Natalie's Nook

Everythingship (n): a meeting of the minds, bodies, and souls.

During the earlier part of this year, 2019, a certain show that was released on Netflix became the talk/trend on just about every social media platform—specifically twitter. It was so popular that for weeks I’m sure most of us saw nothing but tweets and pictures/memes and polls about this specific show all up and down our timelines. As people who make up the community of pop culture, we have multiple ways of making the best. . . .and worst out of anything that intrigues us.

Now, what’s the show? YOU

YOU is a psychological thriller/suspense/romance(meh) show adapted from the book written by Caroline Kepnes in 2014. The show was originally aired on Lifetime in 2018, until Netflix gained the rights to continue the series in 2019 now making it a Netflix Original. The next season is said to be on Netflix sometime in 2020, following the story with the second book in the YOU series: Hidden Bodies (2016).

After constantly seeing tweets about the show and how some people were saying that they wanted a Joe in their life and where could they find him, while others were saying he needed to be put in jail (period); I decided to see what all the hype was about.

I binged all ten episodes in about a week. It was a genre of television that I never thought I would be able to grasp right away, but after a few episodes of seeing how brilliantly charming the main male character was— I was practically begging for more. The main character Joe Goldberg is played by Penn Badgley. Most of us know him from Gossip Girl and Easy A, but this new role that he plays is something some of us never thought we’d see him portray. The way he played Joe made me hate and love him, as he owned my eyes through the television screen. After having watched the show, part of me knew I needed to read the book in order to have the entire story understood; I just hadn’t expected it all to be from Joe’s psychotic, manipulative, selfish point of view.

This past June and July, I devoted my time to reading both YOU and Hidden Bodies; I even reviewed the books (with lots of spoilers) on my booktube channel—This Is Nat’s Nook—because that’s the purpose of the channel and well. . . I was overwhelmed with the amount of measures Joe took ” all in the name of love“.

I would describe Joe as a psychopath. Harsh I know, but first impressions are everything. When we first meet Joe he already has his eyes on a girl that walks into his place of work, he helps her using the customer service skills he was taught, they flirt, and he begins to read her. . . deeply. He reads her to the point where he draws this conclusion of the fact that she doesn’t fully disclose her name when he asks, but uses her card to pay for her books wanting him to know what her name is. Thus, starting a full-fledged womanhunt for a Ms. Guinevere Beck. He literally stalks her social media(s), learns her detailed schedule of her whereabouts, googles her home address where he would sometimes “go for a jog” even though it’s on the other side of the city, supposedly “run into her coincidentally” so they’d meet again, and the rest is history.

Joe falls in love more than once in both books. He makes sure that by all means he does what he has to do to keep his love. No matter the people or things that seems to be in the way of his relationship; he finds ways of dealing with those said “problems”. He could really be a professor and teach a course on “How To Get Away With Murder”. . .if it were legal. As I read, I started to question if his feelings were genuine, if he was actually feeling those feelings and not forcing them. If my information is correct, psychopaths are deemed as individuals who expresses certain emotions such as happiness, sadness, sympathy, and the two most powerful emotions— anger and love; but they express them in a facade type manner. They force those feelings to help show their “normality” like others surrounding them, without the pure intentions, which later leads to irrational consequences. In Joe’s case that was homicidal behavior.

I also questioned if Caroline Kepnes was mentally stabled after putting herself in the mindset of Joe when having to write his character and the relationships on those who he had affected. Having to write two books from the point of view of a “stupidly in love nut job” would put a toll on anyone who’s creative, but they do say we all have a little crazy in us to share. One thing I can say for sure is if you know very little about literature and certain authors that should ring a bell in conversation, Kepnes wrote Joe Goldberg to be that guy that knows literature like the back of his hand! She expresses through Joe how no one really buy books to read them like people once used to, how books of any kind are starting to have somewhat of a devalued place in the world. Reading isn’t what it once used to be thanks to the advancement in technology and the amount of coin that goes into Hollywood entertainment. Joe can see right through those wannabe pretentious book buyers that comes into his store.

Another thing I can say for sure is that Caroline Kepnes writing is so poetically pleasing, one of my favorite quotes from the book is: “The problem with books is that they end. They seduce you. They spread their legs to you and pull you inside. And you go deep and leave your possessions and your ties to the world at the door and you like it inside and you don’t want for your possessions or your ties and then, the book evaporates.” That quote alone is just one of the many erotic parts in both books.

I do see why some are obsessed with Joe: he’s witty, an intellectual (especially for someone who didn’t go to college), handsome, and erotic. All of that is what draws the reader into liking him, apart form his fatal flaw of being deranged.

Me personally, I like my guys intelligent (yes), having an interest in literature (double yes), with a pleasant personality (triple yes), great looks (added brownie points), non-toxic, non-conniving, not narcissistic, not clingy, and mentally stabled as much as possible (oh hell yes!).

P.S. If you’re anything like Joe Goldberg, stay the hell away from me.