YOU Review: Pilot (Season 1 Episode 1)

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a series premiere as strong and distinctive as YOU Season 1 Episode 1, “Pilot.”

The first episode of this new drama series is arguably as promising as the first episode of Lifetime’s recently ended greatest scripted hit, UnREAL. With brilliant pacing and dialogue as acerbic as I’d expect from Sera Gamble and Greg Berlanti, the pilot of YOU is immediately engrossing and captivating.

For one, the casting of Penn Badgley is genius and wonderfully meta. Badgley, of course, is best known for his previous role as Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl.

In that show’s final episode, (spoiler alert from 5 years ago!) Dan was revealed to be the titular Gossip Girl, the omniscient blogger and social media savant at the heart of the series. In retrospect, that made Dan’s romance and near-obsession with Serena van der Woodsen more than a little bit creepy.

In YOU, Badgley plays Joe Goldberg, a bookstore manager and loner who seems largely normal (and dare I say, rather charming and self-possessed) on the surface. But as is quickly revealed, Joe’s psyche is far from well-adjusted.

Perhaps one of the best aspects of the pilot is how Joe’s behavior and unhealthy obsession with Beck swiftly yet gradually progresses in a “slippery slope” manner.

At first, when he meets her in the bookstore, their interaction (and his reaction to her) isn’t too worrying. They banter and flirt, and the only questionable thing Joe does is read too much into minor gestures (like assuming Beck pays with a credit card specifically because she wants him to see her name). Some light social media stalking ensues right after that, but we’ve all been there to some degree.

Of course, Joe quickly goes way off the deep end and far past normal social media stalking.

As I mentioned, the pacing is what really makes the pilot work. Joe’s voiceover, which Badgley delivers perfectly, gives us such clear and succinct insight into his character, to the point that all of his bizarre and disturbing behavior somehow makes perfect sense. Yes, even the attempted murder!

Joe is an incredibly well-formed, complicated, and interesting character. He’s obviously villainous and scary, no question — the man literally stalks Beck, masturbates in the bushes outside her house while peeping in at her touching herself, and kidnaps, assaults, and holds hostage her terrible sort-of boyfriend.

At the same time, Joe does genuinely kind things for those around him, like taking his young neighbor Paco under his wing and protecting him from his shitty home life. And it doesn’t appear as those Joe is doing these things in order to appear some sort of way to those around him. He actually seems to care about Paco and wants to help him, with nothing expected in return. It’s strange and incongruent with the rest of what we see from Joe in this premiere — which just serves to make me want to know so much more about Joe and his past.

Then there’s also Beck.

What’s interesting about Beck, so far, is how little we actually know about her. The pilot introduces her as something of a doormat, and Joe’s biased view of her is that she’s this extraordinarily wonderful person being bogged down by the crappy company she keeps.

Of course, Joe doesn’t actually know Beck. He knows what’s on her social media and what’s in her computer and phone, and then he makes some spectacularly outlandish logical leaps about her character based on those slim clues.

Because Joe is our POV character (at least for now), we the viewers also know little about the “real” Beck. Elizabeth Lail does a great job with relatively little to go off of, giving us a rather opaque portrait of Beck while providing enough hints about what’s really going on under her surface, in those quieter moments where she thinks no one is looking at her.

In our interview with the cast and creators of YOU, we were told that Beck would be getting her own POV episode later in the first season. I’m really looking forward to that, because it will be so interesting to see just how far off the mark (or not!) with Joe’s intrusive reading of her personality.

Overall, the series premiere is a strong, promising installment that has me excited to see more — if only because I can’t imagine how much more unhinged Joe will get, given what we’ve already seen of him in this first hour.

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• There are so many contenders for best line of the episode, but I think I need to give it to Joe’s priceless thought to himself while he’s hiding out in Beck’s shower: “I’m not worried. I’ve seen enough romantic comedies to know that guys like me are always getting into situations like this.” Joe has a certain view of himself that is… not accurate or remotely self-aware, and this line encapsulates that issue.
• I know we’re seeing everything from Joe’s obviously-biased perspective… which makes it all the more interesting that he doesn’t clock Peach’s obvious more-than-friendly interest in Beck. I’m excited to see how those two will clash over Beck when Peach’s apparent romantic intent becomes more blatant (because I’m sure it will).
• Hats off to Lou Taylor Pucci, who plays hipster douchebag Benji to an absolute T.
• I can already predict that Joe is going to do something violent and crazy to “protect” Beck from her lecherous professor/advisor.
• The tone of the pilot is so unexpected. It’s a great mix of disturbing and legitimately funny. I was shocked how much I laughed at certain moments, like Beck immediately vomiting on Joe after that grand romantic moment where he saves her from getting run over by a train.

What did you think of this episode of YOU? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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YOU airs Sundays at 10/9c on Lifetime.

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