Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
This is a story about a boy who meets a beautiful girl and falls in love. Nothing could be more normal, right? Only, nothing about this story is normal.
You see, boy is lonely. Compulsive. Bored. So, he decides to do something about his loneliness.
He meets girl.
Girl is pretty. Winsome. Has a level of depth not even she recognizes. Boy knows this about girl. In fact, boy knows every little detail about girl’s life. Girl just doesn’t know that yet.
Boy, in this case, is Joe Goldberg. A quiet, unassuming bookstore manager, Joe just wants to find someone to love. But he’s been hurt before, so he takes his time with relationships. Does his research. Some might call it stalking. But Joe thinks of it more as his duty.
It’s his duty to get to know the woman he plans to be with. It’s his duty to “accidentally” bump into her, fantasize about her, steal her phone and look at every detail of her social media feed.
It’s also his duty to, uh, “dispose” of anyone who might try and interfere with his love life. And if the woman he loves doesn’t return his affections…well, there’s always a way to solve that problem, too.
It’s nothing new to turn on the TV and see a special about a serial killer or stalker (Dateline, anyone?). But it’s becoming more and more popular to see stalkers and serial killers analyzed on television for seasons at a time.
Enter You.
Netflix’s wildly popular show focuses on fictional stalker and serial killer Joe Goldberg. It dives into his psyche and lays bare the pages of his mind for all to see. And what viewers find is quite disturbing.
In Season 1, Joe lives in New York and meets a woman named Guinevere Beck. He decides to woo her and fix all of her problems. However, things don’t go as planned. Guinevere learns about Joe’s troubled, bloody past and the closer she gets to uncovering his skeletons, the closer she gets to death.
Consequently, in Season 2, Joe Goldberg has become Will. You see, Joe made some mistakes back in New York and if he wants to clear his name, he’ll have to lay low. So, he sets off for Los Angeles. He changes his name. His lifestyle. Everything. And although he vows to become a better man with cleaner habits, his past and present impulses continue to haunt him.
As you can imagine with any show focusing on a psychopathic murderer, You is pretty messy. Not only are people whacked upside the head as blood pours from their wounds, but they’re also tortured, locked in an underground cellar and left for dead. Sometimes fingers are cut off. Most people keep their limbs, but that doesn’t prevent them from, you know, dying. There are also scenes that include references to physical, emotional and mental abuse.
Additionally, language is crude, f-words are used often and there’s plenty of drinking and references to drug use. Oh, and the sex scenes are pretty graphic too. Although we never see full-frontal nudity, we do see bare rears, movements that suggest masturbation, people rolling around in bed and plenty of other things that drag this show into sordid MA-rated territory.
Joe Goldberg, now known as Will, leaves New York to start a fresh life in Los Angeles. But when Joe gets there, he finds that staying away from women and his old bad habits is impossible.
Will fantasizes about a woman named Love flirting with him, kissing him and stimulating him. He masturbates while doing so (we don’t see exposed body parts, but we do see him zip up his pants). Love and Will joke about fruit that looks like male and female genitalia. A brief scene shows two women in bed together, in lingerie, kissing.
A few scenes show dead bodies lying on the ground, surrounded by their own blood. A woman threatens to kill and castrate an ex-boyfriend. Will stalks a woman on social media. A woman confesses her husband died from an unknown illness.
A man smokes a cigarette and drinks wine. A woman tells a man not to make methamphetamine in his kitchen. God’s name is misused once. The f-word is used nearly ten times and the s-word is heard five times. Other profanity includes multiple utterances of “a–hole” and “b–ch.”
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
