You · Season 1 · Netflix
You Season 1
You Season 1 is a MUST-WATCH, BollyMeter 8.5/10. 10 episodes on Netflix from 9 September 2018.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
Season 1 premiered on Lifetime in September 2018 before Netflix acquired it and launched it globally in December 2018, at which point it became a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Critics scored it at 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 62 reviews, with the Guardian calling out its smartest formal move: the show makes viewers complicit in Joe's rationalisation, then holds that against them. Penn Badgley's voiceover is the engine - sardonic, charming, delusional. The New York City bookstore milieu grounds a premise that could easily tip into camp but stays genuinely unsettling. Audiences largely agreed, and the social-media discourse around Joe's fandom became part of the cultural conversation the series was deliberately staging.
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The Room
“It is smart enough to let us know that to sympathise with Joe is to be complicit in his crimes.”
Guardian“Its sparklingly cruel sense of humour is what makes it compulsively watchable.”
New Statesman
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1Pilot8.0
A sharp pilot where charm becomes surveillance, and the rescue scene makes Ethan’s danger harder to dismiss.
The moment: Joe's first covert look into Beck's apartment window, filmed from Beck's perspective as a trespass but narrated by Joe as intimacy.
Full review of E1 → - E2The Last Nice Guy in New York8.0
A sharp, invasive hour where phones become traps and Joe turns concern into the cleanest excuse for control.
Full review of E2 → - E3Maybe8.1
Joe turns romance into cover, and the episode is sharpest when his sweetest gestures smell like cleanup.
Full review of E3 → - E4The Captain7.2
A sharp Beck-centered hour turns sex, shame, and secrecy into pressure, though Joe’s threat stays slightly undercooked.
Full review of E4 → - E5Living with the Enemy7.3
A claustrophobic Beck hour where intimacy curdles into control, sharpened by Peach’s sabotage and cramped by nonstop dialogue.
Full review of E5 → - E6Amour Fou8.2
A tense, clever hour where every rescue plan becomes another cage built around Beck.
Full review of E6 → - E7Everythingship7.8
Joe's protect-by-controlling method finally produces exactly the collapse it was always going to, and the episode never needs to raise its voice to prove it.
The moment: The moment a suspicion Joe planted without ever seeming to push finally becomes the reason Beck says the relationship is over.
Full review of E7 → - E8You Got Me, Babe7.2
A tense relationship hour where silence cuts cleanest, even when the dialogue keeps explaining the wound.
Full review of E8 → - E9Candace8.3
Joe demands trust while hiding from truth, and the episode makes his romance look like evidence.
Full review of E9 → - E10Bluebeard's Castle8.3
A cruel, controlled finale that turns Joe's love story into a cage, then lets Candace crack the lock.
Full review of E10 →