WARNING: Spoilers for all of season 4 below.You are he’s never been shy about the way he wants his audience to suspend disbelief. It is essential that the audience must be willing to accept that Joe Goldberg has been murdering his way across the United States since he was a little boy with little eyes raised. In some cases, it’s this suspension of disbelief that has allowed the show to pull off some of its best moments (the season 3 episode where Joe and Love try to find four come to mind). You are season 4 part 2 breaks through disbelief, however, and lands somewhere completely ungodly, abandoning faith in its audience for cheap pranks and fake references that felt like a small thing to those who came on the journey.
You are season 4 part 2 picks up right where the last batch of events left off. Joe has returned to London but has kept the identity of the Eat the Rich killer a secret to ensure his own secrets are safe and to give himself time to come up with a plan. Meanwhile, the rest of the group is dealing with the aftermath of the events at Phoebe’s country manor. Phoebe, in particular, is struggling with what happened, while the rest of the group are quietly trying to move on from Gemma’s death. Rhys continues his bid for mayor of London while blackmailing Joe, and, as chaos ensues, things quickly spiral out of control.
WARNING: The rest of this review discusses the plot of You season 4 part 2 in detail.It is impossible to discuss You are season 4 without acknowledging the twists revealed in the second half of the season. After a largely staged tangent involving Lady Phoebe and a stalker, it is revealed that Joe has been cheating on his relationship with Rhys Montrose all along. They only met very briefly and everything that happened at Lady Phoebe’s mansion, as well as the murders that Joe has covered up for Rhys, are all committed by Joe while he is in a state of some kind of exile. What’s more, Joe didn’t let Marienne escapeat the beginning of the season – he has been keeping her in one of his signature glass cages inside the London Underground. Joe, who is a real Eat the Rich killer, shares his mind with Jonathan Moore, the smart professor in London that he so much wants to be.
Like the split between Jonathan and Joe, the second half of You are Season 4 feels disjointed, splitting its time between Lady Phoebe’s impending wedding to her sleazy boyfriend Adam and Joe finding out what he’s been up to in London. Also thrown in quickly is a subplot involving Kate’s father, played by Greg Kinnear, as well as Nadia’s investigation into Joe’s true identity. The latter is the only bright spot in a dark hole of confusion as Nadia tries to free Marienne from Joe’s cage. Tati Gabrielle sells Marienne’s despair and love for her daughter with all she can muster, but even she is not freed from You areit’s a joke when another fake turn claims she’s died of suicide (something very out of character for the doting mother) only to reveal that it’s all as part of some master plan devised by the college freshman.
Admittedly, this critic found the first half of You are season 4 fun. It kept the bonkers stories that made the third season such a success, even if it felt a little worse. Placing Joe at the center of a murder mystery felt like an inspired choice and, in order for a show like You are to stay alive, the audience must be kept on their toes. Part 1 certainly accomplished that. Showing that it was a lie, on the other hand, just feels like a cheap trick, showing that You are he has no faith in his audience.
In the end, the new season feels like several ideas have been applied to one group of programs that are too big. The Eat the Rich killer is a fun concept, but there isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said. If anything, it feels like a stalled plot to get to the real story at the middle of the season that sees Joe reckoning with his actions. He never had to face his decisions the way he does in season 4, but watching this evolution in real time would have been much better. ‘ better and easier than pulling one over on an audience in the form of a twist that many saw coming from the beginning. .
With You are season 4 ends on a happy note, with Joe free to hang out with Kate (who is okay with him killing her father), the show could go to anywhere from here. But it seems to have been answered because Joe Goldberg has never felt aimless.
All series of D.O Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.
