Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for the Your Friends & Neighbors Season 1 finale.
Your Friends & Neighborsopens on quite the predicament. Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) wakes up on a blood-soaked floor next to a dead body. He tries to clean up the blood and in his hasty escape, he falls into a pool. From that moment on, the show moves backwards with Hamm’s occasional narration explaining the “swirling, hot mess” of his life. A newly-divorced Coop is fired from his job on a technicality. To maintain the lavish lifestyle his children have become accustomed to, he turns to crime. He breaks into homes in the neighborhood, using his knowledge of his neighbors’ tastes, flaws, and patterns of behavior to take what they wouldn’t miss and pawn those items off.
Fast-forward to the finale and the body has been revealed as Paul Leavitt (Jordan Gelber), the separated husband of Coop’s neighbor-with-benefits, Sam (Olivia Munn). With his DNA at the scene from his fall and break-in, as well as a gun planted in his car,Coop is the lead suspect in Paul’s murder. He’s ready to give up. The planted evidence is enough for Detective Lin (Sandrine Holt), who shows no interest in investigating what happened further. Coop gives a cherished watch to his son and cuddles up with his daughter for one last movie night before he plans on turning himself in and taking a plea deal. That is until his ex-wife, Mel (Amanda Peet), chastises him for giving up, and begs him to try. “Don’t be the guy who gives up the exact moment you should be fighting with everything you have.” So try he does.
Apple TV+’s ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Reveals Who Killed Paul Leavitt With a Twist
Coop reaches out to his attorney-via-blackmail Kat (Heather Lind) to comb over all the evidence available to him. It’s here he discovers that Sam must have a second phone. The phone she gave to the police — the phone that confirmed she was in Boston with her parents —doesn’t have any of their various “you up” texts. With no help from the police,Coop uses the skills he’s honed as the local thief to get back into the Leavitt household. He partners with Elena (Aimee Carrero), a housekeeper in the neighborhood who helps Coop with his criminal exploits, to offer her services to Sam. Sam takes the offer and leaves Elena to clean. Elena lets Coop inside and their investigation begins. In a drawer with a false bottom, Elena and Coop find a suicide note written by Paul. His death wasn’t a murder at all.
“She’s Still in This World”: Olivia Munn Teases a Comeback for Sam in ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Season 2
Season 1 just wrapped on Apple TV+.
In a huge swing with an incredible payoff,Your Friends & Neighborsswitches its perspective to Sam. With the same dry, but lightly playful narration-style viewers have relied on from Hamm, Munn carries the audience over her character’s motivations. She reveals that Paul’s insurance had a no-suicide clause. With their divorce still not finalized, that life insurance is Sam’s — and her two sons’ —only lifeline. Only one gunshot was inflicted by Paul. The others came from Sam, who returned to the home after Paul FaceTimed her during the incident. Sam tries to hold Coop at gunpoint, stopping him from turning her in. She tells him thatit would be easy to say her husband’s killer broke into her home and she had no choice but to defend herself. Coop tells her she isn’t really a killer and, luckily, he’s right.
Jon Hamm’s Coop Takes a Victory Lap in the ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Season 1 Finale
Coop finds out that the company that fired him is sinking without him. Morale is low, and his clients aren’t interested in working with his boss, Jack (Corbin Bernsen). Coop demands 20% of his old Swiss accounts and 25% of the business’ total profit share. Jack tries to push back, but with the company in such a bad position, and Coop’s revelation that he can survive without this job (however precariously),Coop doesn’t budge and gets his way. The only catch is that he has to take a flight to Switzerland with Jack that night. But first, Coop has a gala. It’s a bit of a victory lap for Coop. Everyone in the neighborhood is there, including every person who placed bets on everything from whether he really killed Paul to his potential sentencing.
At the gala, Coop dances with his daughter, Tori (Isabel Gravitt). He asks her if she wants a professional tennis coach, to increase her chances of getting a tennis scholarship to Princeton during her senior year, but she insists that she wants him to keep being her coach. Meanwhile, Hunter (Donovan Colan) shares a table with his mother, aunt, and his new girlfriend, showing a new kind of stability for him. Mel and Coop’s sister Ali (Lena Hall) have something of a heart-to-heart, inspiring Ali to head to her ex’s home and spray paint “F*ck Bruce” across his garage doors. After Nick (Mark Tallman) forgivesMel, she dances with Coop. They acknowledge, however briefly, thatthey’re still in love with each other, but both need to spend some time on their own.
‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Gives a Taste of What’s Next for Coop
Coop leaves the gala, presumably to catch his flight with Jack, but instead he never shows up. The plane leaves without him. This is by design. Coop heads to Jack’s house. He steals a piece of art from Jack’s office, symbolizing not only that he’s done with corporate life, but that he’s ready to do higher-stakes theft, despite the troubleart thefthas already caused him.
Your Friends & Neighborswas renewed for Season 2 in November. In fact, filming for Season 2 is already under way. Speaking withVanity Fair, creator and showrunnerJonathan Tropperinsists that he’s “not going down the Walter White road” for Coop.Season 2isn’t looking to make Coop a proper criminal boss man. Instead,Tropper wants to explore “the risk and reward ratio.”
New faces have been cast forSeason 2, includingJames Marsden, but there’s plenty of room todig deeperinto other characters. While Sam can’t be charged with fraud because she still hasn’t filed life insurance, the entire neighborhood knows what she did. Mel’s recklessness in romance bled over into shoplifting on a college tour, and she still has to unpack her feelings for Coop. Coop’s best friend, Barney Choi (Hoon Lee), is still feeling the financial pressure of his home renovations, as well as the loss of Coop as a business client. Whether Coop rallies any of them to be partners in crime, or we simply see the drama unfold around them in a separate way, there’s no doubt thatYour Friends & Neighborshas plenty of juice left for another season of illicit mayhem and social shenanigans.
Your Friends and Neighbors
