‘Your Friends and Neighbors’ Loses the Thread
Sometimes writers get distracted by shiny things just like kittens.
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The Duchess, who is cruel, likes to joke that I have a man crush on Jon Hamm1. This is due to my sincere love of Mad Men (as required by the Law of Middle Aged White Dudes of a Certain Age) and a few positive comments I may have made about Hamm’s general levels of charisma and good hair2, and it’s become a bit of a running joke in the household. So it took real courage for me to suggest we watch Your Friends and Neighbors on Apple TV+. Because of the mockery, you see3.
The show focuses on Andy Cooper (Hamm), who suffers a series of blows: His wife has an affair with his former best friend and divorces him, he’s estranged from his kids, his bipolar sister comes to live with him, and he’s let go from his hedge-fund job, leaving him scrambling to fund his pretty hefty lifestyle. When he’s wandering a friend’s house, drunk, during a party, he realizes that his friends and neighbors leave a lot of expensive stuff lying around—stuff he can easily pocket, and then fence for cash4. So he does.
This is kind of interesting. Cooper is clear-eyed about his privilege, and has little remorse stealing from his supposed friends. Hamm narrates catalog copy on the items he’s stealing, informing us of the relative value and features of the watches and fine wines he’s swiping, going Full Don Draper for a little while5. The soapy relationships between the friends and neighbors are fun, and there’s some real interest in seeing how Coop navigates this unexpected new career for himself.
And then the show goes and screws it all up by including a murder mystery6.
Every Time I See You It Costs Me Money
It’s ironic that Jon Hamm stars in this, because Mad Men was another show that had a terrific basic concept and execution and got distracted by a secondary premise that almost ruined everything. Your Friends and Neighbors isn’t quite at Mad Men’s level of greatness, but it’s the same basic effect: Coop’s decision to start a new career as a gentleman thief is interesting7. The murder mystery is not so much.
Part of the problem lies with the victim, a neighbor named Paul who is fairly unlikable, a loud man cheating on his wife. He’s also a character the show barely bothers to sketch. It’s impossible to care who killed him outside of the implications for Coop, who has been framed for the murder. That sounds like it should be interesting, but the show doesn’t really dive into Coop proving his innocence, it just sort of hangs the possibility of going to jail for a few decades for the one crime he didn’t commit around his neck and stands back to admire it a little8. It’s not interesting because the show itself doesn’t think it’s interesting.
The stealing luxury watches from his neighbors thing and paying for stuff with bricks of cash? That’s fun and interesting. When the show stops that part dead so it can do a lukewarm police procedural, the show coasts on Hamm’s considerable charm and only gets its zing back when it unpacks who framed him and why, then immediately sets up the next season of the show. That’s, like, three hour-long episodes where the story spins its wheels9.
Out Here, Scotch Was Like A Fucking Religion
There are a few possibilities for why this happens to stories. Maybe the writers didn’t have confidence in their main premise, and thought they needed more. Maybe the murder mystery was always the thing they wanted to write about, but they needed a way in to the universe. Maybe some suits at Apple meddled, demanding more storylines. If the murder connected back to Coop’s new life as David Niven in Connecticut, it might have worked better as a comeuppance, maybe10.
But the main event in a show like this is the comeuppance for a whole class of people. The fun stuff is when Coop is staring at his friends and neighbors and marveling at their empty, wealthy lives, mocking their commitment to their bougie bullshit. The high-end thievery bit gives the show room to do that as Coop wanders their impeccable, boring homes mentally cataloging bullshit, or teams up with his old housekeeper (Aimee Carrero) to leverage the staff underground network and their secrets pipeline to his advantage. The murder stuff feels like every other murder story you’ve ever seen on TV11.
Ah well. At least there’s Jon Hamm, doing his patented Befuddled Hottie12 routine and largely pulling it off. The man will never get a role like Don Draper again, but he’s always fun to watch when he pulls that exasperated face. Wait, do I have a man crush on Hamm? Maybe13.
NEXT WEEK: Sirens’ ambitions are its undoing.
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The word “joke” does not convey the precise level of mockery she imbues into these jests.
I mean, it’s spectacular.
In lieu of awards for bravery you can just send me whiskey.
Meanwhile, if you rob this house you walk out poorer than you were when you broke in. And also have several cats in your pockets, somehow.
These scenes are brief, but they’re a mix of Fight Club and Mad Men in a way that works a charm for this Gen X idiot.
This is more common than you think. Even some murder mysteries screw up by focusing on the murder mystery.
Although they could have given us one scene where Hamm wears a tuxedo while robbing someone, like David Niven.
Trust me: Standing back to admire one tiny part of the story you’re writing is a problem many writers face. I lose time to this all the time.
It’s very common these days for every season of a show to have a saggy middle 3 or 4 that just tread water, but it’s better than the old days when seasons would have saggy middle 10s and 12s, because there were 27 episodes in the season.
There could be a vague gesture at this being the consequence of Coop’s choices—he wouldn’t have been there to be framed if he wasn’t stealing people’s watches—but Coop never regards the murder charges as anything more than an aggravating unfairness, so that potential is wasted. Unlike Hamm’s hair.
Right down to the quirky detective who is not so much quirky as eally bad at their job.
If we’re voting, I wouldn’t mind having Befuddled Hottie as my nick name.
Yes.
The murder was merely a catalyst for Coop to remind him the life he had wasn't shitty at all. And it served it's purpose. He's trying to dip out of the privilege for a second to figure out why he wanted to get there in the first place. The murder victim was an ugly man, and Coop can't say much more for himself. And he is a criminal, but not that kind of criminal. It all makes perfect sense to me if you step back from plot devices to the story of a man finding himself. Like you said, it's not much different than Mad Men in that respect.