salmmmaaa4

Okay, listen. When the trailer for You Maniac came out, I was LOSING IT. The story looked incredibly addictive, the actors, the tension, the whole subject of red flags, which I thought was relevant and very much on point. I think the trailer and all the edits really got people talking.
This was actually the first series I watched while it was airing, and every single episode gave us SO much to talk about. I watched it with a friend, and I don't think a single week went by without us sending each other ridiculously long voice messages, doing our little armchair psychology sessions to figure out the characters, and coming up with every possible theory under the sun. And I think that's probably where the problem started: all that hype, all that overwhelming excitement, the series unfortunately failed to maintain it, especially during its second half.

I genuinely think the first half of this series deserves all your attention, because the complexity of these characters is absolutely insane.

Moth and Dean are both characters you simply can't figure out. They're complex, toxic but good, driven yet closed off, surrounded by people yet lonely, confident but lost. And that's exactly why every action we might label a red flag feels like it goes much deeper. You can tell there's something more behind it than just a desire to hurt the other person.

Both Moth and Dean are introduced to us as broken people. Dean is incapable of believing in love. He's trapped in the image other people have created of him, and he drowns his thoughts in alcohol and the attention he receives. Honestly, I think his job suits him perfectly. As an influencer, he puts out a carefully constructed image that meets his followers' expectations of him. He gets all this attention, which allows him to justify his behavior without ever feeling the need to change.
Moth is broken too, but in a different way. He doesn't think he's worthy of love. You can sense there's a deep wound keeping him from committing again, from allowing himself to be vulnerable.

So when two people are irresistibly drawn to each other, yet neither of them can break down the walls they've built to let themselves be seen, understood, or even communicate properly, you end up with an entire ocean of misunderstandings. Of course, as viewers, we're FRUSTRATED. But deep down, all we really want is to understand them.

It's funny because, at the beginning, my friend and I were constantly trying to pick a side. We wanted to figure out who had more of a right to hurt the other. When in reality, they were both walking red flags, hiding every sign of commitment behind yet another wound because neither of them knew how to open up.

Do you see how fascinating this is? All these contradictions, all these layers to uncover. Up until episode 5, I was SO hyped. I was waiting for every Saturday like it was a religious obligation. I thought the plot was surprisingly coherent. It's actually quite simple, but you could feel that every episode was there to reveal something new.

WilliamEst were obviously great. I found their characters absolutely captivating during this first half. They managed to embody all those contradictions: the red flags, the tension, the desire, the fear of commitment. It was incredible. I still think about that boat scene from time to time, and WOW. Just like the fireworks, my brain was about to explode. I desperately wanted to know what the hell had hurt these characters, where their fears and behaviors came from.
And then... well. Yeah.


Time to address the elephant in the room. Did they change directors after episode 6, or did this person simply run out of ideas?

I genuinely wanted to lose my mind when I found out that Moth couldn't believe in love because, and I'm not even joking this is actually so absurd, he had a crush on his senior in art school, who then refused his Valentine's Day flowers. So, to sum it up: he got rejected, and he's been inconsolable ever since.

No, he wasn't his ex. No, he hadn't treated him like shit. No, the guy wasn't mean to him. He just didn't have feelings for him.
Seriously... Once I found that out, I found myself becoming less and less capable of understanding Moth, this insufferable drama queen.
And then Mes comes back into his life, and suddenly we're not addressing to Dean's AT ALL anymore. Even though, just moments earlier, they were doing perfectly fine. He'd met Dean's parents, they'd been kissing sweetly while eating that damn ice cream... Dean, for his part, basically stops being a walking red flag the second he realizes he's in love with Moth (which happens pretty damn quickly). Moth, meanwhile, acts like a man who's losing his mind every five minutes and rarely manages to come back to his senses.

So, just to put things into perspective: Moth is an illustrator. He's been out of school for quiiiite some time. He's happy with his work, and he knows where he stands in life. Or at least, that's what we all thought before Mes came along and started preaching about Moth's drawings like he was preaching the word of God.
I genuinely think Mes is obsessed with butterflies, because, no offense to Moth, but I wouldn't exactly bet big money on those drawings becoming internationally recognized masterpieces. And yet Mes starts making him question his entire existence with a steady stream of "I believe in you" "You're amazing, bro."

And just like that, we go from a genuinely fascinating show about the complexity of attraction between two deeply complicated people to a very ordinary story about losing your sense of purpose and trying to figure out who you are. A crisis Moth wasn't even having before Mes showed up to preach about how he needed to become a REAL artist, basically implying that he was somehow a fake one before.

This is probably one of the most frustrating parts of the series, because we realize that Moth doesn't belong in this world of "real artists". He knows it. He feels it. He feels diminished by it. And yet, he keeps painting while ghosting Dean, who, in turn, decides that the only thing giving his life meaning isn't a bunch of butterfly paintings, but Moth himself. A man I remind you, who, in this relationship, is putting in an almost offensively low amount of effort.

All of this marks such a sudden shift: we go from a peak series about deeply complex, painfully human characters we're desperately trying to understand, to Moth, a complex character we no longer even WANT to understand.
And just to be clear, I was Team Moth. I related to him SO much at the beginning. I tried with every fiber of my being to understand him before he completely went off the rails.

So yeah, the series gradually turns into one long, painful chain of misunderstandings. We watch these stubborn characters refuse to open up, just like they did at the beginning. The difference is that Dean keeps trying. More importantly, he's the first one who actually manages to break down his own walls and let himself be vulnerable.

Then, after a few painful product placements, we finally find out what's stopping Dean from believing in love.
I mean, I can't really speak on this from personal experience, but after discussing it with my friend, I can understand how a parent's infidelity could genuinely make someone question everything they thought love was. That's a completely valid reason to struggle with relationships.
But it was the way the show chose to reveal this, and everything that followed, that really threw me off.

We get an episode where Dean's father suddenly dies near the end of the drama. Which is not exactly something you see every day. It almost feels like the show needed a dramatic excuse to force a conversation between two characters who, in reality, barely talk and rarely spend any meaningful time together.
Anyway, we're at the funeral. There are some good moments in this episode, but the sudden appearance of the mistress is definitely not one of them. Once again, we need something dramatic to force these two into a conversation because apparently, they just can't have one on their own.

For me, this episode perfectly sums up the whole one step forward, two steps back situation. At the beginning, the misunderstandings were interesting because they helped build the characters and gave us context. But when you're only two episodes away from the finale, they start becoming unbearable. It's as if the characters are constantly being bombarded with insignificant problems, and the only thing suffering as a result is their relationship.

We barely get any moments where Dean or Moth can be vulnerable without the other completely failing to understand them. I would have loved to see a different trajectory, because gradually, we realize that the characters' complexity, especially Dean's, is being erased by love, as if falling for each other has somehow made them simpler people.
And that's such a shame, because the only thing left to resolve is whether they'll end up together, when there were so many other aspects of their characters worth exploring.

And let me tell you, the thing I hated most was the final episode.
Watching the preview for episode 9 had me STRESSED. Because yes, instead of focusing on their relationship, which is already complicated enough, we suddenly find out that Moth, who graduated quite some time ago, has randomly decided he wants to become a painter. A career path he'd already moved on from after exhibiting that cutesy painting of himself and Dean.
And it's not even somewhere nearby. It's NEW YORK.
Why? Dean has already done all the work to show Moth, time and time again, how much he cares about him. And Moth genuinely wants to go. He's not giving up.

My biggest fear was that we'd get some random flash-forward with absolutely no explanation, where their relationship, which has only just started, gets put on hold, and then the show expects us to believe that everything goes back to normal.

DING DONG. I wanted to scream. It's such a waste.
There was SO much potential. So much to explore in these characters alone. But all that complexity was pushed aside to make room for problems that simply weren't interesting.

And as for Pun and Ten, listen, they're cute. They look like a middle-school couple, but still, they bring a little sweetness to the screen.

So, in conclusion: yes, You Maniac is worth watching. Despite all my criticism, I genuinely loved this series. I was completely hooked on the story, which unfortunately took a much simpler turn along the way.
Human nature is complicated. Dean and Moth were complicated, and that's exactly why we could spend hours discussing their behavior without ever really reaching a definitive answer. These characters were what made You Maniac so compelling, because they resonate with us and continue to do so. It's a shame the show chose to simplify something that could have remained so deeply complex.

The director played with fire by selling us these complex, addictive characters. Too bad that after episode 5, I realized they'd picked the wrong player.