The things we do for love. Last episode, Joe (Penn Badgley) decided that what he needed to do was off Peach (Shay Mitchell). With the socialite dead and gone, nothing can stop Joe’s relationship with Beck (Elizabeth Lail) from truly blossoming... right?
"Everythingship" opens with Joe telling a story to his new, pot-smoking therapist, Dr. Nicky (why, yes, that is Full House star John Stamos), who just so happens to be Beck’s new therapist.
In case you’re wondering why Dr. Nicky would take Joe on as a patient, it’s because Joe is not really "Joe" to the psychologist, but "Paul," who is reeling from a breakup with a Beyoncé backup dancer named Ronaldo. As Joe/Paul details his breakup with Beck/Ronaldo, it’s revealed what happened between Joe and Beck since Peach’s unfortunate demise.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Weirdly, things are pretty great between Beck and Joe after Peach’s funeral. They play "fake word" Scrabble, coming up with the term “everythingship” to describe their perfect romance. Obviously, their romance is everything except perfect, but things start to go really south when Beck gets fired from the yoga studio (she would?) and Joe offers her a job working at his bookstore.
As Joe’s highly-underrated bookstore clerk Ethan (Zach Cherry) notes — don’t shit where you eat. You could get e-coli. Also, maybe don’t hire Beck to work your bookstore when she leaves the register open, shows up late on the reg, and literally piles books on top of other books instead of sliding them on the shelf like a normal person.
Look, I know that Joe’s the crazy one here, but like — that’s just not okay, Beckalicious!
Joe confronts Beck about such psychopathic bookstore behavior, and she admits that she’s been dealing with a lot since Peach died. She hasn’t been sleeping well, which, fair. She also drops that she’s seeing her therapist again, something that Joe had zero clue about.
Joe doesn’t like that Beck withheld information, but when Beck treats him to a fancy dinner of meatball subs in his rare books fishbowl (where Joe murdered Benji, never forget) all is forgiven. Beck’s birthday is coming up, and with some encouragement from Lynn (Nicole Kang), he decides to throw her a lit-themed banger at the bookstore.
Beck, however, shows up late… and pissed. She has no good explanation, and Joe accuses her of cheating — she does smell like "two glasses of rosé." Beck reminds him that if they don’t have trust… they don’t have anything. When Joe follows her into a park (after seeing texts on her phone from someone labeled in her contacts as just a fox emoji), she catches him, and immediately ends things.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Joe’s convinced Dr. Nicky is the fox, and he might very well be — but Joe’s not picking up on that juuuuust yet, even though Dr. Nicky did admit he lost his virginity to “Hungry Like the Wolf.” (Fox = wolf = Dr. Nicky?) While we’re meant to think that Joe stole a letter opener so he could plunge it into Dr. Nicky’s throat — what any mad man would do — he actually uses it to pick the lock on his office, so he can watch Beck’s taped session. Dr. Nicky seems like a decent therapist, and Beck a lost girl who wants to end things with Joe because she is truly just a mess who needs to get her shit in order before she can settle down.
Given everything we know about Joe, one might think that he would go to Beck’s house and kill her for breaking his heart… or something equally as brutal. Instead, he takes the breakup like a very mature guy. Have we been just, like, waaaaay too harsh on Joe this whole time?
Of course not. He’s a psychopathic serial killer with a burning hatred of women just beneath his good-guy exterior. Unfortunately, his cute new neighbor Karen (Natalie Paul) does not seem to recognize this at all. She makes eyes at him all episode long, and when he finally tells her that he and Beck broke up, the two bang.
It’s sexy! It’s fun! It’s low-key! Could it be the thing that finally gets Beck out of Joe’s brain?
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Nah. About five seconds post-coitus, Joe is scrolling through Beck’s Instagram. That’s when the “ghost” of Candace (Ambyr Childers) his ex-girlfriend, appears in the bedroom. “Are you going to leave Beck alone?”, the (likely dead) girlfriend asks. “Or will she end up like me?”
That’s Candace for you: Always keeping it real. After all, there’s no way that Joe is going to let Beck go so easily… we have more three episodes left in the season, and Joe hasn’t gone full Mark Wahlberg in Fear just yet.
Amongst the darkness, there is a little bit of levity. Newly-vegan Ethan has found his literary princess in Blythe (Hari Nef), and their romance is the everythingship I am currently shipping. Here for it, mostly because I am 100% positive that no one is planning on murdering the other’s friends.