To watch the second season of “You,” Greg Berlanti’s Netflix series, you’d think everybody in LA had an angle, or that no one was “all there.” The women look like goddesses. The men are coked out and rattle on about film projects “in development.” The teens are as worldly as adults and have mouths as filthy as the Hudson River.
Into this toxic environment wanders Joe (Penn Badgely), now Will thanks to a new identity. He’s our mild-mannered psychopathic killer from Season 1. Will is hoping to slip into town unnoticed and avoid entangling alliances that lead to love.
All goes well until he meets a young woman named—wait for it—Love, the daughter of the owner of an upscale food emporium named Anavrin (that’s Nirvana spelled backwards). Joe gets a job managing the store’s bookshop. He tries to kill off any possibility of romance but becomes obsessed with Love anyway. Will doesn’t realize, however, she is a package deal which includes her twin brother Forty (James Scully) an idiotic, narcissistic, sadistic filmmaker-wannabe.
The secondary plot line involves Joe and Delilah (Carmela Zumbado), his beautiful landlady, and Delilah’s precocious 15-year-old sister Ellie (Jenna Ortega from “Jane the Virgin.”) Will learns from Delilah that rock-star comic Hendy (Chris d’Elia) has been taking advantage of teenage girls and is determined that Ellie not be his next victim.
Season 2 is replete with references to green-juice-drinking, New-Age-y behavior that one associates with Southern Californians. Whether this is accurate or is intended to be satirical is unclear and should be determined by a real Angeleno, not an eye-rolling New Yorker. Suffice to say that much of the season reads as rehashed teen soap opera (see also “the OC,” “90210,” and “Melrose Place”) and that the series regrettably has jumped the shark, albeit a baby one.
Will I return for You, Season 3? You bet. Can’t wait to see how wormy Will (or is it Joe?) worms his way out of his next predicament.
Thanks Auggie. We will watch it for sure.