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In the Apple series, Your Friends and Neighbors, a very rich guy reacts to becoming a bit less rich by turning to a life of crime. Played by Jon Hamm in full charming but morally compromised Jon Hamm mode. It's sort of a drama, it's sort of a dark comedy about rich jerks, and it will show you a lot of very pretty real estate. I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about your friends and neighbors. pop culture happy hour from NPR.
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Listen now to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Joining me today is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the television and film review podcast, Leaving the Theater. Hello, Ronald. Hello, Linda. And also with us as podcast host and book person who writes the Greta Graham newsletter.
Greta Johnson, welcome back, Greta. Hey, Linda, glad to be here. So Your Friends and Neighbors stars Jon Hamm as Andrew Cooper, who people call Coop, which is very TV. He's a very well-off hedge fund manager who's recently divorced. Boundaries are there for a reason. Boundaries? You mean like monogamy?
Really, Coop? It's been almost two years. When are you going to stop playing that card? I don't know. What is the statute of limitations on adultery? Coop finds himself out of a job, and he immediately starts to panic over how he's going to pay for his very expensive life. He realizes that his friends and former friends are so rich that they don't really use... or need, or take care of much of what they own, so he starts sneaking into their houses and stealing.
He takes watches at first, then he starts grabbing other things too. Meanwhile, he's also got a messy personal life. He's still hung up on his ex-wife, played by Amanda Peet, even though she's got a new guy. And he's been having a thing with one of their friends, played by Olivia Munn. Just about his only real allies are a sister with problems of her own, played by Lena Hall, and his best pal and money manager, played by Hoon Lee.
The show is streaming on Apple TV+. Greta, I want to start with you. What did you think of your friends and neighbors? I liked this show as long as I didn't. think about it too hard. Uh-huh, uh-huh. I feel that. Part of me was sort of like, is this grown-up gossip girl with crime? And is that how I get behind it? Jon Hamm is certainly a very charming human. I think... like Jon Hamm fans who like nice watches are gonna love this show yeah there is a lot of watch info part of me was just like
I think I wanted more class warfare out of the show. And that just like doesn't exist at all. So those were kind of like my overarching thoughts. I'm very curious where you two landed on this one. Yeah. How about you, Ronald? What do you think? It's tough because I feel like there's stuff about this show that I like. I like watching Jon Hamm. I like watching Olivia Munn. I even like Hoon Lee. entertaining but the elements of this show that are good don't really overcome
for me, the sequencing and the writing. And I also think that the premise of the show is that he basically is breaking bad. He goes to do this bad thing in order to... like stabilize his lifestyle but that becomes such a subplot it's not the main plot it's just it's like another thing that's happening I remember at one point, maybe around one of the episodes, where other things are happening plot-wise in the show, and then it returns to the fact that he's also
stealing from people and i was like i'd forgotten he was doing that honestly my attention has shifted so much yeah and then i think my biggest quibble is that i don't not sure what they're doing with amanda pete Because as far as I'm concerned, you've introduced her as a straight up villain in the show. Like, there's no redemptive quality there. But then they try to nuance it later, which I understood and I was willing to go with a little bit.
But every time they would say something smart to Coop, I would be like, but wait a minute, you did something very, very bad. And he has a right to be upset and hurt by this. So it just feels like it's kind of all over the place. It's not my favorite, but I am interested to see how it ends. Yeah, you know, I think I'm mixed in the same way that you guys are. Because when I watched it, my first thought was, this really reminds me of a lot of what...
sort of peak television was in its earlier days. Here you have a very handsome, middle-aged white dude who is bad, but maybe not, which is essentially what... everything was for a while not everything but what a lot of stuff was including like previous john ham work right yes in a way it felt old to me it felt very retro to me in a way I will say, I think the part of it that I was interested in
Is that, you know, he as a rich person. And I think one thing that has divided people that I know about this show is. Do you think the show wants you to feel sorry for him or not about the way that he loses his job and suddenly is afraid of not having quite as much money? Because... Perhaps it's my own bias that I was like, well, I don't feel expected to feel bad for him. He's still rich.
And if you think the show is trying to make you feel bad for him because of the money that he has lost, I think it feels very hollow. For me...
What I hooked into about this show and kind of liked was this idea that he starts to realize that he is surrounded by such... empty rich people that they genuinely won't even notice yes and obviously as i think greta was sort of alluding to there's not an examination of what that means for other there is a little bit there is another character who kind of comes into it who doesn't come from this kind of extremely rich world.
There's not as much of an exploration of it from that perspective, which is maybe the class warfare stuff that Greta was talking about. There's more of an examination of it from his perspective. But then it turns into kind of like a... crime drama thing that I was not as into, as opposed to being a kind of a dark comedy about a rich guy who discovered... that he is surrounded by extremely empty consumption, which he's of course also guilty of himself. I feel like there's sort of this implied...
questioning of this lifestyle, but it's not actually there. And then that gets really frustrating because then it's just like, no, Jon Hamm, you're definitely just part of the problem, you know? Right. Yeah, and I feel like when they try to shift to that by adding that extra character... I was like, okay, cool. This is where he's having the awakening and going. beginning to shift into exactly what we actually want to see, which is you questioning.
what actually is wealth? What is value? What does it mean to have these things and not need them? And what is the morality of that? Exactly that. And then they kind of walk into it. And of course, we haven't seen an old series, so we don't know how far this goes. But I am...
curious if that's where it's going, then I'm almost irritated that it takes that long or the course, because it's already been renewed for season two. So I'm wondering if that is the whole of season two, then maybe it's a more interesting show, but that's not going to do much to hook. an actual audience. The other thing that is a problem for the kind of the viewpoint that this is a kind of an arch look at.
incredibly rich people is that it is also really running on the beauty of these houses, right? A lot of the kind of visual appeal of this show is... look at that house, you know, like, look at that car. But it does feel like there's something about it that is unfocused. And I think it feels... Like there's a blurry idea of a show that I might like, but it's not been brought into focus. Yes, that's exactly it. Yes. Also, with a show like this, I would really love to know actual dollars.
is all of his money gone? Does he still have a couple mil in the bank? But that's not enough. Like, I think especially when you're talking about this level of wealth. I also think that, like, this is a show that It basically feels like an undeveloped premise. Yeah. But when you start to say, okay, this is the premise.
there's a bit of a bait and switch and then too many inciting incidents at the beginning of it. Because at the beginning, it just occurred to me while we were talking, and I do this all the time with television, be like, what would make this better? I think it would be better if he'd never lost his job and started stealing anyway.
Sure. If part of the pressure was that he's stealing from his friends and also a hedge fund manager. Right. He's stealing and he's stealing. Exactly. Then it feels a little bit more complex and nuanced in a way. Sure. But if he's stealing out of necessity. I feel like, again, I go back to the Breaking Bad reference where it's like,
I am selling drugs out of necessity. And then I turn into a drug kingpin. It is no longer necessary for me to sell drugs. I'm just doing it because I like it. It was right there. And I feel like that's not what they're doing. It's kind of messy in this.
Right. And there's all this other stuff going on. I don't really understand the purpose of the Olivia Munn character, even though I think she's fine in this. I agree with, I think it was Ronald who talked about Amanda Peay and the way they... set up that character initially and then gradually you learn that there is a lot to recommend her and he still loves her.
They still are connected, but I don't really understand what most of the women are doing in this show. I think the most sharply observed relationship that he has is not the one with his sister, which is the one that I think they want to be the one. That is the most kind of revealing about the person he really is. It's the one with Barney, his kind of best friend and money guy played by Hoon Lee, who is just increasingly looking at him like, what is going on?
And who doesn't have necessarily, like obviously Barney is also a well-off person, but Barney doesn't necessarily have the same status as Coop in a couple of different ways. So there are interesting things in here that I wanted this show to chew on, but it kind of... kept sort of veering off into other... stuff. I also think it has too much character development. Right. Irrelevant character development. That's exactly what I'm saying. Because you introduced the cops at one point.
And then you start developing the... And I was like, no, stop. No, I do not need this. They only have a function. I don't need to know what they're doing at home or if they're friends with each other, any of that stuff. And the thing is, there are ways to take a character who is... And in the writing, in the way that you write a very, very small amount of dialogue or a very limited number of scenes.
you can make that person feel specific, right? It's the quality of the writing and not the amount of screen time. that can develop a character. And I'm not saying they needed to have like no development of the. police. I don't know yet where they're going with that. But I do agree that it becomes sort of more screen time for the police for its own sake. Like, well, we ought to develop everybody.
You got to humanize everybody. You got to make everybody specific. But I don't know that I need to go home. with all of them. Well, and I even felt that way about Barney's character. Yes, Greta. I was going to say that. Yes. And Olivia Munn's character. Where like the backstory, it's like, what are, and maybe if they had started that from the beginning, it would have made more sense to me. But I think a lot of the identity crisis of the show is like, is it a Jon Hamm show? Yes. Or.
Is it a – Is it an ensemble show? Or is it an ensemble show with a variety of cast members who are all participating in this really wealthy community in different ways and are really frustrated with it in different ways? And I feel like they're – trying to get there, but it doesn't actually pull that off. I mean, if you call friends and neighbors, it can be exactly what you just said. Because for a minute I was watching this and it started to remind me of Cougar Town.
or even shrinking, where it's like we started with a premise. But the chemistry was so good between the characters that the show became something else. Typically, that only happens with comedy, though. Like in drama, I'm sitting here watching this or like purported drama, whatever you want to call it. Like if you're sitting here watching it, if it's going to shift to be their relationship with each other and with their wealth, I would still watch that show.
It feels like the show is uncertain that that's what it is. I think the other thing that you can't miss about this show... is how heavily reliant it is on how good Jon Hamm is on television. Sure. Jon Hamm is just exceptionally good on television. And that is just true of certain people. You know, it used to be that somebody who was as...
beloved on television as Jon Hamm would leap and become a movie star. And that hasn't really happened, right? But what he has done is he has remained a really potent... personality on TV. And to have him come back and be at the center of this show, it almost makes it impossible for it to be really a truly an ensemble show. When you start it centered on him, it's always going to want to come back.
to let's look at Jon Hamm, not just being handsome, I'm kind of joking about that, but being as charismatic on TV as he is, as kind of strangely... complicatedly likable and also hateable, which is how I always found him to be on Mad Men. The fact that I thought he was very charismatic on Mad Men did not change the fact that I thought Don Draper was fundamentally a very bad person. Agreed. And I think this.
Kind of could go the same way, but I don't know where they're trying to go with the use of that kind of screen presence, if that makes sense. I think there's a good show here. Kind of partially formed is how it feels to me. Yeah, I think that's accurate.
All right. Well, we want to know what you think about your friends and neighbors. Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Ronald Young Jr., Greta Johnson, you are not my neighbors, but you are my friends. And thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Technically, I am your neighbor.
Thank you. You are sort of my neighbor. That is true. Also, just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org. Thank you all for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour. PR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you tomorrow.
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