In defense of Beck: A ‘You’ retrospective

I love Beck. I know, I know, she’s widely known as the least likeable female protagonist of the series, coming second only to Brontë/Louise from the latest season. What can I say, Love Quinn just doesn’t do it for me. I need my naïve, messy, self-centered Beck.

I think there are two viewpoints that often collide when speaking of fictional characters and the appreciation (or lack thereof) of them. There’s two lenses to view them through: are they a good person or are they a good character. I think we can all unanimously agree that Joe is not a good person. When your murder rap sheet is as long as his is, no knight in shining armour romance fantasies can defend it. Even if some people he killed were awful – looking at you, Benji – I think we can all agree that Joe is not a good person.

But, he is (mostly) a well-written and interesting character. Listening to how he justifies the killings to himself, somehow always managing to convince himself that he is a good guy, a nice guy. It’s entertaining.

Most people would say Beck is neither. I think she’s both. Hear me out.

One of the criticisms Beck often falls victim to is that she’s boring. This would fall into the ‘not a good character’ category. I think her being boring is sort of the point of the show, or the first season of the show based on the book You by Caroline Kepnes. While I personally don’t find her character boring, per se, I do find her quite normal. She’s not a Love Quinn or a Kate Lockwood, with mass amounts of money and dark family secrets. Her darkest secret is that her father actually is alive, he’s just actively choosing to not have her be a part of his life.

She lives an overwhelmingly mundane existence. Yes, she went to Brown, and she knows a Salinger and an abundance of other rich, privileged people. But she’s not one of them, not really. She’s just a young woman trying to put herself through grad school, working as a yoga instructor on the side, and with a love for writing. There’s nothing special about her. She is a normal person, living a normal, sometimes boring, life.

The reason she is presented to us as this amazing, larger-than-life person, is Joe. He projects all of this onto her. From the moment she walks into the book store he fills her with all these qualities she doesn’t even necessarily have. And we see Beck fail to live up to Joe’s view of her over and over again.

I think what I love about Beck most, besides that she is normal and boring, is that she is flawed. She makes questionable dating decisions: Benji, Dr Nicky, Joe. She gets fired from her job as a yoga instructor. She wants to be a writer but somehow never makes the time to write. And yes, sometimes her writing isn’t good. That’s okay. I think we place these insane expectations on female characters to be amazing. Most of us, even if we’re good at something, don’t always hit the mark 100%. That’s okay. It’s human.

Another criticism she often faces is that she’s naïve. This can fall into both categories, but I think it’s mostly a commentary on her person. And I do agree – she is a bit oblivious to what the people around her are really like from time to time. But I think this is loyalty and trust rather than just blind naïveté.

She’s fiercely loyal to her friends, and she is very trusting of people. I think she believes in the good in them, so she’s not thinking that they’re out to hurt her. This goes for both Peach and Joe. Considering the childhood she had and the abandonment she faced, I think her ability to trust is impressive. On the other hand, that’s probably also the reason she is loyal to her friends and sticks by them no matter what. She definitely fears abandonment. But don’t we all?

She wasn’t always the best friend, although her friends were a challenge in themselves. She probably wasn’t the best daughter or sister. But she was just a normal girl, living her life, who somehow became the obsession of a stalker and serial killer. I think that’s the whole point. There was nothing special about her until Joe decided that she was some unattainably perfect person who could do no wrong.

Maybe I have a soft spot for Beck because I see some of myself in her. I first watched the first season of You as soon as it was released. I remember that night vividly: I was in my second year of university and home for the Christmas holidays, back in my old childhood bedroom. I think I watched most of the show that night, and the rest over the following days. When I first watched the show, I was a bit younger than Beck. Maybe I looked up to her, maybe part of me wanted to be more like her (well, minus the being stalked by a serial killer bit…) As I’m writing this, I’m older than Beck ever got to be. I still see myself in her, or I see a younger version of myself, just trying to figure things out, in her.

Either way, this is to say that I’m a fierce defender of Beck. I think she was the perfect protagonist for the first season of the show. I think she was an interesting character, and there was much more to her that we never got to know or explore due to her untimely death. For what it’s worth, Beck, I never found you boring.

Instead, I found her intelligent, well-meaning and loyal. But I also found her self-centered, messy, and annoying. She was human. She was Beck.

And somehow, she was feminist in her refusal to be the picture perfect woman.