This past Thursday, February 9, Netflix released half of its new season of the hit series, “You.” The show is well-known for its unique take on love, obsession and fatal attraction. Season four has been long awaited by fans since the last season ended with quite the bang.

This season opens with Joe, the murderous main character, in London posing as a man named Jonathan Moore. In an attempt to give himself a fresh start, Joe becomes a professor teaching “American Iconoclasts.” However, Joe quickly becomes tangled with one of London’s richest friend groups, and soon falls back into old patterns.

The content of season four differs greatly from the previous three seasons. Typically, Joe falls for a woman, stalks and becomes obsessed with her, and it ends sourly and tragically. Season four takes a classic approach, alluding to familiar “who-done-it” stories such as the famous board game “Clue” and many elements from Sherlock Holmes stories. 

The first five episodes of the series moved rather quickly. Joe, who acts as a Sherlock parallel, is trying to find the formidable “Eat the Rich Killer” that has been plaguing the privileged friend group he aligned himself with. To protect them, he stays close to them. Just as in the previous seasons, much of the dialogue is Joe’s inner thoughts, which show what kind of person he really is.

The new approach initially was appealing. The show’s audience may have been growing tired of the same story from Joe, and it can be appreciated that the writers wanted to try something new. Despite this, the writing itself tends to overshadow the point of the story that Joe is the true villain. There were multiple instances of failed attempts to relate to the audience using “Gen Z” slang, such as “soz,” “canceled,” “Twitter troll,” among many more. This language is especially apparent when being used by a completely unrelatable group of people, that being London’s old money 20-something-year-olds.

In addition to having questionable language, the show made an attempt to moralize Joe and his actions. The first few episodes recall some of Joe’s past, unforgivable actions, including multiple counts of stalking and homicide. But later on, the show seems to forget about his past and instead focuses on Joe’s personal redemption. He continuously goes out of his way to protect people, which is typical of him, but part of Joe’s personality is his inability to do something without personal gain. Writing that aspect out utterly changes his character, and too quickly.

Many of the changes to the show, however, have been positive. Penn Badgely recently came out in the press stating that he will no longer be doing intimacy scenes for the show because he wants to be completely dedicated to his wife. This decision was hugely applauded by fans and has been a welcome change to the feeling of the show overall. The last couple episodes especially have a sense of nostalgia by directly referring to the “Clue” board game. In fact, one character uses a candlestick as a weapon, and different crimes were separated by room.

The second half of season four will be released on March 9, giving fans a month to ponder the shocking events. While it is doubtful that some of these flaws will be filtered out, perhaps the show will conclude bigger and better than the previous three seasons.