Why ‘YOU’ is the Perfect Netflix Show

YOU, Lifetime’s addictive soap opera about stalkers, social media, and the NYC literary scene, has somehow become Netflix’s first big hit of 2019. The series hit Netflix right smack in the middle of the 2018 holiday season, and by all metrics, has become a mega-hit on the streaming service in a way it never could on cable. YOU isn’t the first show to find its legs on Netflix — just think of Breaking Bad, Riverdale, and Schitt’s Creek — but it might have gotten the biggest boost from the streaming service in recent memory.

Data aside, not every show pops on Netflix like YOU did, and not every show would garner Netflix’s full support like YOU has. The streaming service picked up the show from Lifetime and ordered a second original season, and proudly featured it on its home page banner for some of its highest traffic days. Now Netflix could pick just about any promising cable show to rescue from cancellation, but they put their force around YOU because it is the perfect Netflix show: sexy, shocking, and delectably entertaining.

YOU is just the latest addictive show from super producers Sera Gamble (Supernatural, The Magicians) and Greg Berlanti (Arrow, Riverdale). Based on the books by Caroline Kepne, YOU takes us inside the mind of Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgely), a seemingly nice bookseller who develops a dangerous obsession with a grad student named Beck (Elizabeth Lail). The series satirizes the clichés of romantic comedies, staging Joe’s various “meet cutes” with Beck as the dangerous result of stalking and manipulation, and quickly reveals Joe’s dark side. (That is, we see the depths of his sadism by the end of the first episode.)

YOU sounds like it could be the stuff of dark, grisly nightmare fuel. Think Mindhunter, but about serial killers going fishing for true love in the big city. But it wins you over with its witty, sardonic tone. YOU is emphatically a satire, which means that it undercuts its horror with wry humor and really scathing social commentary. In lesser hands, these nuanced barbs could fall flat, but actors Penn Badgley and Shay Mitchell are graduates of the millennial soap. Both Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars used sharp dialogue and glamorous backdrops to distance the viewer from trauma or disgust. YOU just feels like the natural graduate level version of those earlier hits. It only happens to be darker, meaner, and a whole lot sexier.

So about that sex factor… The sex appeal of the show obviously plays into the show’s success. The opening scene of YOU gives us an overt mention that Beck is not wearing a bra, and a pivotal scene involves Joe being able to watch Beck not only have sex, but pleasure herself, just by staring into her apartment window. But beyond the obvious voyeuristic fantasies the show caters to, the sex on YOU is a huge part of why YOU works. It colors in Joe’s obsession as a form of romance and tricks you into thinking his crush is not about control, but intimacy. (Hence why so many weirdoes on the internet seem to be crushing on Joe in return?)

When you break it down, YOU organically does what Netflix’s algorithm tries to Frankenstein into being. It tells a bracing story that appeals to soap opera fans, crime thriller obsessives, comedy connoisseurs, and suckers for romance. It’s the rare show that seems to be able to bundle up all the major groups that flock to Netflix for their kicks. Moreover, it’s structured in a way that begs for binging. There are cliffhangers and questions that entice you to keep going down this creepy rabbit hole.

What it all boils down to is that YOU‘s success tells us as much about the power of Netflix to hype up a show as it does about the kind of show that Netflix users really, really, really want.

Watch YOU on Netflix