With the first portion of You’s fourth season out, it bears noting that there have been few scenes as indelible as one that took place in the final episode (“What Is Love?”) of season three, during which Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) drags his wife’s corpse across the floor to the tune of Taylor Swift’s “exile.” A song from folklore that was released as the second single, it features Bon Iver, and accordingly maximizes that overall “sad indie” sound Swift was going for back in 2020, when most people wanted to slit their wrists because they couldn’t do much besides go to the grocery store (spoiler alert: that’s all life boils down to anyway). To play it contrasted against the murdering and disposal of one’s significant other, therefore, lends a different layer of “sadness” to the tune, which is all about having outgrown the person who is now your ex—with the female counterpart in the duo noting that she had given plenty of warning signs before the imminent demise (therefore echoing the theme and structure of Postal Service’s “Nothing Better”). Swift and Iver rue in unison, “I think I’ve seen this film before/And I didn’t like the ending/You’re not my homeland anymore/So what am I defending now?/You were my town, now I’m in exile, seein’ you out/I think I’ve seen this film before/So I’m leavin’ out the side door.” This being exactly what Joe does after he sets their house ablaze with the stove.
At the beginning of the episode, Joe mentions Shirley Jackson’s declaration (in her story, “Pillar of Salt”) about how suburbia is where people start to come apart. Unravel. Mentally, needless to say. More specifically, the quote goes, “Upstairs Margaret said abruptly, ‘I suppose it starts to happen first in the suburbs,’ and when Brad said, ‘What starts to happen?’ she said hysterically, ‘People starting to come apart.’” Yes, there’s an entire genre about “coming apart” in the suburbs (mostly written by Richard Yates). But Joe has been “split” since childhood, pulling something of a Dexter Morgan by compartmentalizing his “alter ego” and using it for “good.” Joe, of course, views “good” as killing anyone who gets in the way of his “ownership” over a current obsession. The latest in season three (briefly extending into season four before Joe gets distracted by a new girl to pump) is Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle). The surly librarian (is there any other kind?) who makes Joe all the more certain that marrying Love (Victoria Pedretti) and having a child with her was a huge mistake (and not just because it entailed all those sex scenes Badgley now won’t do). Even though he plays the “protective papa” role well enough, he’s not so caring about Henry as to take him along when he flees from Madre Linda (a fictional town meant to be somewhere in the Silicon Valley realm). “It wasn’t fair of me, but it was the right thing for Henry,” he assures the viewer as the finale comes to a close. The abandonment comes after finishing Love off, of course.
Tidily wrapping up his “chapter” in Madre Linda by turning Love into a “Mrs. Lovett” figure, Joe bakes a meat pie with one of his toes in it (which he cuts off himself—committed to the authenticity of the narrative he’s trying to create). The wordy email Joe then sends to the HOA on Love’s behalf when he’s done putting together all the fake details goes, “I moved to the suburbs because I bought into the dream. Community, prosperity and, most of all, safety. But I never felt safe here. Judged from day one, for my past, my body, how I was raising my child. If I wasn’t perfect, I would lose it all. A game so rigged, it could only exist in a world that hates women.” It all sounds pretty rational until the suicide note Joe pens (making him all the more “undercover” misogynistic because he thinks he can write women so well) veers into a rant about how she needed to do what she “had to” in order to really protect her family: kill the adulterer next door, kill and frame the anti-vaxxer who got her child sick, trap the couple (Sherry and Cary) who tried to “sabotage” her, etc. Of course, these were things Joe was complicit in, pawning his own crimes off on her and leaving her holding the (body) bag, as it were. Thanks to the benefit of her corpse to take the blame for everything. As women so often do no matter what their “motives” might have been. Men like Joe, on the other hand, are examined and analyzed so as to determine what might have went wrong in their life to make them “this way.” Women, not so much. They’re either psycho bitches or docile duckies who can get along in a patriarchal society.
In this regard, another appropriate track from the folklore album to have included in this episode might have been “madwoman,” on which Swift laments with a controlled rage in her voice, “Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy/What about that?/And when you say I seem angry, I get more angry.” She builds on the theme of being branded as the “crazy” woman (usually as a result of the wonders of gaslighting) with the chorus, “And there’s nothing like a mad woman/What a shame she went mad/No one likes a mad woman/You made her like that/And you’ll poke that bear ‘til her claws come out/And you find something to wrap your noose around/And there’s nothing like a mad woman.” Sometimes referred to as, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Which is why Love decides to kill Joe when she unearths his roaming attraction for Marienne. Alas, after Joe outwits her plan to kill him with his own plan to kill her, Love rightly assesses, “We’re perfect for each other.” The way Joker and Harley Quinn are (how fitting, then, that Love’s last name is Quinn). They’re both “anti-heroes,” if you will. Speaking of that particular single, Penn Badgley’s commitment to Swift’s work under the pretense of being “Joe Goldberg” continued when he joined TikTok to enact his own “Anti-Hero” challenge by trying to run away from himself, only to find that it was him, hi, he’s the problem, it’s him. This realized after trying to run away from the person chasing him, only to open the door and find the pursuer (himself) there, too. And yes, so much of Swift’s oeuvre can be sardonically applied to You, especially a song like “You Belong With Me.” Then there’s “Bad Blood,” “Look What You Made Me Do,” “Blank Space,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “All Too Well,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “I Did Something Bad,” “Don’t Blame Me,” “Call It What You Want,” “Lover,” “The Archer,” “ME!” and, specifically for season four, “London Boy.” The list of applicable songs from Swift goes on and on, but something about “exile” being wielded for this particular scene would make it difficult to top in terms of other songs from her canon being placed over a certain moment in You.
Despite this unforgettable soundtrack instance, You’s third season, expectedly, was met with eyebrow raises from most viewers (except probably Cardi B) who weren’t about the suburbia-driven plot, and felt that the show was starting to drag. Regardless, the You team is on board for a five-season track to wrap up any supposed “arc” for Badgley’s character. Who, incidentally, was only really challenged by Love (this being part of why he killed her—men hate being outdone by a woman in their “field”). A person described as having “no loyalty for anyone but herself.” Sounds, ultimately, like Joe. The difference being that he uses the guise of “doing the right thing” to justify every murder, as well as the subsequent inevitable need to abandon the life he faked in a new city because of his obsession du moment.
At the conclusion of “What Is Love?,” Joe can feel good about what he’s done. Even tell himself that he created a legacy for Love that she herself never would have secured by turning her into “a bit of a folk hero” (hence, folklore being the perfect album of Swift’s to pull from). “More famous, even, then Guinevere Beck.” With the dragging of her poisoned (with aconite) husk to the kitchen area (where women belong, right?), the brutal coda of a relationship that a man decided needed to end on his terms is highlighted with macabre flair in the lyrics, “So step right out/There is no amount of crying I can do for you/All this time/We always walked a very thin line/You didn’t even hear me out.” The next round of verses then includes Taylor’s echoing rebuttal via, “You never gave a warning sign (I gave so many signs)/All this time I never learned to read your mind (never learned to read my mind)/I couldn’t turn things around (you never turned things around).”
Joe, it would seem, hasn’t been able to turn them around in season four either. But at least in season three, underloved as it was, there was a far more memorable scene to tie to it than there has been thus far in season four. However, the trailer for Part Two of the season has teased the return of Love. Whether it’s in a haunted, Shakespearean (because London?) sort of way or not, perhaps it means further use of Swift’s music somewhere in the fray. For, in spite of Badgley noting of Joe’s likely take on Swift, “I think, unfortunately, he would despise her. Because she’s successful and blond, maybe? I don’t know, but I think he would,” she’s thus far provided the most iconic marriage between music and action in the series. The only song that could really outdo it would be Mariah Carey’s “Obsessed” played during the series finale.
