One of my favorite television tropes is how people are always dressing so inappropriately for funerals. This is true no matter how high or lowbrow the show. (Even Fleabag looked ravishing at her mom’s funeral. No matter how hard she tried, her hair kept falling in that really chic way!) Women, without fail, roll up to TV funerals dressed like they’re ready to go clubbing, and the ladies of You do not disappoint. Delilah’s dress is an especially eyebrow-raising choice for a graveside situation, but let’s not discount Amy/Candace’s attire. Just really questionable choices all around, from everyone but Gabe, who looks fantastic. (He also brought the best gossip: “I heard they found his body in a sex dungeon.”)
Also, people seem to bring plus-ones to funerals on TV shows with some regularity, which is fascinating to me. Who brings a date to a funeral? Funny how it’s so difficult to score a plus-one to a wedding but on TV people are just bringing guests to funerals like it’s no big thing. Arguably it’s the biggest thing, no offense to weddings.
I love that Forty, who had been exiled to Henderson’s social Siberia, is acting like he and Hendy were so close. I also love that Kathy Griffin is on hand to give a eulogy. (It does raise all kinds of meta questions for me, like, how does she feel about playing “herself” when in this alternate reality, she is praising a serial sexual predator who targeted young girls?) In that post-funeral rush, Forty asks “Amy” to move in with him. Love interjects that maybe he shouldn’t be making such a serious decision while he’s grieving, and Forty flips out. He runs away to nurse his sorrow with a matcha. After he leaves, the gang discusses the seven totems of Los Angeles, a smattering of cursed images that, once a person spots them all, transfers upon said viewer the mantle of True Angeleno. They are: a rollerblader in booty shorts, a police helicopter, two starlets wearing the same dress, a pack of coyotes, a dog in a stroller, an off-brand superhero, and a palm tree on fire. By the end of this episode, Joe will catch ’em all. Must he say in a city that disgusts him for the rest of his haunted life?
Speaking of haunted lives: It’s Love’s anniversary with her late husband. Another rare glimpse into an inner life that isn’t Joe’s! This does, however, crush my hope that maybe Love was going to out-psycho the psycho and turn out to have killed her husband. We do learn that Love used to not rely on her parents’ finances, that her independence from her family was an agreed-upon rule of the marriage. Both she and her husband are using “golden parachute” wrong, though, and it’s very distracting. A golden parachute is the payout CEOs and the like get when they’re ousted from their jobs, so they can float gently down to earth and land in a soft pile of money. I think what they mean is … just a safety net? Like a regular one? I suppose it could also be gold.
Back at the apartment, Delilah is struggling, grabbing a curling iron thinking it’s a hairbrush, holy smokes that has to hurt. The balcony sprite is playing caretaker, calling her sister Jessica Jones (all my recaps are connected!) and prescribing “four ibuprofen and a xanny.” Delilah does not have time to medicate or bond. She has to work. Later she will say, unironically, that she is trying to “topple the patriarchy from her two-bedroom apartment.” Honestly I would be cool with it if we just retired the word “patriarchy” for a few forevers.
Forty tells Joe that he’s getting a producer credit on the Beck movie. The contact sheet helps Joe track down Candace, who is renting a room in a “gothic Barbie dream house” that Joe can easily find. Will he be back in time for donuts with Love? Of course not. He’s an hour late and clocks this guy in a Toyota who he’s pretty sure is following him. Turns out it’s a private detective Love’s family has been using for years, and Love deployed him to look into Candace. Joe, not playing it cool at all: “Would you ever hire someone to follow me?!??” RED FUCKING FLAG. YOU IN DANGER GIRL. Love insists this is just a thing that people with money do. Maybe some people have too much money then? Just a thought!
Candace gives Forty the slip so she can scope out Joe’s apartment. She knows exactly what to say to Delilah to get into the apartment — that “Will” is an ex with whom things are complicated, that she thought Hendy “seemed like kind of a perv” — and manages to unlock a window from inside to prepare for a future break-in. I am impressed. When Joe gets home, Ellie drags him for “dripping in hoo-ha.” Joe is SHOOK. Candace “resurrected like some sort of ginger vampire to suck my life away” he says as he assembles his patented DIY homicide kit. (Do you really call someone a ginger if it’s obvious they’re dyeing their hair?) He goes to her house but then — twist! The attacker becomes the attacked!
It’s not Candace, though; it’s the girl whose house she’s renting. Who just so happens to be a dominatrix who is really good at tying knots. Joe’s cover — that he was acting out this elaborate rape fantasy upon which he and his beloved agreed in advance — is pretty smooth, considering. “You poor pathetic boy,” says his captor, dumping out the contents of his backpack. “You went to Home Depot.” She calls Forty a “douche-canoe,” threatens to throat-punch Joe with her Louboutin, and sends him on his way with a, “Call yourself a Lyft, sweetie, and get the fuck out of my house.” I … love her?? She is my new favorite character.
Candace and Joe are just assailants crossing in the night, because at this very moment, she is breaking into his apartment. And who does she find there? Love. Love who learned from her P.I. that Candace is not an indie film producer but is “barely a waitress” with no permanent address and a history of being institutionalized. (To be fair, Forty isn’t an indie filmmaker so much as he’s “barely a barista.”)
Candace tries to tell Love the truth: That Will’s real name is Joe Goldberg and that he almost killed her. But of course she sounds completely insane. She does produce one bit of evidence that sets off a little alarm in Love’s brain: a photo of her and Joe, from happier, coupled-up times.
When Joe comes home, Love is there, icing cinnamon buns. I CANNOT with Love here. Like, she made an entire batch of shitty-tasting cinnamon buns just so she could say that it sucks to be lied to? Like … that’s not really an equivalent lie? When he said they tasted like shit for a second I thought, omg, is there actually shit in the buns???? But no, it’s just salt. My great hangup with this show is that it clearly wants to be crazy but it refuses to commit in these moments and go full bonkers. This is its greatest flaw.
Also, as I did to Beck before her, I am screaming at Love through the screen: If you thought there was even a 5 percent chance that your boyfriend was a serial killer, or that he’d BURIED HIS PREVIOUS GIRLFRIEND ALIVE, why would you EVER put yourself in a situation where you are alone with him, in his apartment?! Why wouldn’t you want to meet in a public place, or with your friends on the other side of a door?
Joe admits that his name is really Joe, but he spins it so that Candace sounds like the lunatic and he was running away from her. He has a whole riff on how Love can call him anything as long as she keeps, you know, calling him. Candace also told Love about Beck, but Joe insists he and Beck only went on one date. Love says Candace is gone for real, that she threatened her and gave her money. Oookay. Joe, desperate, tells Love he’s never loved anyone like this before. Love feels the same, but oh well, she’s dumping him anyway. I write now she’s DEFINITELY gonna die :(.
At Anavrin the next day, Joe attempts to quit his job. Forty, however, believes in Joe, and not just because he thinks “Joe Goldberg” is a better producer name. Forty says Joe is the most authentic person he knows, just in case you were still wondering if he’s still the worst judge of character in this show.
When Joe gets home, he sees Ellie storming out of Delilah’s, so he pops in, concerned neighbor that he is. “It’s worse than I thought,” he thinks to himself, taking in the sight of a normal woman doing her job, surrounded by organized notes. Delilah is fuming about how “this town enables rapists.” I write in my notes DELILAH GO TO THERAPY DO NOT GO TO JOE, PLEASE DO NOT HOOK UP. Because no one on this show listens to me as I shout at them helplessly from my couch, they have sex. Joe refers to this, in his head, as “the least I can do,” which, WOW scumbag city. His post-coital professional advice is not really the direction I’d go — essentially, why be the New Yorker when you can be babe.net? — and Delilah kicks him out. So she still has some common sense. For now. I will hold onto this. It is all that I have in this cruel world, where palm trees burn in the night.
