@highfalutin said in Good TV:
@aria said in Good TV:
I just finished it. Having read the novel when it was released, I.... have complicated feelings about the show. I mean, I loved it. I really loved it. But the book made me deeply uncomfortable with its fascinating portrayal of the narrator and how truly disturbed and delusional he was. The show made me deeply uncomfortable with myself, because despite knowing from the very beginning -- even without being familiar with the book, so no spoilers -- that he's a fucking psycho stalker, I actually really liked him and was kind of rooting for him at the end?
I'm not sure whether that says more about the incredibly fucked up idea of 'romance' we have portrayed in media or about me, but either way, I'm sitting here pretty skeeved out by having thought to myself, "Aww, Joe. You'd be such a great guy if you weren't a violent lunatic." And this is from someone who reacts with an instinctive, visceral anger to the slightest hint of Nice Guy (tm) bullshit after horrible real life experiences growing up.
Man, exactly this. All of it. When I got a pleasant stomach flutter as Joe was running at a full pelt for Beck's place (accompanied by a straight up grin when he tried to do that romantic "stone tapping on the window" and it broke instead) I was so sickened by my own reactions I almost turned it off.
I found myself rooting for him consistently, and that's insane. I don't know if the credit goes to the actor who portrayed him or the story - probably a combination of the two - but they did a hell of a job. I deeply enjoyed the show. I just don't know what to think about how I responded to the "protagonist."
I honestly feel like a fair portion of that was the actor? I mean, in the novel they do a much better job of portraying just how angry and disgusted he is. Don't get me wrong -- Peach is horrible and her arrogant, classist crap is a big part of it. In the show, it makes you feel bad for Joe; in the novel a lot of it is countered by his internal rage centered on how very little he thinks of them, how he -- the poor, uneducated, working class white man who is just smart and well read -- is so much better than them, and it just sort of clicks in your brain. Like, "Ohh. OHH. He's that guy, the ill-adjusted, socially isolated 'intellectual' white boy that thinks he deserves whatever he wants because he's absorbed this narrative and he's just angry he isn't getting what he's owed and congratulating himself for being such a 'gentleman'." And having existed in the super misogynistic circle that was 90s gaming culture, I was all "I know this guy. I know twenty of these guys and it's terrifying."
The show trades a lot on Penn Badgley's charm and good looks, but if there's one thing that I give it credit for, it's being very keenly aware of that. If you read any of the interviews or tweets or whatever he's made about his views on the show, how looks and charm and whiteness and maleness are so valued in our culture that we skew towards giving Joe the benefit of the doubt even though we know he's a murderer, it's brilliant. It becomes a different kind of horror, one that's as much a send-up of our culture and our complicity in these stories, in the idea of Beck as some sort of prize that Joe's supposed to win for doing everything 'right', a horror with ourselves and our reactions.
I love it. I love it so much. SO MUCH.
A++. Would buy again.
ETA: Having started watching this right after finishing the Ted Bundy tapes -- like, Netflix was all, "Hey, you apparently like shows about violent lunatics that murder women (which I am mentally questioning even as I type this, like maybe I should just go watch Fuller House or something for awhile), you should watch You! You'll like it!", things got.... weird. Like at one point I was examining my reactions to Joe and kind of went "*Ohh, fuck. This is how Bundy got married while he was literally on trial for raping and murdering a twelve year old girl, isn't it?!?!", and it's a whole..... thing to sudden feel a wash of sympathy and pity for Carol Ann Boone.