Why we love Netflix’s You, even though we all agree it’s ter­ri­ble TV

Next week sees the return of heart­throb ser­i­al killer Joe Gold­berg (Penn Bad­g­ley) as Net­flix drops a new clutch of episodes of their smash hit crime thriller You on March 9. For the first time the pow­er dynam­ics have shift­ed, as the hunt­ed becomes the hunt­ed, faced with a stalk­er who has the abil­i­ty to expose Joe’s exploits and bring him down once and for all.

You is the smash hit not even Net­flix saw com­ing. Although the stream­ing ser­vice doesn’t pub­lish view­er­ship stats, they claim 40 mil­lion house­holds tuned with­in the first month of its release. You was orig­i­nal­ly a Life­time show cre­at­ed by Greg Berlan­ti and Sera Gam­ble, who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked on huge series includ­ing Dawson’s Creek, Riverdale and Super­nat­ur­al. Berlan­ti had huge faith in the project, but the show bare­ly drew 650,000 view­ers every week, falling short of even Lifetime’s stan­dards, a net­work noto­ri­ous for mak­ing so-bad-it’s‑good tele­vi­sion. It was axed four months lat­er before being picked up by Net­flix, where it quick­ly found its audi­ence among a pri­mar­i­ly young mil­len­ni­al female demographic.

There are so many dubi­ous plot points that make You, objec­tive­ly speak­ing, a ridicu­lous show. It’s painful­ly obvi­ous where Joe’s vic­tims are going wrong, since none of them appear to have cur­tains in their homes, mak­ing it very easy for him to point a tele­scope at their win­dow, and fol­low their every move. Then there’s Joe’s main dis­guise, which con­sists only of a base­ball cap, yet four years on, he hasn’t been caught for the many crimes he’s com­mit­ted. But it’s real­ly Joe’s snarky nar­ra­tion – in which he posi­tions him­self as an earnest hope­less roman­tic, dri­ven to mur­der through no fault of his own – that makes the show so absurd and enter­tain­ing. Much of You is told from the abuser’s point of view, allow­ing the audi­ence to under­stand how Joe jus­ti­fies his actions to him­self. In this way, the show is tak­ing itself seri­ous­ly, but its over-the-top style means that we as view­ers can’t.

Per­haps the most unset­tling rea­son view­ers keep com­ing back is because we all, to vary­ing degrees, fan­cy Joe. Fans are con­stant­ly swoon­ing over him on social media, with many seem­ing­ly attract­ed to the character’s many con­tra­dic­tions: he is charm­ing, dan­ger­ous, book­ish, a hope­less roman­tic, sadis­tic, cru­el, and mys­te­ri­ous, all wrapped in one. Bad­g­ley him­self has been very forth­right in his crit­i­cism of Gold­berg, say­ing that his char­ac­ter is ​“not actu­al­ly a per­son who just needs some­body who loves him. He’s abu­sive. He’s delu­sion­al. And he’s self-obsessed.” But it’s these very com­plex­i­ties, as well as our aware­ness of how odd it is to like and root for him, that con­tribute to the fun and absur­di­ty of it all.

Sweet escapism, cama­raderie, and the binge­abil­i­ty fac­tor are also key pulls for the show. You is hard­ly the most under­stat­ed, sophis­ti­cat­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller on TV. The allure is that most of us only devote one week­end to watch­ing it; phone in hand, Twit­ter and What­sApp groups open, dis­cussing, dis­sect­ing, and spoil­ing it for one anoth­er over 48 hours, and then it’s all over. The con­straints of net­work tele­vi­sion, and there­fore why it nev­er stood a chance on Life­time, was that it had to be week­ly, giv­ing peo­ple far too much time to con­sid­er whether to return to a pre­dictable dra­ma about a ser­i­al killer who’s also con­vinced he’s a real­ly nice guy.

What net­work tele­vi­sion gave us, which has been par­tial­ly lost in the stream­ing era, is the com­mu­nal aspect of watch­ing TV. The week­ly wait would build antic­i­pa­tion, con­ver­sa­tion, and com­mu­ni­ty around pop­u­lar shows. Thanks to the legion of binge-hun­gry fans, we still have this, albeit on an accel­er­at­ed time frame. Being part of the You fan­dom adds to the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing every twist and cliff-hang­er through to its log­i­cal, or often illog­i­cal, con­clu­sion together.

You isn’t real­ly an intel­li­gent show, which puts it square­ly in the low-brow, escapist cat­e­go­ry of TV. Its only real job is to make us care about what hap­pens next after the end of every episode. Most of us find it exhaust­ing and drain­ing to be con­stant­ly engaged with the news cycle and deal with the end­less demands of every­day life, and seek the com­fort of being able to retreat into a show we expect lit­tle from. It doesn’t mat­ter how misog­y­nist, greedy, self-absorbed, or unlike­able its char­ac­ters are, or that their motives high­light huge plot holes, only mak­ing sense with­in the con­fines of this fic­tion­al world. All You real­ly has to do is pro­vide a very basic, mind­less lev­el of enter­tain­ment. Judg­ing by the pletho­ra of memes pok­ing fun at the show, it’s safe to assume it does this quite well.

Yet the vio­lence enact­ed with­in You, often against women, reflects the vio­lence against women in the real world, and this makes it at times dif­fi­cult to enjoy and tru­ly indulge in the show. In one of many vio­lent scenes, Joe stalks a woman run­ning alone in a park, chas­es her down and even­tu­al­ly attacks her with a rock to the back of her head. He then rea­sons, ​“She gave me no choice. It’s brave what I do for you. It’s hard, some­times it makes me sick. How many guys are will­ing to do any­thing they need to for love?” Know­ing that such misog­y­nis­tic ide­olo­gies and vio­lent behav­iour are still com­mon makes hear­ing Joe’s inner mono­logue extreme­ly uncom­fort­able viewing.

But per­haps the show’s pre­dictabil­i­ty offers a con­trolled and secure envi­ron­ment for its pre­dom­i­nant­ly female audi­ence to explore and face some of our fears in a fic­ti­tious world where there are no stakes. The prac­tice of fac­ing our fears in a con­trolled set­ting, like watch­ing a hor­ror film, helps us process fear and devel­op cop­ing mech­a­nisms. Researchers have found that when peo­ple are exposed to their deep­est fears, they bet­ter under­stand their source, their reac­tions to fear and how to bet­ter reg­u­late their emo­tions. For instance, the show’s first sea­son sparked a lot of online con­ver­sa­tion among women, about all the ways over­shar­ing on social media puts women at increased risk of stalk­ing. This led to more dis­cus­sions about online safe­ty, with women exchang­ing their own hor­ror sto­ries, and shar­ing advice on how to bet­ter pro­tect our­selves online.

Audi­ences are inter­est­ed in ser­i­al killer dra­mas – good and bad – for the same rea­sons true crime shows, films and pod­casts are endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar. These allow us to safe­ly sat­is­fy our curios­i­ty about the human capac­i­ty for evil, while con­sid­er­ing how we might bet­ter pro­tect our­selves. If You does so with a large dose of silli­ness rou­tine­ly point­ed out by its star, even better.