S04.E5: The Fox and the Hound

[Door County Cherry]

Quote

While falling back into familiar patterns, Joe gets caught up in an unfortunate game as everyone's plans go up in flames.  

 

[krankydoodle]

I checked this show out because the season 4 trailer reminded me of Hannibal and even though it didn't match my expectations on that front, it was still entertaining. I expected Joe to be a lot smarter considering how much he's apparently gotten away with, but instead he just seemed to flail around and get lucky.

It was fun to see actors I've liked in other things like Ed Speelers and Ben Wiggins. And Charlotte Ritchie is great, but I didn't think she had much chemistry with Penn Badgley. I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying Adam and especially Tilly Keeper's Phoebe. Also, did anyone even mention Sean Pertwee's character disappearing without giving notice? Strange that his role was so small.

[Chaos Theory]

“How are you this good at hiding bodies?”   Ahhh the age old question.

Rhys was the obvious Joe stalkers so I am rather disappointed it is him and not Kate but then the show already did the “Joe sleeps with someone just as screwed up as he is” story.     

Although the sociopath vs sociopath story could be interesting.    

I rather enjoyed Kate,  Lady Phoebe,  Nadia and Rhys and am looking forward to seeing all of them in the 2nd half Of the season.   

Edited February 10, 2023 by Chaos Theory

[peachmangosteen]

I found this boring as hell. It was a real chore to get through. And the stalker reveal sucked.

I continue to wish they would have just killed Joe off at the end of season 3 and had Love take over. What could have been!

I'll still watch part 2 though lol.

[Anela]

Phoebe is hilarious, but her quickly going with "Gemma is missing" was fucked up. 

I'm not really up for a redemption arc. Rhys was the obvious choice for the stalker/murderer, we hardly saw him when the others were doing their thing, and he has the similar background to Joe. 

[peachmangosteen]

I had convinced myself that Joe was actually doing all the killing, which I was kinda into, so when Rhys was revealed I was like meh. 

[CSunshine76]

Episode 5 kind of “jumped the shark” for me. Roald holding Joe at gunpoint, in the parlor in  front of everyone? Really? These folks are so rich this was normal to them?
Not to mention, the disgusting way they treated and talked about people whom they deemed “less than”. I don’t know it just seemed so ridiculously fake to me.  I’ll watch the second half to see what happens, but this season is really disjointed from the first 3.

[Door County Cherry]

On 2/9/2023 at 5:26 PM, krankydoodle said:

Also, did anyone even mention Sean Pertwee's character disappearing without giving notice? Strange that his role was so small.

Is that the butler?  Joe wrote a resignation letter to Phoebe who I guess just accepted that he quit and that's that.  

9 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

I continue to wish they would have just killed Joe off at the end of season 3 and had Love take over. What could have been!

I'm not sure I would have found her more interesting.  I just think we're reaching the limits of the premise of focusing on a stalker, especially as it's the fourth season and the fourth book hasn't been published yet.  (Although that too I feel like should not have continued but did because of the success of the series.)

I kind of appreciate what they're doing in making Joe be stalked but the side characters aren't as interesting this season and it's lacking some of the comedy.  I think the only time I laughed out loud is when they put Gemma's body in the trunk and the bottom fell open. 

8 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

I had convinced myself that Joe was actually doing all the killing, which I was kinda into, so when Rhys was revealed I was like meh. 

My first thought was Rhys but then that notion got boring and I too had convinced myself that it was Joe doing the killing.

So when the reveal happened, I felt deflated about it because it felt so obvious.

But something still didn't sit right with me about Joe's scenes with Rhys so I went back to find the scenes with Joe, Rhys and the friend group to confirm a feeling had that I couldn't recall Rhys interacting with them.  Sure enough, when Rhys is at event with all of his friends, the only person we ever see him talk to is Joe. Even at the dinner table when he looks integrated with the group, he and Joe have a conversation and Joe responds with "I'm fine" to something Rhy says.  Jonathan asks him "what was that?" which I do not think he'd do if Joe were actually speaking next to someone.  

Like I said, I fast forwarded so I might have missed something but the only time we saw the friend group react to anything Rhys said was during the eulogy at the funeral.  And I think that eulogy-guy was the real Rhys who is planning to run for mayor and went to school with the group.  I do think the version Joe talks to and is "stalking" Joe is the real Rhys but rather a manifestation of Joe's own psyche. 

[Ms Blue Jay]

I'm really enjoying it.  I'm obsessed with Charlotte Ritchie as Kate.

I thought the Rhys reveal was good.

Each season of this show feels like its own separate show.  This is nothing like how this show started.  it's like this season they're trying to make Joe be Benoit Blanc.  It's so odd.

This show is doing Gossip Girl better than the Gossip Girl reboot did.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Ms Blue Jay

[krankydoodle]

5 hours ago, Door County Cherry said:

Is that the butler?  Joe wrote a resignation letter to Phoebe who I guess just accepted that he quit and that's that.  

I think he'd been working for the family for a while and Phoebe seemed like the kind of person who would at least comment on it, if not try to track him down to get him back. But maybe it's just another way of showing how disposable or interchangeable underlings are to even the more likable members of this circle. Anyway, it's just a nitpick. I still had a lot of fun with the show and am glad we won't have to wait too long for the second half of the season.

[peachmangosteen]

6 hours ago, Door County Cherry said:

But something still didn't sit right with me about Joe's scenes with Rhys so I went back to find the scenes with Joe, Rhys and the friend group to confirm a feeling had that I couldn't recall Rhys interacting with them.  Sure enough, when Rhys is at event with all of his friends, the only person we ever see him talk to is Joe. Even at the dinner table when he looks integrated with the group, he and Joe have a conversation and Joe responds with "I'm fine" to something Rhy says.  Jonathan asks him "what was that?" which I do not think he'd do if Joe were actually speaking next to someone.  

I did notice when Joe said something to Rhys at the dinner table and Adam had a weird look on his face and asked him what he said or whatever and thought that was odd. I've seen this theory on reddit as well and I do think it's a strong possibility. While watching, I was thinking maybe Joe had like split his personality or something and was killing but then suppressing it so that goes along with this whole thing of him manifesting Rhys in his mind as the killer when it's actually him. At this point, if it's really just Rhys doing it I'll be very disappointed.

[seacliffsal]

I just binged the first five episodes and feel a bit underwhelmed.  As others have noted, the side characters are very one-note and not that interesting.  I feel that the side-characters in the previous seasons were more relevant to the story (here they are just being killed rather than getting too close to exposing Joe or taking his obsessions away from him).  The timing of the story seems off to me-in the first episode it seemed that it took a while for Joe to finally find Marianne and yet it took the same amount of time for the PI to find Joe (and why would Love's family hunt for Joe when it was accepted he was dead, and would they keep the PI hunting for him for such an extended period of time?).

I do like the interactions amongst Joe and his students-and was hoping the 'teach me how to be Agatha Christie' would have a bigger payoff (maybe it still will).  I would think that there would have been more interest/investigation into who trapped both Joe and Raold in the dungeon and put them in the irons.  There didn't seem to be any follow up to that.  

I hope the second half of the season really moves the story and brings in more twists to the story.  I really have enjoyed this series and hope this season ends strong.

[dubbel zout]

On 2/9/2023 at 6:26 PM, krankydoodle said:

Also, did anyone even mention Sean Pertwee's character disappearing without giving notice? Strange that his role was so small.

Joe killed him—he strangled him in Malcolm's family crypt—and Joe wrote a nice letter of resignation to Phoebe.

I'm kind of sorry to see Gwen go, because she was so absolutely appallingly awful.

[BlueSkies]

Joe reminds me a little of Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver:

 

-in the 1st season Joe is a loner in NYC as was Travis Bickle.  

-Travis obsessed with Betsy and Joe obsesses with numerous women

-Travis kills to save a teen prostitute, Joe killed I think his neighbor who was an abusive dad.  Plus well multiple others

-Travis attempted to kill a politician and watched him on TV in his apartment.  The last scene Joe watched Rhys on TV and well may kill him or who knows.  

 

 

 

kind of an unrealistic show.  I still want to know how Rhys got in Joe's apartment.  But I'm still engaged 

[Spartan Girl]

On 2/10/2023 at 5:26 PM, peachmangosteen said:

I continue to wish they would have just killed Joe off at the end of season 3 and had Love take over. What could have been!

I miss Love. The show isn’t the same without her.

Although at least Rhys is another sociopath who at is honest about who he is, unlike Joe, who is forever trapped in his own Misunderstood Hero fantasy. Rhys told him in the first episode that redemption is only possible if you face who you are with both hands, and that’s never gonna happen at this rate.

I don’t know how much longer this show can go. My ideal ending would have Joe being haunted by the ghosts of Beck, Candice, and Love before finally being killed by Rhys or Ellie and/or someone that was working with Candice. Maybe that can still happen…

[dubbel zout]

11 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

I miss Love. The show isn’t the same without her.

She shows up in the second half of the season!

[peachmangosteen]

Spoiler

I hated that shot in the promo because it's obviously just going to be one of Joe's hallucinations and I don't like being toyed with lol.

Is promo discussion supposed to be spoiler tagged in this forum? @Door County Cherry

[Chaos Theory]

12 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

I miss Love. The show isn’t the same without her.

Although at least Rhys is another sociopath who at is honest about who he is, unlike Joe, who is forever trapped in his own Misunderstood Hero fantasy. Rhys told him in the first episode that redemption is only possible if you face who you are with both hands, and that’s never gonna happen at this rate.

I think that is the entire point this half of the season.  Everyone either knowingly (Marianne & Rhys) or unknowingly (Kate) have been telling Joe that he can’t find any kind of redemption while lying about himself.   Marianne in the flashback outright said she knew he killed Love and was afraid he would eventually kill her (and likely her daughter).   Rhys kept trying to convince him to embrace all parts of who he is. And Kate unknowingly at one point said the truest thing this season that Joe/ Jonathan was going to be so disappointed when he realized that women of the 21st century didn’t need to be rescued.   Joe rejected all of it because he needs his fantasy to function.  

[skotnikov]

13 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

I don’t know how much longer this show can go. My ideal ending would have Joe being haunted by the ghosts of Beck, Candice, and Love before finally being killed by Rhys or Ellie and/or someone that was working with Candice. Maybe that can still happen…

I hope the show won't survive beyond this season.  It's that bad. 

 

The killer reveal was anti-climatic, it was obvious from the start that Rhys is the killer (TV cliches again). Once he shared his whisky with Joe you knew there's something wrong with the guy.    

[seacliffsal]

Maybe the next season could be Ella/Emma (I can't remember her name) as we catch up with what she's been doing in Florida...

[Door County Cherry]

3 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

  Reveal spoiler

I hated that shot in the promo because it's obviously just going to be one of Joe's hallucinations and I don't like being toyed with lol.

Is promo discussion supposed to be spoiler tagged in this forum? @Door County Cherry

If it's beyond the episodes we've already seen, I'm going to say yes. But outside of the ep threads like in the media thread?  No. 

[dubbel zout]

FYI, the spoiler I mentioned is for the second half of the season.

[BlueSkies]

17 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

I miss Love. The show isn’t the same without her.

Although at least Rhys is another sociopath who at is honest about who he is, unlike Joe, who is forever trapped in his own Misunderstood Hero fantasy. Rhys told him in the first episode that redemption is only possible if you face who you are with both hands, and that’s never gonna happen at this rate.

I don’t know how much longer this show can go. My ideal ending would have Joe being haunted by the ghosts of Beck, Candice, and Love before finally being killed by Rhys or Ellie and/or someone that was working with Candice. Maybe that can still happen…

Well I guess you're talking about deep down Rhys knows what he is.  Because I mean if he wants to be mayor though he's not honest about what he is to the general public.  

 

The whole hunting trip in season 3 Joe I thought learned he couldn't repress the part of himself with his own fantasies.  

 

 

Rhys kind of made an interesting villain though.  Like Love he was able to beat Joe at his own game.  

 

 

Edited February 12, 2023 by BlueSkies

[dubbel zout]

30 minutes ago, BlueSkies said:

Rhys kind of made an interesting villain though.  Like Love he was able to beat Joe at his won game.  

Did Rhys win, though? He thinks he did, but if he really knew Joe, he'd know Joe is nothing if not resourceful (and lucky, lol). Rhys thinking he'd won is counting his chickens, IMO.

I'm interested to see how Joe gets his revenge and exposes Rhys as the killer. Many of Rhys's secrets are already public knowledge, so he has that advantage. Do we know what the (rapidly diminishing) group thinks of him? They might have something that could at least end his mayoral run, if they dislike him enough. He's not quite one of them, despite being a duke's illegitimate son. I don't think Rhys grew up knowing who his birth father was. That information went by pretty quickly when Joe was giving us the rundown on the group in the beginning.

[Spartan Girl]

41 minutes ago, BlueSkies said:

Well I guess you're talking about deep down Rhys knows what he is.  Because I mean if he wants to be mayor though he's not honest about what he is to the general public.  

Yes, I meant honest with himself, not honest to everyone else obviously lol.

[BlueSkies]

21 minutes ago, dubbel zout said:

Did Rhys win, though? He thinks he did, but if he really knew Joe, he'd know Joe is nothing if not resourceful (and lucky, lol). Rhys thinking he'd won is counting his chickens, IMO.

I'm interested to see how Joe gets his revenge and exposes Rhys as the killer. Many of Rhys's secrets are already public knowledge, so he has that advantage. Do we know what the (rapidly diminishing) group thinks of him? They might have something that could at least end his mayoral run, if they dislike him enough. He's not quite one of them, despite being a duke's illegitimate son. I don't think Rhys grew up knowing who his birth father was. That information went by pretty quickly when Joe was giving us the rundown on the group in the beginning.

Like how at the last second he was able to get out of the handcuffs 😅

 

I'm actually even a little surprised "the gang" would still even believe him.  Joe that is.  

 

[dubbel zout]

17 minutes ago, BlueSkies said:

I'm actually even a little surprised "the gang" would still even believe him.  Joe that is.  

If Kate weren't on his side I'd agree. She seems to have a decent amount of influence that way.

[Anela]

Could we have a speculation and spoilers thread?

 

[Glade]

On 2/10/2023 at 9:30 PM, Door County Cherry said:

But something still didn't sit right with me about Joe's scenes with Rhys so I went back to find the scenes with Joe, Rhys and the friend group to confirm a feeling had that I couldn't recall Rhys interacting with them.  Sure enough, when Rhys is at event with all of his friends, the only person we ever see him talk to is Joe. Even at the dinner table when he looks integrated with the group, he and Joe have a conversation and Joe responds with "I'm fine" to something Rhy says.  Jonathan asks him "what was that?" which I do not think he'd do if Joe were actually speaking next to someone.  

Like I said, I fast forwarded so I might have missed something but the only time we saw the friend group react to anything Rhys said was during the eulogy at the funeral.  And I think that eulogy-guy was the real Rhys who is planning to run for mayor and went to school with the group.  I do think the version Joe talks to and is "stalking" Joe is the real Rhys but rather a manifestation of Joe's own psyche. 

This checks out.  Personally, I'm also expecting episode one to be revisited; and to find out that Joe lied to us, he really did kill Marrianne and an incoming English professor who he vaguely resembled enough to steal his identity.  But will such reveals make this season something better and exciting again?  That I'm not sure about.  I still kind of wish, as the s4 trailer implied, Joe's stalker was a person from past seasons come to gain revenge, not a random new character.

[Black Knight]

I just binged all five episodes, and Ioved them. It helps for me that it's been a while since the last season aired, so although I know the "Joe is surrounded by other wonderfully awful people" thing has been done before, enough time has passed that I don't mind another go-round of it. So many darkly hilarious moments in this first batch of episodes.

I enjoy a good murder mystery and am a huge Christie fan, so I enjoyed Joe trying to play detective and Nadia schooling him on the tropes. I couldn't believe the show passed up a chance to have them discuss those attendant with the "house party with a murderer on the loose," but I suppose there wouldn't have been a way to get that conversation in that wouldn't have made it too obvious to Nadia what's really going on with Joe's study of murder mysteries.

I don't think Kate can rightly be considered one of Joe's women, as he's not obsessed with her yet, and I'm not sure he ever could be even were he not already in a "you" relationship with Rhys. She's so strongly herself that she's very hard to project onto. I suspect if they did date for real, it would be more like that relationship Joe had with a woman in S1 when he and Becks were broken up for a little while, where he liked his girlfriend fine, but there was no obsession and it was easy for him to leave her for the woman he was obsessed with.

The Rhys thing is an interesting shift in that he wants himself and Joe to be murder partners. Love was of course fine with the fact Joe was a murderer and that she was a murderer, and felt they should be able to bond over that, but she wasn't specifically envisioning them having fun murdering people together. Love and Joe were killers in the same way, in that all their kills were triggered by particular circumstances. They didn't go out hunting for people to kill. It's that distinction that has allowed Joe to rationalize his murders, to hide from himself what he is. Rhys is holding up a different mirror than Love did, and I'm intrigued to see if that finally gets Joe to become self-aware.

[SoWindsor]

I guess I'm in the minority but this might be my favorite season. I know that seems really weird but I liked that he wasn't obsessed with another woman. It was a nice change a pace and a way to make the season different than the others. 

It's like how each season of Dexter was so different. This felt like that -- finally something different from Joe.

[Door County Cherry]

5 hours ago, Anela said:

Could we have a speculation and spoilers thread?

 

Spoilers/spoiler spec and discussion is meant to go in the book thread.   In the earlier seasons, most of the spoilery info came from the books so that it was a spoiler thread went without saying. But as the show goes on, other things might happen that aren't in the books so I've added "other spoilers" to make it more clear. 

 

[Anela]

35 minutes ago, Door County Cherry said:

Spoilers/spoiler spec and discussion is meant to go in the book thread.   In the earlier seasons, most of the spoilery info came from the books so that it was a spoiler thread went without saying. But as the show goes on, other things might happen that aren't in the books so I've added "other spoilers" to make it more clear. 

 

Thank you.

[iMonrey]

I was mostly bored with this. It got a little better in Episode 5 but this season is such a drastic departure from the first three. I found it irritating and frustrating that Joe spent the first four and a half episodes not knowing what the hell was going on - much like us, the audience. Yeah, it was a murder mystery type of thing, like the Glass Onion, but that's not what the first three seasons of the show were. 

Now I read that maybe he's just imagining Rhys, or at least most of the time? Then who knocked out Joe and Roald and tied them up in the dungeon? Did Joe tell Roald and Kate that Rhys was the killer? If not, why?

Why did Rhys frame Joe for Malcolm's murder in the first place? 

I think the story really should have just ended with Season 3, unfortunately. I was really looking forward to this but it ended up being a real slog to get through these five episodes.

[peachmangosteen]

Can someone explain the part with the PI to me? I found that whole thing very confusing lol.

[dubbel zout]

You mean the guy who gave Joe his Jonathan Moore identity? Here's what the Vulture recap has to say:

Elliot, a hitman hired by Ray Quinn, Love’s dad. But alas, the hitman is weary of his life, well, taking lives. Just like Joe, he yearns to start anew. So! In exchange for a cut of that money Joe pulled from Love’s secret account — the one he emptied “the day she baked you into a pie,” as Elliot artfully puts it — Elliot will supply Joe with this excellent new identity so he can “fuck off into the sunset.” He will tell Mr. Quinn that Joe is dead, and all Joe needs to do is lay low, pay Elliot (not sure how that part is getting worked out), and kill the only person who knows that Joe is still alive: Marienne. But secretly, Joe REFUSES to do this. Instead, he snags Marienne’s locket straight off her neck and texts Elliot a photo of the necklace as confirmation of the kill. Personally, if I were in the hitman business, I would want much more definitive proof than a piece of jewelry. Still, it appears Elliot, desperate as he was to move on to a nonviolent chapter of his journey, was appeased by this.

[KaveDweller]

7 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Now I read that maybe he's just imagining Rhys, or at least most of the time? Then who knocked out Joe and Roald and tied them up in the dungeon? Did Joe tell Roald and Kate that Rhys was the killer? If not, why?

Now that would be interesting. I was starting to think Joe really was the killer but he'd had some kind of psychotic break and didn't realize it. Then Rhys showed up. But he could still be imagining Rhys. Have we seen anyone else interact with him? Joe could have tied up Roald, then chained himself and then passed out? 

Joe probably didn't tell anyone he is the killer because then Rhys will tell them about Joe's past.

I enjoyed the first few episodes, but it is very different from last season and it is definitely weaker because of that.

[Spartan Girl]

On another note, I’m so sick of Joe blaming Love for his actions. Of course he was doing that long before he met her in the metaphorical sense…

[peachmangosteen]

7 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

On another note, I’m so sick of Joe ...

Could have left it at that for me lol. I am beyond ready for this show to end so I can watch him finally get his comeuppance.

[sandwoman]

On 2/13/2023 at 3:40 PM, KaveDweller said:

Have we seen anyone else interact with him?

Oh huh I guess we haven't. He's obviously a real person who wrote a book and seems to be a public figure, but maybe the Rhys who he sees at the parties is a figment of his imagination. Could be!

[JenE4]

At the very beginning I thought it was either Rhys, Kate, or Nadia as the only three people he trusted, as another Who Dunnit rule is that it’s always the last person you would suspect. But then episodes 2 and 3 I noticed the same photographer in the crowd eyeing Joe, and with the splashy reveal of the Eat the Rich Killer in the paper and the effortless ability to find all of the articles about Joe, I thought it was going to be this investigative journalist trying to make a real name for herself. But turns out it was a similar motive for Rhys—somehow he can spin this that he’s a part of the populace just like you, and I understand your plight and can change the socioeconomic disparity from the inside because I know both sides. (Was that the gist of it? I was falling asleep near the end. Also, I’m still holding out hope that photographer will be integral somehow in the second half.) An egomaniacal and sociopathic politician—we should have seen that coming. Rhys even told Joe that most of the stories in his autobiography were made up, or at least combining details of different stories to be more interesting and endearing, so we knew he was a liar. Since all of these characters have some type of hobby/job to try to make them feel more special than the peons, one in the crowd writing an autobiography and having political ambitions didn’t really stand out. Yet, I appreciate the observations that Rhys never really interacted with anyone else. I didn’t even realize that he wasn’t at this weekend getaway. But that should have been suspect—why not? Turns out he was lurking around in the bowels of the manor. Okay, so the second half will have a decidedly different feel. How will Joe be able to expose Rhys without exposing himself? Roald also tried to kill him no less than 3 times!! Is he also going to have to continue watching his back for this dude, or will he lay off now that Jonathan saved him from perishing in the fire? How’s Nadia’s unicorn fantasy book coming along? Will Kate ever loosen up? Will Adam and Phoebe see a sex therapist? Will the junkie artist get out of rehab and become a success? Will we ever see Marianne again? Or, did the writers just paint themselves in a new direction? So many mysteries! Or, more likely, so many inconsequential storylines!

[peachmangosteen]

1 hour ago, JenE4 said:

Also, I’m still holding out hope that photographer will be integral somehow in the second half.

There has to be something there, at least. It was too pointed to be nothing.

[tvduser93]

Just rewatched with the assumption that Kate is doing exactly what Joe usually does to his obssession.

Story made sense and was worth the time.

[BlueSkies]

Roald was very much a douche bag.  He looked like one, had the personality of one, and was just generally an unlikeable fellow.  But then that made me realize the actor that played him did a good job with his role.

 

 

So I actually pulled out my inner Joe Goldberg to find out more about him.  His name is Ben Wiggins and his date of birth isn't even on his IMBD page or he doesn't have a Wikipedia page.  But he was a fitness trainer in England a few years ago

 

 

https://www.barrys.com/instructor/ben-wiggins/

[Norma Desmond]

On 2/11/2023 at 11:21 PM, BlueSkies said:

kind of an unrealistic show.

Now that's an understatement.

 

There are so many plot holes. You is starting to overstay its welcome.

[BlueSkies]

13 hours ago, Norma Desmond said:

Now that's an understatement.

 

There are so many plot holes. You is starting to overstay its welcome.

Very fair point.

 

But for me its still ultimately entertaining 

[MaggieG]

I didn't like this season, probably because all the new characters were terrible. The only one I kind of liked was Phoebe, only because she seemed ditzy but not cruel. Was I supposed to like Kate? Because I couldn't stand her. I'll finish the season but this was not my favorite. 

[faithie]

As a huge fan of the early seasons, this season so far is a bit too convoluted and boring.  There are too many characters with too many storylines - earlier seasons were easier to follow.

Anyhow, I've already invested the time so I will watch the second set of episodes in March.

The commenters who notice that Rhys never interacts with any other characters are probably on to something - the guy may not exist outside of Joe's fevered imagination.   

Who knows who locked Joe and Roald in the dungeon and set the fire?

Can Joe go back to the dingy streets of New York and his job as a bookstore clerk?

[Scarlett45]

I didn’t find these last few episodes as fun as the other seasons were. Joe doesn’t have anyone to play off of, he’s alone in a sea of not great characters. In Season 3 he had his library coworkers, in Season 2 he had his super/her sister, Season 1 he had his neighbor and co-worker. 
 

Kate seemed like an okay character, I did like how she pulled a knife on Joe because only killers are so good at hiding bodies! But then she had sex with him??

[Lady Calypso]

Ok, well I finished 4A, and overall, I wouldn't necessarily call the season bad, just boring. I think some of the ideas could have worked. The idea of Joe being stalked himself, him needing to solve his own case while trying to maintain his cover, is actually a very intriguing idea. Similarly to the Love twist, Joe having someone actively working against him makes for a more interesting season. That's why it's not the worst season of TV I've seen.

However, there are two issues that I realized with that kind of twist: a) He needs to have a compelling cast to be working with; and b) He needs to be in some form of control and not a passive player. 

And that, for me, is exactly why season 4, thus far, has not worked. The people surrounding him aren't compelling enough, and Joe was too passive and not doing much on his own to be interesting. Joe's main victim was not compelling enough, especially for a love interest. Kate was given the intriguing backstory, but it just wasn't working nearly as well. And Joe actively fighting against his urges? We've seen him try and fail so many times now. The main difference in the past seasons was that he was more active, even when fighting against it, even when people dragged him back. Here, there was a WHOLE lot of voiceover, but what did he REALLY do all season beyond kill one person and hide another body? 

The interesting aspect of this show, for better or for worse, is Joe's actions. What he does is what makes this show stand out. With him standing idly by while he stares at people for 80% of the season while doing voiceovers, it makes for a boring season. And, like I said above, it COULD work with a compelling cast but, unlike previous seasons, there were very few compelling characters, even when given somewhat compelling backstories.

For me, I found most of the women the only compelling characters. All of the men were annoying or boring. Even Adam, the one with the most compelling story, didn't give me much and I ended up really not caring about his kink shame. Kate wasn't compelling, but they at least tried with her and, since she got significant screentime, she got marginally better stuff to work with. 

The only two new characters I ended up liking were Nadia and Phoebe. Phoebe had to grow on me once they gave her something other than vapid socialite, and Nadia reminded me a lot of Ellie with the edge that she had. Otherwise, Joe was working with bland characters and that really made this season fail.

I can't imagine 4B being better, even if they introduce a twist such as Rhys being part of Joe's imagination. Mostly because that opens the door to Joe being deemed crazy, rather than a literal sociopath, and the idea of Joe getting away with his many crimes by the end of the series by reason of insanity is not something I would want.

Yeah, so not a bad season in the sense that I hated it for plot holes and characters, but painfully boring. The voiceovers were too much; I get Joe has always had an abundance of voiceovers, but what I noticed is that this season, he spoke to people less than the first three seasons. He had conversations with people in the first three seasons but this time around, he did a LOT of staring. Penn may have had more dialogue, but it was hardly out loud.