Your Friends & Neighbors: Season 1

87

Yes, there was a 1998 problematic-white-people, Neil Labute film called Your Friends & Neighbors. This series is unrelated. Which is kind of weird. I mean, it’s a decent name for something, but it’s odd that they decided to keep the entire title in tact, even using the ampersand and not the full “and.” Putting that aside, the problematic-white-people thing does transfer from the movie to the series. But it’s 2025, so they throw in one Asian couple and a black dude (who was a professional basketball player, because I guess he could have only been that or a rapper?) Yeah, rich people in Westchester County, NY — an affluent suburb north of NYC — who are generally just interested in rolling their money and keeping up appearances. Not a groundbreaking take.

In the middle of all this wealth and artifice is Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm), a man who finds himself in dire straights after an expensive divorce and a non-scandal scandal at work that ends with him being summarily fired. That is the plot. Coop has a lot of expenses and now he is supporting his wife, his two children and has no income. Plus, he has to keep up appearances by continuing to pay his country club dues, his charitable givings and his… well, I don’t know. Because he is seemingly broke the day he’s fired. Which doesn’t seem like a thing a guy that rich would be. Especially when his money is being managed by his best buddy, Barney (Hoon Lee), who has seemingly gotten rich himself just off his fees from Coop’s haul. But the opulence amongst this crowd is extreme. And here’s the social commentary, I guess: they are so rich and so above and beyond the worries of “normal” people that they’ve become complacent. They’ve become so engrained in their wealth and status that they won’t even notice if their symbols of status go missing. Which I guess is kind of, sort of social commentary. But not really.

Regardless of what you think about the conceit, this is the deciding factor in Coop turning to petty crime to fund his life. He knows, because of their complacency in their gated communities and whatnot, that his friends and neighbors don’t even bother setting their alarms. Which is more of a theory of his than anything else, but is pretty much correct 100% of the time. Which is kind of a dumb cop-out. But what at first starts off as him walking upstairs during their parties and stealing an expensive watch from his friend’s drawer turns into semi-inept burgling of houses for larger and more expensive items. He’s not particularly good at it, and is constantly almost caught. But he’s just skilled enough to pull off some smaller crimes while deflecting focus from himself. Eventually, after finally being caught in the act, he’s blackmailed into taking on a partner; one of the housekeepers, Elena (Aimee Carrero). But she, with her network of other house minders, who quietly see all the comings and goings and secrets of their bosses, turns out to be a good partner and asset in his thievery. Even though she inexplicably vanishes toward the end of the season.

So, while we think this secret life of crime that Coop is keeping — along with his complicated relationship with his ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and his ex-best-friend-who-is-dating-his-ex-wife, Nick (Mark Tallman) —  this doesn’t end up being the crux of the series’ tension. That’s a murder, of course. Coop is sleeping with another friend from town, Sam Levitt (Olivia Munn). She is separated from her husband, who, in a really unfortunate turn of events, ends up dead. And guess who becomes suspect number one? You got it, the guy who is always skulking around and sleeping with the dead guy’s estranged wife. So, on top of being fired, having to steal stuff to make ends meet, being the main suspect in a murder case, Coop also has to take care of his sulky high school children and his bi-polar adult singer-songwriter sister, Ali (Lena Hall). There is just way too much going on in this show. Although, the most unrealistic part of it is the crowd at Ali’s show at some bar in Westchester sitting there completely quiet and rapt as she sings cover tunes like “Fake Plastic Trees” and Hole’s “Doll Parts” accompanied by her acoustic guitar. It’s insanely ridiculous and would never happen. But you too can listen to her on her Songs from Your Friends & Neighbors EP and judge for yourself!

In film school they tell you using voiceover is a crutch. Despite my professors’ almost unanimous take on that, here we hear Jon Hamm doing voiceover throughout. With Hamm’s voice advertising everything from cars to coffee these days the v.o. does come across as commercial pablum at times. Toward the end of the season, the voiceover switches from Hamm to Munn’s character, which exposes the voiceover as overwrought and overwritten and also exposes her acting ability to be a little… well, she’s nice to look at is all I’ll say. It’s a weird choice and makes no sense in the context of the series and must have sounded just as wonky in the edit room as it did on my TV. But they kept it anyway. There’s also some nonsense with a stolen painting and this art forger played by scary-ass Ólafur Darri Ólafsson. They go out to a NYC club to celebrate their caper — one that no 50-something man has any business being at, though we get to watch a coked-up Hamm dance, which is kinda fun — where some light sexual assault happens, things go sideways and said art forger ends up with the original painting when Coop and his partner, Elena essentially walk/run away from the deal. Though Ólafsson’s character decides to seek out and beat the shit out of Coop even though he ends up with a free original painting with no strings attached. It’s illogical. There’s also the fact that Coop gets a lot of what he wants out of people through petty blackmail — threatening to mostly expose their infidelities or other cheating — which doesn’t exactly jibe with the whole theme of the show, nor make Coop in any way a good guy. If that’s what we’re supposed to think about him.

The show does struggle with logic at times and is sometimes too fragmented for its own good. On top of being too obvious and predictable with said fragmented storylines. Almost as if it doesn’t trust itself enough to make something of Coop’s main predicament and needs to add in multiples of predicaments to bolster it. Jon Hamm is a charismatic guy, and the show does manage to take advantage of his comedic side, while also leaning into the damaged humanity thing that he also does well. I can’t say I totally get his character or his motivation, but he’s at least someone drawn interestingly enough that you want to find out more. The rest of them? Not as much. He’s on the poster, though, so I suppose it is his show. I do hope that they manage to pull together all of the storylines in season two and give Coop more of a motivation than keeping up the payments on that Maserati with Chekhov’s trunk.