The episode opens with a deceptively peaceful morning. Joe Goldberg wakes up not in his own bed, but in Beck’s cramped, book-strewn apartment. He’s not a visitor; he’s moved in. After engineering the breakup between Beck and her toxic, controlling boyfriend Benji, Joe has smoothly transitioned from “the nice guy from the bookstore” to Beck’s live-in savior. Beck, still fragile and grateful, has accepted his offer to stay “just until things settle down.”
On the walk home, Joe interrogates Beck. “Your therapist. He’s a little… familiar, don’t you think?” Beck brushes it off: “He’s just nice, Joe. He helps me.” Joe’s internal monologue rages: Helps you? He wants to sleep with you. I’m the one who saved you. I’m the one who killed for you. you s01e05 aiff
He turns and walks away, disappearing into the New York crowd, already planning his next abduction. The cage isn’t empty for long. The episode opens with a deceptively peaceful morning
But then Joe sees him : a tall, handsome, effortlessly confident man in a tweed jacket. Dr. Nicky, Beck’s therapist. The very same therapist Beck has been seeing to “work through her issues.” Joe watches, his jaw tightening, as Beck touches Nicky’s arm, leans in too close, and laughs at his stupid joke. The betrayal isn’t real—it’s just friendly conversation—but in Joe’s mind, it’s an affair. After engineering the breakup between Beck and her
The central crisis of the episode arrives when Beck gets a call from her professor. Her MFA workshop is meeting at a bar downtown, and she wants Joe to come. Reluctantly, he agrees. At the bar, Beck is vibrant, laughing with her peers—including her ex, the self-absorbed poet Benji (who, unbeknownst to everyone but Joe, is currently locked in a glass cage in the bookstore’s basement).
That night, while Beck sleeps, Joe slips out and returns to the bookstore basement. Benji is still alive—barely. Dehydrated, terrified, and reduced to begging. Joe ignores him. Instead, he opens his leather-bound journal and begins a new section: Dr. Nicky.