Swing and a Miss
Episode 8 of You Season 3 begins with Joe still reeling from Love’s idea of having an open marriage. Joe decides to play along though, believing it’s a good way to disguise his feelings for Marienne. But of course, there’s also an elephant in the room – James. What exactly happened to him. Was he really killed by Love? Joe heads to work where Marienne reveals that she’s in the final of her illustration contest. She never actually submitted her work though – that’s all Joe’s doing. Marienne is undeniably excited about it but puts on a front for the other workers to avoid suspicion. However, Ryan continues to hang about like a bad smell and he causes no end of problems for Marienne. She believes Ryan is planning something but right now, it’s unclear what. To be prepared for this, Marienne asks Joe to be a character witness, something to help her upcoming custody hearing. Back home, Joe watches as Theo grows closer to Love. She thinks it’s making him jealous but as Joe narrates once more, we lean that he’s feeling a whole lot of nothing. Love has an ulterior motive here though, and intends to use Theo to find out what Matthew is planning. And that opportunity arrives that evening. When Matthew heads out, Theo sneaks into his office and finds a whole bunch of cameras connected to Love. She’s the target he’s after, and as Theo hits out at him over his obsession, Matthew explodes in rage and forces Theo to pack his bags and get out. That evening, the open marriage is taken to the next level when Cary and Sherry show up to get busy. As Joe is taken away and given some testosterone by his “friend” Cary, a call from Marienne sees Joe come crashing down to Earth. Ryan has ruined Marienne’s chances of being published, sending explicit pictures to the illustration competition. Marienne needs a friend and invites Joe over but obviously it’s not a great night to do that. So naturally things get hot and heavy between Joe and Sherry but Love throws out the safe word and hurries downstairs. Love is a complete amateur when it comes to subtlety and she and Joe end up arguing in the living room. As things grow heated, Love suddenly reveals that she killed Natalie. Oh no… This serves as the catalyst for everything going completely awry. Joe ends up fighting with Cary while Love fights with Sherry. Bearing in mind that there are cameras all over the place, someone is bound to see this, right? Wrong. Joe incapacitates Cary outside the house in the back garden while Love knocks out Sherry upstairs. With both knocked out, the couple drive up to the bakery and dump the pair in the glass cage in the basement. Ironically, this leads to the pair having the best sex of their life. The next day, Marienne does a great job at her hearing but there’s a problem. Ryan and the judge are good friends and it would seem as if the system is rigged against her. As the episode closes out, Love and Joe watch on the monitors as Cary and Sherry wake up. How are they going to deal with this situation?
The Episode Review
So You throws up another contrived scenario for our married couple to deal with, thanks to Love’s amateurish ways and talking way too loudly about Natalie’s murder. Given how unhinged she is, it’s a wonder Joe and Love have managed to get away with this until now. Her character is intentionally annoying though but at the same time, if this season doesn’t end with her behind bars or dead then it’ll be a real shame. Instead, we get a good chunk of run-time dedicated to the swinging party and Marienne’s issues at work. While this sets up a good internal conflict with Joe, it’s not exactly enthralling TV — especially when you compare it to season 1. It would seem as if this show is happy to coast along the track of mediocrity and while this season isn’t outright bad, it’s not exactly great either. This is a definite step down from season 2 and I think some of that comes from the intense focus on Love – who’s nowhere near as deeply crafted and interesting as Joe. Still, we’ll have to wait and see what the final two episodes have n store for us!
