It’s not easy concluding a TV series. Leaning too deeply into the bittersweet, nostalgic nature of a show’s end makes for an over-indulgent, incoherent shamble on screen. Straying too far from a show’s classic beats in the name of drama, however, isolates fans and undermines their years of loyalty.
Many modern shows, especially programs housed by streaming services, don’t get the luxury of living until their writers’ desired ends. Those who do manage to get green light after green light face perhaps an even larger problem than an untimely cancellation. How does one make years of viewership feel worthwhile at the close? How can a writer satisfy both fan wishes and their own creative visions, knowing that there won’t be another chance or another season to do so?
These questions were answered beautifully by show creators Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble through season five of Netflix’s “You.”
“You” is a thriller series following Joe Goldberg, a bookstore clerk who kills to gain access to the women he obsessively stalks. The show premiered in 2018 and quickly became one of Netflix’s most watched television shows. All ten episodes of its final season were released April 24.
It wasn’t a perfect season by any means. For good reason, “You” has never achieved the acclaim that awards show darlings like “Succession” or “Ozark” have. In its final season, it reminded viewers of its imperfection with more than a few uninspired editing and production choices, least of all the woefully miscast and wildly underwritten season female lead, Madeline Brewer’s Bronte.
While “You” has not had the budget or the critically-lauded cast of many of its streaming peers, it has writers and actors who are unquestionably devoted not only to their roles, but their viewers. Through all of the show’s seasons, the show’s creators have never lost sight of their objective: seducing audiences into admiring, desiring and even relating to a man who claims to solely want love, and then suckerpunching them with the reality that no man who kills in love’s name can be deserving of it.
That alone can’t make a perfect show or season, but in “You’s” case, it’s the maker of a perfectly satisfying finale.
Penn Badgley offers a performance that is slicing, unnerving and nastily charming all at once. He melts between “Mr. Nice Guy” and “Mr. Hyde” with the ease of an exhale, delivering narration with a vocal fry that would be overwrought and grating on anyone else, but with him is sinfully sultry.
After nearly seven years of watching him kill friends, enemies, girlfriends and wives as Goldberg, viewers should be immune to the wit and charm of “You’s” lead. But when Badgley slinks into the wickedness of his character and violently turns on yet another woman, he still manages to shock with how quickly his eyes darken and his soul seemingly empties.
In a show like “You,” where the protagonist is anything but a hero, the largest problem is cementing its lead with the ending he deserves. After allowing Goldberg escape routes from punishment for his handfuls of murders, “You” at last delivers on retroactive justice.
The creators play their final grand hand, sending Goldberg off on one last woman-hunt through the woods and into an arc-completion that is deeply satisfying in its deservedness and perfectly punishing in its metaphorical (and literal) castration of its favorite misogynistic, murderous man.
Concluding a TV series is hard. By its finale, “You” wasn’t at its highest caliber. But despite plots that could’ve been convoluted and expectations that could’ve never been met, it succeeded because it was obvious how much the show meant to its creators.
“You” may have had a slightly messy conclusion, but for the show on the murderous bookkeeper, there was no better way to close his story.
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