‘You’ Season 5 series review: Penn Badgley’s Joe Goldberg swims gleefully in a crimson tide

Bibliophile serial killer, Joe Goldberg’s triumphant return to the Big Apple is marred by old and new threats in the ludicrous final season

After the horrors in the Old Blighty in Season 4, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) has returned home to New York. Told over five seasons and 50 episodes beginning in 2018, You, based on on Caroline Kepnes’ book series, tells the story of a well read book store owner, whose endless search for true love invariably ends in murder.

Season 5 sees Joe married to the fabulously wealthy Kate (Charlotte Ritchie), who has managed to smooth over all his murderous deeds, bought his beloved bookstore, Mooney’s, and got Joe’s son, Henry (Frankie DeMaio) back into the family fold.

The golden couple are paparazzi darlings and Joe is living a fulfilled life till naturally everything begins to fall apart. Kate is the CEO of the infinitely wealthy and equally shady T.R. Lockwood Corporation. She wants to buy good karma by donating enormous sums of money to charitable causes much to the dismay of board members including her wicked half sister Reagan (Anna Camp). Reagan’s twin, Maddy (Camp in a double role) is a thrice divorced socialite, in something that is “vaguely PR”, and the ultimate party girl.

Kate’s half brother Teddy (Griffin Matthews), who was ignored by the Lockwoods for being born on the wrong side of the blanket, is an ally to Joe and Kate. When family friend Uncle Bob (Michael Dempsey) leaks some damaging information to the media and plots a no-confidence motion against Kate with Reagan, Joe finds his dark side rising to the challenge.

Joe writes out his murderous fantasies at Mooney’s on a typewriter (pretentious no?) till he does not, which Joe gleefully says is a resurrection and feels fantastic. In the midst of all the uproar at Chez Lockwood, Joe meets a fascinating book thief, or rather borrower, called Bronte (Madeline Brewer). The literary allusions come thick and fast as Joe almost brains Bronte with a bust of Emily Dickinson.

Against his better judgement, Joe hires Bronte and gets drawn into her life as a struggling playwright. He also meets Bronte’s quirky friends, Clayton (Tom Francis), Dominique (Natasha Behnam) and Phoenix (b). When it rains, it pours and soon Joe is juggling many balls, from Henry attacking Reagan’s daughter at school to putting the wrong twin in his reassembled glass cage, all the while fighting the attraction he feels for Bronte. Ghosts from murders past including Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail), Marienne (Tati Gabrielle), and Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman) refuse to stay buried.

Season 5 dabbles with themes and concerns of the books including the distorted truths of social media and romance novels, particularly the romantasy sub-genre. Badgley dives into his “soft boy misogynist/control hungry goblin” role with gusto even as the 10 episodes fly by in a flurry of great-looking clothes and homes, clichés and scenery-chewing lines with every character, including Joe, getting a fairly satisfactory conclusion to their arcs.