The first season of the stalker drama-thriller 'You', based on the books by Caroline Kepnes, kept fans wanting more even besides its dark and eerie feel to the entire stalker-murderer character played by Gossip Girl star Penn Badgley. His role in this captivating thriller series is as Joe Goldberg, a local bookstore manager in New York. The story is based on his newfound love for the tech-savvy world of social media that leads him to find the love of his life by the name Guinevere Beck ( Elizabeth Lail), a broke NYU graduate student who aspires to be a writer.
The story's slow-paced demeanor follows the journey of a stalker who begins to follow Beck after her first visit to the bookstore where he falls in love with her. Joe is so obsessed with Beck and her life that he finds the need to control it and make it better by eliminating the people who have no value for her existence in the busy life of New York City. Joe's character was perceived as a boy full of charm and etiquette running his bookstore with ease and humility only to later reveal his gameplan.
The stalking reaches a point where he finds out that Beck is someone looking out to be taken care of by somebody who values her for who she is from the inside and not just to sleep around with. Joe's character in the series shows two sides to him - one of a creepy stalker who can just about do anything for the sake of Beck's betterment according to his perception and two, the sober one. Joe feels like he is the guy that people come to for help and he has this urge to help people like Pacco (Luca Pandovan), his neighbor's son, and Beck because, without his presence in their lives, they wouldn't be happy. Season one gives the viewers an insight into Joe's character and the choices he makes to make life better for the love of his life Beck. When she realizes that Joe's presence in her life would be good for her, they begin to date and everything goes well till Beck's posh self-obsessed friend Peach (Shay Mitchell) gets suspicious about Joe's identity and everything that he is. This is where the story becomes enthralling to the audience and raised the viewers to about 60,000 on Netflix.