Your Friends and Neighbors opens with Andrew Cooper (known to his friends as Coop), a former hedge fund manager in New York, waking up in a stranger’s house with a dead body lying in a pool of blood right beside him. He immediately starts getting rid of his clothes and all evidence that can prove that he was in that house in the first place. But while exiting through the back door, the automatic lights turn on, which startles an already anxious Coop, and he falls into the pool. As he sinks to the bottom, he starts thinking about how things in his life got so bad, and the episode flashes back in time by four months, where we see Coop meeting a woman named Liv Cross. The two strike up a flirtatious conversation, even though both of them are aware that they work for the same company, albeit on different floors and under different bosses, and that they have a massive age gap between them. And although we don’t see it happen immediately, it’s pretty obvious that Coop and Liv hook up. The repercussion of this interaction is massive, probably even more disastrous than his divorce. So, let’s talk about it.
Spoiler Alert
Meet Coop
Three months after Coop’s adventure with Liv, since we see him all alone in his house, it’s evident that they didn’t get into a relationship. While taking a leak, Coop decides to take us on a walk down memory lane to when he got his first job when he had freshly graduated from college. This gives Apple TV+ an excuse to get the VFX artists to use their not-so-groundbreaking technology to de-age Jon Hamm as well as Amanda Peet. I don’t know why they couldn’t just get actors who looked like younger versions of Hamm and Peet. De-aging isn’t at the stage the makers think it is; it didn’t work in Before, it hasn’t worked in Your Friends and Neighbors, and it won’t work any time in the future. Please, stop de-aging actors in their 50s, please.
Anyway, coming back to the plot, this whole flashback basically shows how Coop had this dream of becoming so big that he didn’t have to think about whether or not he could afford something. When he reached that stage, he found out that 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 of his house, give up custody of his kids, and apparently pay all the bills incurred by his ex-wife and two children, Hunter and Tori, even though he wasn’t the one who had committed adultery.
Coop Is Jobless
To make things worse, in the present day, Coop loses his job for sleeping with Liv, and his boss, Jack Bailey, informs him that he’ll not only not get a cent of the profits he has made recently, he also won’t be able to get access to his old clients or get new clients for, brace yourself, two bloody years. In order to find his bearings, he picks up his son and goes to have some ice cream with him. When he drops him home, he has to listen to Mel give a lecture about boundaries, that Coop needs to buy a new drum kit for Hunter, that he needs to pay for Tori’s uber-expensive skin treatment, and that he should be okay with the fact that Tori (who is barely 17) is dating a 20-year-old guy, Jake Weston.
Look, I think that show is going to reveal that Coop actually had a part to play in Mel cheating with Nick—it might’ve had something to do with him being an absent husband and father—but at the moment, Mel is coming off as an annoying douchebag who is dragging Coop’s face through the mud even though she is the one who was at fault. Kudos to Peet for making Mel seem like the most loathsome character in the series.
Coop Resorts to Theft
In order to blow off some steam, Coop calls up Samantha Levitt, who is also a divorcee and attracted to Coop. After frolicking around, pretty roughly, in their bed, the two have an argument over the fact that they don’t have a future together. The following day, Coop goes looking for work and hits one dead end after another. So, he finally breaks the news to his business manager, Barney Choi, that he has been fired. Barney tells him that he should get a lawyer and sue Bailey and that he has enough money to stay afloat without a job for about seven months.
So, Coop begins to get desperate. When he goes to the Millers’ party and watches everyone having a merry time, he slips into Peter and Diane Miller’s bedroom and steals a rolled-up bundle of $100 bills. He doesn’t do anything with it, at least for now, and chooses to dip into his own savings to buy that drum kit for Hunter. When he goes to deliver it at his former house, he walks in on Jake and Tori “having fun.” Jake tries to be polite about it, but he gets punched in the nuts by Coop. To make things even more chaotic, Coop learns that his sister, Ali, has escaped from her psychiatric ward and is playing Radiohead on the lawn of the guy she was supposed to marry.
Coop Finds Out He Has Been Backstabbed
After calmly whisking her away from that situation, Coop apologetically tells Ali that he won’t be able to pay for her stay at the mental institution, and hence, she needs to move in with their parents, which is something that Ali is surprisingly okay with. Once he gets a break from all these family issues, Coop finds the time to confront Liv and requests that she withdraw her complaint since everything between them was consensual, only to find that Liv wasn’t the one who told HR about her one-night stand with Coop.
So, he barges into Bailey’s office and orders him to rehire him because he has been laid off for no real reason. However, given how adamant Bailey is regarding keeping Coop out of his firm, it seems like he has backstabbed Coop because he envies his success rate. Also, given how Bailey talks to Liv when she comes to meet him about Coop’s firing, I have a feeling that Bailey is looking to use the power dynamics that exist between him and Liv to get into her pants, and he has fired Coop because Liv chose to be with him instead of approaching Bailey. At the end of Your Friends and Neighbors episode 1, Coop breaks into the Miller household to steal an expensive watch, because he feels that if he can’t live the privileged lifestyle, those around him don’t deserve to live lavishly either.
Coop Meets Lu
In the second episode of Your Friends and Neighbors, based on Barney’s advice, Coop goes to meet the manager of a low-grade hedge fund company, Ben. But within a few seconds, Coop dismantles his potential employer (while giving off some major Don Draper vibes) as he senses that he is being cheated just because he isn’t as lucrative as he used to be before. While that looks badass and whatnot, he still needs to make money. So, he goes to a pawn shop to sell the watch he stole from the Millers. The owner, Lipschitz, realizes that that watch doesn’t belong to Coop. Hence, he sends Coop to a shady pawn shop owned by Lu and advises Coop to try his luck there.
Of course, Lu buys the watch at a cut-rate price, but what she tells Coop is priceless. Lu says that Coop comes from a world where he used to set the price and everyone used to negotiate with him. After losing everything that he holds dear, especially his job, he has entered a world where he doesn’t have the upper hand, and he has to learn to deal with this upset in hierarchy. Coop gets Lu’s point, so he takes her advice and her money and leaves. After this scene, we get to see the show’s opening title sequence. Usually, I don’t bring up the title sequence in a recap article, but I have to highlight this one for two reasons. One, this is the first time I am seeing the VFX and CGI trickery that were used in that city explosion scene in Inception outside of that movie. And two, in addition to reflecting the theme of the narrative perfectly, it looks unique and nothing like all those boring title sequences made for “prestige” TV shows.
Coop Bonds With Hunter and Tori
We see how a day in Mel’s life looks, and the most anxious she gets is when a patient of hers—she is a child psychologist—talks endlessly about the insurmountable rage he feels and how he damages private property to calm down; and I’ll come back to this in a bit. When Coop shows up for Tori’s tennis practice session for the upcoming tournament, which is her ticket to enter one of the most prestigious colleges out there, Mel gives Coop a hard time about being late. And Coop channels the anger he is feeling towards Mel onto Nick by reminding him for the umpteenth time that he is an adulterous individual. Once that negativity is out of his system, he gives Tori the training and encouragement that she needs to beat Chelsea Sperling at the finals.
We get a scene where all the ladies drool over Nick, and then Samantha’s ex shows up, so they tell her that they’ll help her bag an eligible bachelor, because they don’t know that she is in a physical relationship with Coop (this bit isn’t passing the Bechdel test). Speaking of Coop, Samantha tells him that she wants to have some freaky time with him because she is feeling particularly jealous over her ex, Paul. Then he proceeds to partake in some chit-chat with the Sperlings, and he also informs Barney that he has rejected Ben’s offer, which worries Barney, because if Coop isn’t earning, he won’t be able to pay his fees. Instead of focusing on that, Coop exits the tennis club with Hunter (in Nick’s glorious van) so that he can give him his drum kit. Before doing so, though, the father-son duo drop off Ali at her parents’ house.
Mel Is Problematic
As soon as Coop realizes that his mother is as annoying as she was when he last met her, and his father is as feckless as he was when he last met him, he walks back on his decision to keep his sister at their parents’ place and makes Ali his roommate. Yeah, Coop says that there’s not enough space in his house, but it is only small by his old lofty standards, which means that there’s more than enough space for Ali. Once Ali is settled in, Coop heads over to Samantha’s, and they baptize Nick’s van with their bodily fluids. Since Coop decides to spend the night there, he has to tuck her son in instead of getting to take care of his own son, who is being given a lesson about “being okay” with missing his dad by mom-of-the-year Mel.
The following day, while Coop takes stock of the state he is in with Ali over cereal and milk, Mel is shown to be doing some good old day-drinking and then keying someone’s car. Now, here’s where I need to bring up the child psychologist part and the fact that Mel damages this car after taking inspiration from the kid who is suffering from anger issues. So, in that scene from earlier, I thought Mel had identified a potential school shooter or something. I assumed that she was petrified that a kid with destructive instincts was sitting in front of her and she didn’t know how to tackle that situation without triggering him. Apparently, she was taking notes on how to calm down. What?! I hope the writers are doing this purposefully to show how detestable Mel actually is—probably so that Coop looks like a saint in comparison—because if they are going to justify Mel’s behavior and her actions, then there’s going to be a problem.
Lu Is Tracking Cooper
Coming back to Coop, he breaks into the Sperling household to steal another watch while his own daughter is playing in the tennis tournament, waiting for her father to show up. Coop does show up for Tori’s finale with Chelsea, which Tori wins by applying Coop’s tactic of attacking the net. That’s not the end of the Sperlings’ miseries, though. I think Coop is going to destroy Chelsea’s future outside of the tennis court now that he has evidence of Jules and Brad Sperling having the answers to the upcoming SATs so that Chelsea can cheat and ace the exams, which is textbook academic dishonesty. At the end of Your Friends and Neighbors episode 2, Coop gets a wake-up call. He goes to Lu to sell the watch that he has stolen from the Sperlings, but Lu refuses to buy it. Coop says that he is willing to take any amount of money for it; however, Lu is in no mood to budge.
While all this is going on, a guy named Donnie walks in asking for his mother’s ring that he had pawned. When Rocco, Lu’s cashier, refuses to give Donnie back the ring because he doesn’t have the money to buy it, Donnie pulls out a knife. So, Lu pulls out her gun and tells Donnie to leave the shop, promising to never return again. Once Donnie is out of the picture, Lu tells Coop to hit the road too. As he leaves in his Maserati, Lu calls up someone and asks them to give her all the information they can gather on Coop. The reason why this scene is so important is because it foreshadows Coop’s fate. Donnie is Coop’s future. That’s where he is going to end up, and, coincidentally, Lu gets to use that altercation to tell Coop that he should quit his thievery before he is too deep in the hole he’s digging himself into. Going by the opening of episode 1, though, it’s clear that Coop didn’t heed Lu’s advice. That said, it’s possible that Lu will end up being Coop’s savior because she thinks that he is a good guy. What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
