The genius of this episode is that we, the audience, are forced to confront our own complicity in Joe’s compression. For six episodes, we enjoyed the slick editing and the voiceover. We liked the curated Beck. Now, Joe is annoyed by the real Beck, and the dissonance is terrifying. The title is ironic. Beck coins the term "Everythingship" to describe the messy, undefined space between dating and exclusivity. For Beck, this is liberating. For Joe, it is existential poison.
Joe justifies his cage (literally, the glass cage in the basement) as a tool of justice. He keeps his ex-girlfriend Candace (the ghost of Season 1) locked away because she "betrayed" him. He advises Paco to use intellect to defeat Ron. But by the end of the episode, when Joe realizes that Beck has lied about her therapist (she isn't going to sessions; she is seeing a married man for comfort), the Paco parallel snaps into focus. you s01e07 ac3
Joe cannot operate in ambiguity. His mind is a deterministic machine. He needs labels: "Mine," "Saved," "Target." When Beck tells him she wants an "Everythingship," she is essentially telling him she is not a novel to be finished; she is a serialized periodical with no ending in sight. The genius of this episode is that we,
He tracks her phone. He stalks her Uber. He calculates the probability of infidelity based on her texting frequency. Now, Joe is annoyed by the real Beck,
This is not a coincidence. The episode is asking a brutal question: When does protection become possession?