It’s not uncommon to suspect that something — or someone — is manipulating the invisible threads of our decisions, playing with our desires like pieces on a cynical, unyielding chessboard. When least expected, a brutal twist imposes itself, shattering any plans and making it inevitable to face an unwanted, yet inescapable, reality. Such setbacks, which even the most cautious cannot avoid, shape the ways in which we choose to continue: sometimes with heads bowed, resigned to the surface of existence, or with eyes raised, defying chance and forcing truth to reveal itself in the details.
Nelson Rodrigues, with his usual sarcasm, once declared that without luck, you can’t even win a Chicabon — let alone summon the courage to rise from bed and face the daily abysses of urban reality. Attempting to strip ambition from man, an ambition often cloaked under the supposed purity of nature, proves too pretentious a task for any visual narrative. Talent and technique alone are rarely enough to convey such complexity. Yet “You”, in its fourth venture, defies this logic: it meticulously dissects psychopathy wrapped in charm, elevating its protagonist to a disturbingly magnetic anti-hero, whose tenderness is merely the façade of a refined predator.
We are compelled to believe that we owe explanations to a universe that, in reality, completely disregards our most intimate anxieties. This dissonance breeds insoluble unrest, intensified by fleeting desires and dilemmas as shallow as they are noisy. From this chaos, the true unrest of living emerges — the continuous struggle against an unknowable tomorrow, dragging us through a whirlwind of uncertainty. Joe Goldberg embodies like few others this patchwork of contradictions: he is both the architect of his schemes and a prisoner of obsessions that blur reality, turning his every move into something almost dreamlike, as if the world around him were nothing more than a distorted projection of his disturbed mind.
Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble, the architects of this unease, push the experience to its most uncomfortable limits. With Penn Badgley giving depth and form to the unsettling Joe, the series delves into human fragility through the lens of a bookseller who sees in others’ reading habits a window to control. What makes “You” a singular phenomenon is the boldness with which 25 different directors steer the narrative: each episode unfolds like a spiral of tension, driven by Joe’s desire for beautiful, vulnerable women whose lives he believes he can steer. From Guinevere Beck, an aspiring writer precisely portrayed by Elizabeth Lail, the series never relents — maintaining a relentless crescendo of suffocating intensity, leading the viewer through forty episodes of discomfort and fascination.
Series: You
Creators: Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble
Year: 2018–2025
Genres: Thriller/Romance/Noir
Rating: 8/10