Your Friends and Neighbors opens with Andrew Cooper (known to his friends as Coop), a former hedge fund manager in New York City, waking up in a stranger's house with a dead body lying in a pool of blood next to him. He immediately begins stripping off his clothes and any evidence that might prove he was ever there. But as he steps out the back door, the automatic lights come on, startling an already anxious Coop, and he falls into the pool.
Creator: Jonathan Tropper
Stars: Jon Hamm, Amanda Peet, Olivia Munn
Three months after Coop's affair with Liv, seeing him alone at her house, it's clear they didn't start a relationship. While urinating, Coop decides to take us on a trip down memory lane, back to when he got his first job fresh out of college. This gives Apple TV+ an excuse for the visual effects artists to use their not-so-groundbreaking technology to de-age Jon Hamm and Amanda Peet. I don't know why they couldn't just hire actors who look like younger versions of Hamm and Peet. De-ageing isn't at the stage the creators think it is; it didn't work on Then, it didn't work on Your Friends and Neighbors, and it won't work in the future. Please, please, stop de-ageing 50-year-old actors.
Anyway, back to the plot, this flashback shows how Coop dreamed of becoming so famous that he wouldn't have to worry about whether he could afford anything. At that point, he discovered his wife was cheating on him with a former NBA star, Nick Brandes. For some reason, after the divorce, Coop was the one who had to move out, give up custody of his children, and apparently pay all the bills for his ex-wife and their two children, Hunter and Tori, despite not having been the one who committed adultery.
To make matters worse, in the present, Coop loses his job for sleeping with Liv, and his boss, Jack Bailey, informs him that not only will he not receive a single cent of his recent earnings, but he won't be able to access his old clients or find new ones for, brace yourself, two freaking years. To compose himself, he picks up his son and goes out for ice cream with him. When she drops him off at home, he has to listen to Mel lecture him about boundaries, that Coop needs to buy a new battery for Hunter, that he has to pay for Tori's expensive skin treatment, and that he should accept that Tori (who's barely 17) is dating a twenty-something, Jake Weston.
Look, I think this series is going to reveal that Coop had something to do with Mel's infidelity with Nick—maybe it had something to do with his absence as a husband and father—but for now, Mel comes across as an annoying jerk who's making Coop look ridiculous, even though she's the one to blame. Kudos to Peet for making Mel seem like the most repulsive character on the show.
To vent, Coop calls Samantha Levitt, who's also divorced and attracted to Coop. After a rather rough romp in bed, they argue about their lack of future together. The next day, Coop looks for a job and runs into one dead end after another. So he finally announces to his manager, Barney Choi, that he's been fired. Barney tells him he should hire a lawyer and sue Bailey, and that he has enough money to stay out of work for about seven months.
So Coop starts to get desperate. When he goes to the Millers' party and sees everyone having a good time, he sneaks into Peter and Diane Miller's room and steals a rolled-up wad of $100 bills. He doesn't do anything with them, at least for now, and decides to dip into his savings to buy the drum kit for Hunter. When he goes to deliver it to his old house, he walks in on Jake and Tori "having fun." Jake tries to be polite, but Coop punches him in the balls. To make things even more chaotic, Coop learns that his sister, Ali, has escaped from her psychiatric ward and is listening to Radiohead on the lawn of the guy she was supposed to marry.
After calmly removing her from the situation, Coop apologizes to Ali and tells her he won't be able to afford to stay at the mental institution and therefore needs to move in with his parents, something Ali, surprisingly, doesn't have a problem with. Once he's taken a break from all these family issues, Coop finds time to confront Liv and asks her to withdraw her complaint, as everything between them was consensual, only to discover that Liv wasn't the one who told HR about her one-night stand with Coop.
So he storms into Bailey's office and orders her to rehire him, as he was fired for no apparent reason. However, given Bailey's insistence on keeping Coop out of her company, it seems he's betrayed her because he envies her success. Also, given how Bailey speaks to Liv when she visits him to discuss Coop's firing, I get the feeling Bailey is looking to use the power dynamic between him and Liv to take advantage of her, and he fired Coop because Liv chose to be with him instead of getting close to Bailey. At the end of the first episode of "Your Friends and Neighbors," Coop breaks into the Millers' house to steal an expensive watch, because he believes that if he can't live in privilege, those around him don't deserve to live in luxury either.
In the second episode of "Your Friends and Neighbors," following Barney's advice, Coop goes to meet with Ben, the manager of a low-end hedge fund firm. But in a matter of seconds, Coop dismantles his potential employer (with a Don Draper vibe) because he feels he's being taken for a ride just because it's not as lucrative as it once was. While that sounds great, he still needs to make money. So he goes to a pawnshop to sell the watch he stole from the Millers. The owner, Lipschitz, realizes that the watch doesn't belong to Coop. He sends it to a shady pawnshop owned by Lu and advises him to try his luck there.
Of course, Lu buys the watch at a bargain price, but what he tells Coop is invaluable. Lu says that Coop comes from a world where he used to set the price and everyone bargained with him. After losing everything he held dear, especially his job, he's entered a world where he no longer has the upper hand and must learn to deal with this shift in hierarchy. Coop understands Lu's point, so he accepts her advice and her money and leaves. After this scene, we see the opening sequence of the series. I don't normally mention the opening sequence in a recap article, but I must highlight this one for two reasons. First, this is the first time I've seen the visual effects and CGI technology used in the city explosion scene in Inception outside of that film. And second, in addition to perfectly reflecting the narrative's theme, it feels unique and nothing like those boring credit sequences made for prestige TV series.
We see a day in Mel's life, and what causes her the most distress is when one of her patients (a child psychologist) goes on and on about how she feels uncontrollable rage and how she damages private property to calm down; and I'll come back to this shortly. When Coop shows up for Tori's tennis practice for the upcoming tournament, which is her ticket to one of the most prestigious universities in the world, Mel nags Coop for being late. And Coop channels his anger toward Mel and Nick, reminding him for the umpteenth time that he's an adulterer. Once he's shaken off that negativity, he gives Tori the coaching and encouragement she needs to beat Chelsea Sperling in the final.
There's a scene where all the girls are drooling over Nick, and then Samantha's ex shows up, so they tell her they'll help her find a good bachelor because they don't know she's in a physical relationship with Coop (this part doesn't pass the Bechdel test). Speaking of Coop, Samantha tells him she wants to spend some fun time with him because she's especially jealous of her ex, Paul. He then starts chatting with the Sperlings for a bit and also informs Barney that he's turned down Ben's offer, which worries Barney because if Coop doesn't make money, he won't be able to pay his dues. Instead of focusing on that, Coop leaves the tennis club with Hunter (in Nick's glorious van) to get his drum kit. Before doing so, father and son drop Ali off at her parents' house.
As soon as Coop realizes that his mom is still as annoying as the last time he saw her, and that his dad is just as incompetent as the last time he saw him, he reverses his decision to keep his sister at their parents' house and makes her his roommate. Yes, Coop says there isn't enough room in their house, but it's small by his old standards, which means there's plenty of room for Ali. Once Ali is settled in, Coop heads over to Samantha's.
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