You season 4 part 1 review: Everyone’s the worst, so the bad guy’s a hero

For three seasons now, Netflix’s YouHe has taken up a dangerous hobby: flirting with people of bad taste. Joe Goldberg is played by Penn Badgley. He’s an eccentric bookseller and has an unsavory habit of killing people or stalking them. Each season features It is possible toJoe wants to be better but can’t. He keeps getting into interesting relationships with women. You mustFind out more. He must either continue doing horrible things or meet someone who is worse. He moves to England in this fourth season.

That’s the beauty of a TV show that features a terrible person. The only way to prevent him getting arrested is to have him move from one place to another. The result is a show that viewers can relate to. You can also see it hereYou can jump from genre to genre. It is possible to’s first season was a dark twist on the New York City meet-cute romance, its second shifted things to Los Angeles to add a bit of West Coast satire to the mix, and the third saw Joe settle down with his murderous impulses and the show became a domestic farce, using murder to underline the stakes of marriage and parenthood.

It is possible to’s fourth season, however, starts with Joe feeling the heat stateside and going on the lam in Europe. Joe grows a mane and changes his name. Joe is offered a position as an English professor and joins a group that includes old-money debutantes. This new crowd is brash, entitled, and getting murdered one by one by a mysterious “Eat the Rich Killer.” Even better: this killer seems like they want to frame Joe — and they know his secret.

Netflix Photo

In transforming into a murder mystery, It is possible to’s writers, headed by showrunner Sera Gamble of The Magicians fame, invert the series’ usual formula. This time, Joe is the one being stalked by someone who knows a little too much about his life — including the murders that he’s trying to run from. Of course, that doesn’t mean Joe isn’t You can also see it hereFixated on a new person. This time, it’s Kate (Charlotte Ritchie), a gallery manager who lives next door to Joe and gets wrapped up in his life after her sort-of boyfriend, Joe’s arrogant university co-worker Malcolm (Stephen Hagan) is the first victim of the Eat the Rich killer.

Netflix will not continue this season like previous seasons. It is possible to Split into two parts. The first five episodes are dropping today with the remaining five following on March 9. There’s a natural cliffhanger at the end of part 1 that has the potential to change the entire course of the season in a way that makes the wait for part 2 unbearable, but it’s also a cliffhanger that brings It is possible to’s chameleonlike ability to genre hop into question, making viewers wonder how far is too far.

Netflix Photo

Part 1 is a bit messy, but fun — the new cast of rich jerks are perfectly detestable targets for Joe’s sardonic narration, and it’s built around the sexy cat-and-mouse game between Joe and Kate. Each suspects the other in the Eat the Rich killings in some way, but they’re both drawn to each other due to their compulsion to believe that they are good people shunted by circumstance into do bad things: Joe with his occasional murder, Kate with her exorbitant wealth. Part 1 ends before making any particular statement about these ideas — in fact, its class war is aesthetic only, a means of placing Joe in a context where he is, at least in the moment, not the worst person in the room.

Many It is possible to’s knack for creating a protagonist that the viewer both wants to watch and not root for lies on the shoulders of Penn Badgley’s performance. Badgley’s performance is both light and dark. His wry smile quickly turns to a discomfiting look, which hints at the truth beneath his skin. It’s why It is possible to’s best episodes can keep viewers at the edge of their seat as they hope Joe — not always the brightest criminal — evades capture but also know that in the end, it would be satisfying to watch him rot. The first half of season 4 begins with a reason to root for him, as he’s a bad person who may be the only one capable of catching someone worse. Next, the season ends on an uneasy note, as Joe asks a question that could threaten to undercut what the show has done so far. Is Joe a helpful monster or a monstrous hero.

It is possible toNetflix now streams season 4 part 1. Part 2 will be available on March 9.