Cliff Notes – You’s ridiculous ending proves Joe Goldberg was never worth our time
- Joe Goldberg’s journey concludes with a clichéd and immature ending, where he faces a bizarre punishment that undermines the gravity of his actions.
- Despite some intriguing themes in season five, the narrative ultimately falters by reducing Joe’s character to a mere punchline, detracting from the serious implications of his crimes.
- The series finale leaves viewers feeling that the show, which had potential for deeper exploration, ultimately failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion to Joe’s story.
You’s ridiculous ending proves Joe Goldberg was never worth our time
Joe Goldberg’s reign of terror has come to an end at last (Picture: Clifton Prescod/Netflix)
Warning: spoilers ahead for You season 5
Hello, you. After seven years of this on-and-off-again fun, this flirtatious will-they-won’t-they is finally at its end, and I’ve realised something about You.
You were never worth my time.
Right, that’s quite enough trying to replicate Joe Goldberg’s (Penn Badgley) self-centred narration. I’ve had to put up with it for five seasons now, and to be frank, I’m sick to the back teeth of it.
Anyway, if you’ve never had the pleasure of watching Netflix’s You, then congratulations, you’ve missed out on 10 hours of genuine Entertainment, 39 hours and 40 minutes of mind-numbing tedium, and 20 minutes of gratuitous sex scenes.
Get personalised updates on all things Netflix
The show has a simple enough premise: Joe, the aforementioned self-centred narrator, meets a girl at the bookshop where he works and falls madly in love.
But uh-oh, Joe’s not just a hopeless romantic, he’s an obsessive serial killer who takes the expression ‘love makes you do crazy things’ to a terrifyingly literal place.
Now, honestly, that’s not a dreadful idea for a show in a pulpy, trashy kind of way,
Sadly, over the course of five seasons, we’ve repeated this plot over and over again until it’s more worn out than a single man’s favourite pair of socks (they’ve got holes in them, Jacob, just throw them away).
Thankfully, it’s all over now. After more than 20 murders, one split personality (yes, really), and more miraculous escapes than Harry Houdini, Joe’s finally been brought to justice.
But how did our lovelorn hero get brought low?
Sadly, the ending leaves a lot to be desired (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
Well, imagine the most clichéd ending you could end a story about a stalker, then chuck it in the bin, bang your head against the wall repeatedly, and then have another go at writing a bad ending.
Once you’ve done that you’ll probably discover (once the dizziness subsides) you’ve written that Joe gets his penis shot off by his final would-be victim, Bronte (Madeline Brewer), and arrested.
If you did, then well done – you’ve earned yourself a gold star – because that’s what happens.
Okay, technically, we don’t learn exactly what happened to Joe’s member. Still, we do see a brief montage where it’s implied he’s lost a few inches, and we don’t mean from his height.
It’s clichéd and immature (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
In case it’s not clear, I did not enjoy how You ended. I thought it felt like the type of ending you’d consider for a first draft before deciding to put some effort in.
Harsh? Yeah, but true. There’s just something so laughably edgy about having an abusive man literally emasculated as his final punishment.
It’s the type of thing you’d expect to see in a high school drama production put together by teenagers to prove they understand subtext.
I get what they’re going for with it, but it all feels a bit slapdash and juvenile, as though the thing that defined Joe was that he liked having sex and not the fact, you know… he killed people.
You season 5 had some interesting ideas (Credits: Clifton Prescod/Netflix)
Truthfully, the biggest problem I have with it is that season five actually has some interesting ideas at its heart.
It tries to confront the audience with the idea that they have been somehow complicit in Joe’s crimes, and there’s a neat irony in the man who literally killed for companionship being sentenced to a life alone for those murders.
Those are relatively clever thoughts for a show that delighted in the more salacious side of storytelling.
Sadly, those ideas are lost for the sake of a d*ck joke (Picture: Netflix)
It’s infuriating, then, that only in the last few episodes does it finally get serious about the true horror of Joe’s actions – it reminds you that the women Joe killed were living, breathing people whose stories were ended by a cruel man who saw them as nothing but extensions of himself.
That’s a bold idea for a show like this. But it’s completely undermined by turning Joe into a ‘walking d*ck joke’ as Bronte so neatly describes him in her final monologue.
It puts Joe back at the centre of the story by bringing attention back to him after an episode where we’re literally told this isn’t his story.
I’m sure there’ll be plenty of fans delighted that Joe got his just desserts. That, believe this was a fitting punishment for him, but deep down I think we all know the truth. You deserved better.
You season 5 is available to stream on Netflix now