’m pretty salty that the most interesting character in season 2 also gets killed off, albeit not by Joe. Delilah is this beautiful, liberated, boss, Latina. Here she is, raising her little sister, managing an apartment complex, and starting off this interesting career as an entertainment journalist. She was about to break a Me Too story based on her own experiences and those of other women at the hands of a reprehensible comedian pedophile/abuser. & The show has to go off and kill her too. She’s similar to the Beck character, in that she’s on the cusp of “making it.”
The show is suspenseful, and interesting. It bothers me that my favorite characters have to die though. Why did their bright lights have to be extinguished so senselessly?
