Guinevere Beck Deserved Better

With the release of You Season 4, I can’t help but think back to Season 1 and 2, when the plot was much simpler and Joe was really just an average Joe– aside from the whole murderer element. By that I mean when Joe’s— and by default, the show’s—world was much smaller, and the plotlines were only relevant to him and the people he was obsessed with. It makes me think of how much easier it was to believe Joe, to want to see the good in him, and how Penn Badgley’s incredible portrayal of him got so many viewers to turn on his first romantic victim, Guinevere Beck. 

With time we’ve been able to see how unreliable of a narrator Joe can really be, especially in Season 4, but back in Season 1 and 2, Badgley made Joe’s actions so justifiable. With someone as obsessive and cunning as Joe, many expected him to fall for someone equally as charming, someone “worthy” of being stalked by him. When Beck failed to match Joe’s wit, audiences were unphased about her death. It was pretty clear from the get-go that Beck wouldn’t survive her relationship with Joe, so there was no surprise when she died in his arms. What did surprise me, however, was how many people were relieved she was dead. I can’t even count how many tweets I remember reading at the time, all complaining about how incredibly unlikable she was. I remember people calling her boring, whiny, insecure, and slandering her for cheating on Joe with her therapist, Dr. Nicky (played by John Stamos). To me, it was a huge shock. How many people missed the point? I thought to myself. 

Guinevere Beck was never meant to be a perfect character—she was deliberately made to be far from it. She’s incredibly flawed. That’s the point. She does the wrong thing, always changes her mind, lies, and can't stand up for herself. She’s a naïve grad student, lost in her own career, dealing with family issues on her own poorly, and just incredibly desperate for love. With such a messy character, it makes you think: Really Joe, her? Yes. Her. 

At her core, Beck is just a normal college student. The reason why so many people hated her was because she forces us to realize the flaws within ourselves. Beck is endearing, though a lot of people would hate to admit it. She tries so hard to make something of herself, to fit in, and many times she fails. She doesn’t always know what she wants; she’s struggling to become her own person and at the same time, desperately seeking for someone to see her for her. That’s real— it’s what we all do in trying to figure out who we are.   

Beck also shows us how easily manipulated that we as an audience can be, even by a fictional character like Joe. The writers tricked the audience into thinking that Joe is somewhat justified in his actions to “help” Beck. It makes us believe his own delusions, into thinking she needs him, not only to make her life easier but to make her more “interesting”. Surrounded by Joe’s continuous monologue, we convince ourselves that he has the potential to do the “right” thing. We convince ourselves that he has the right intentions and he can eventually change with the help of the right person. We subconsciously put the pressure on Beck to be worthy enough to make him change, and when she isn’t, we’re annoyed with her. Joe picks vulnerable people to pursue, and convinces us as we watch him that Beck’s mistakes are enough to let him dictate her life. 

There is also something to be said about the long history of how women are typically portrayed in TV, especially in shows where they are primarily the love interest of a male protagonist. We are so used to seeing vulnerable, weak female characters in need of someone to see, validate, and save them. We see this in Beck, and in the worst way possible. Her life is a giant mess, and all the mistakes she makes that frustrates the audience are a reflection of that. However, just like she says in her final moments, she did not ask for Joe to fix her life. In fact, she’s fully aware that she has toxic tendencies, and initially pushes Joe away from her because of them. We’re so used to seeing a damsel in distress, grateful for her knight in shining armor, that when people saw Beck ungrateful for his unknown efforts and even cheating on him, (before she knew Joe was behind all the changes in her life), they immediately turned on her. The audience who fully saw both sides, who knew that Joe is a murderer, still empathized with him over the woman he was actively stalking. We are so used to a male hero, that even when he proves to be the villain, we still somehow blame female characters for his actions. 

That’s not to say that Beck is the best or the most interesting character on the show. Quite the contrary, there are plenty of characters that outshine Beck, whether for good or bad reasons. With the introduction of Love Quinn in Season 2, we were able to get Beck’s polar opposite. Love, by contrast, was her own person. Despite her deranged family, Love holds her own. She has supportive friends, made her own career, and is equally talented and passionate about it— unlike Beck who constantly struggled with being a writer. However, Love is equally as dangerous as Joe. We wanted to see Love win because we wanted to see Joe’s match take him down; we wanted to see the epitome of feminine rage. And while there are still some qualities within Love that we can see ourselves in, it’s safe to say that a large majority of us could never be as extreme or impulsive as her. We are infatuated with Love because we can’t relate to her, and we didn’t like Beck because it forced us to confront that we could easily be her.

However, with Season 4 and the return of Beck and Love, I have seen a change of heart on Twitter towards seeing Beck on screen. While she only appears as a delusion from Joe’s mind, I saw more praise for her return to confront Joe one last time (at least for now), than I have ever seen before. Perhaps after seeing the rest of Joe’s love interests, who for the most part at least got some warning earlier in their own respective plotlines that Joe was somehow shady, we are acknowledging that maybe we were all a little harsh on Beck. She truly was just a regular girl, wanting to be loved. 

All 4 seasons of You are now streaming on Netflix.