Looking for your next Netflix binge-watch? Love watching handsome, brilliant, murderous nerds fall in love with women? Interested in watching said nerds trying to woo women while simultaneously cleaning up the bloodstains of the people they murdered? If this is you: while you’re on the line for the mental hospital you so badly need to be checked into, consider watching You. 

You follows Joe, a brilliant young bookstore owner that protects the woman he falls in with, at any cost. Joe eliminates anything that might disturb these women, especially people.   Every episode of the series begs the question: What would you do for love? And in Joe’s case, anything. Penn Bagley, who plays this homicidal psychopath of a main character, carries the series on his shoulders with his superior yet morbid acting. He reminds the watchers that his character should not be swooned over (yet we do it anyway).

You portrays a compelling yet scary perspective of 21st-century stalking, with Joe using social media in disturbing ways to keep tabs on his unlucky love interests. He makes messes and the show revolves around him cleaning them up, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You is O.J. Simpson mixed in with every modern love story. Boy meets girl, boy kills anyone that gets in the way of him and girl.

When I first started watching the show it felt very unsettling but in a good way. The main character seemed very relatable (when you push away all of the murder stuff). The show’s main character, Joe, is a self-proclaimed “nice guy”, keeping the girls he is obsessed with out of harm’s way. Joe does anything to make them notice them, he even goes as far as taking other people’s lives just so he can get a glance or smile. All in all, the show was extremely entertaining, with a new girl every season to be obsessed with.  

I love this show. You can relate to the main character, even if he is a serial murderer. The show is smart enough to let us know that to sympathize with Joe is to be complicit in his crimes. Every time you feel you’re being drawn in, the show pulls the rug from under you and reminds you that he is not the romantic hero you are looking for. Anytime Joe is doing horrible things, I wish he would get caught, I hate him. But the second the cops get close, I hope with all of my heart he gets away without a scratch. It’s addicting. 

The characters are so amazingly built that by the end of the series you can’t tell if you hated them or loved them. The storylines are similar throughout each season, but the new characters and new settings manage to not make it feel recycled. Each season builds on the previous season’s guilty pleasures, and it’s amazing. 

If anyone is skeptical about watching the show, I would recommend going ahead and watching it. It only took me a week to get through with the show’s three seasons. Every episode is about an hour. The show’s more than just about obsession and murder, it also highlights really important and pressing issues in our time like masculinity and feminism, class, race, and the use of modern technology. Not only that, the show has very good-looking people in it. A very necessary reason to put in the review.

Overall, You is a very compelling and amazing show. You’ll be binging so much that the “Are You Still Watching?” screen will become a common sight. Not only does the series look over depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses, but it also makes sure viewers know the dangers of social media. The show also handles abuse from parents and from partners. With the series coming out in 2018, we mark almost four amazing years with You, and you KNOW all of us will be marking our calendars for Season 4.