Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 TV Review: Jon Hamm and James Marsden make great suburban adversaries
PLOT: Andrew Cooper doubles down on his life as an unlikely suburban thief, until the arrival of a new neighbor threatens to expose his secrets and place his family at risk.
REVIEW: Jon Hamm has been a solid presence on screen since his remarkable leading role in AMC’s Mad Men, from hilarious turns in Bridesmaids to scary antagonists on Fargo. Hamm’s series Your Friends & Neighbors was an instant hit before it even debuted on Apple TV, landing a second season before the series premiered. With a third season greenlit in advance of the sophomore run, Your Friends & Neighbors is poised to be a long-term commitment for Hamm and the stellar ensemble featuring Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn. With James Marsden joining the series in a key role, Your Friends & Neighbors continues to provide a balanced mix of suburban mystery and melodrama as it further explores the lives and secret sides of a group of wealthy residents in upstate New York.
Season one of Your Friends & Neighbors opened with hedge fund manager Andrew Cooper (Jon Hamm) being fired and taking up a life of crime to pay for the lifestyle his children and ex-wife, Mel (Amanda Peet), have become accustomed to. Surrounded by excess in his exclusive neighborhood and country club, Coop steals from his neighbors and eventually gets involved with Elena (Aimee Carrero), a housekeeper who has access to homes that even Coop cannot get into. By the end of the first season, Coop’s relationship with Sam Levitt (Olivia Munn) leads to her husband committing suicide and Coop being framed for it. Exonerated while Sam is taken to jail, Coop is offered a chance to return to his old job, but turns it down to instead keep stealing from the rich alongside Elena. It was an interesting premise that involved sex, lies, and murder, which are also key factors in the new season, with some additional wrinkles. Season two finds Coop and his friends and family in even more danger than before.
Picking up some time after the first season, Your Friends & Neighbors wastes no time in introducing new resident Owen Ashe (James Marsden). An extremely wealthy but mysterious widower, Ashe immediately makes an impact in town as he strikes up a close relationship with Sam as well as Coop, Nick (Mark Tallman), and Barney (Hoon Choi). Marsden makes a great addition to the cast as the suave Ashe steps in and offers everyone opportunities that create new rifts and wrinkles in the ensemble’s layered relationships. Coop’s secret life as a burglar becomes known to more characters this season, altering the relationships those individuals have with their partners and complicating the web of lies connecting everyone. Coop and Mel find ways to rekindle their relationship, while Elena must contend with the dangerous people she owes money to. This forces Coop and his new compatriots to both align and face off with Ashe, who is more dangerous than he appears. The crime side of this series has always been a fascinating element, but the suburban melodrama and how affairs and backstabbing factor into things sometimes make it harder to choose which is more intriguing: the criminal activity or the rich people just being assholes to each other.
This season continues Jon Hamm’s narration, which not only lends insight into Coop’s thoughts and emotional state but also offers a tongue-in-cheek breakdown of the value of the various pens, watches, and other items he steals in each episode. While Jon Hamm continues to evolve in his role as Coop, who faces entering his fifties and the physical limitations that come with it, Your Friends & Neighbors does right by the ensemble cast. Both Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn continue to get solid scenes for Mel and Sam; this season gives Mark Tallman and Hoon Lee a lot more to do, showcasing both actors and their strengths opposite Hamm. Corbin Bernsen returns as Coop’s former boss, Jack Bailey, while Oded Fehr delivers a standout performance that will likely be expanded in the third season. Coop’s kids Hunter (Donovan Colan) and Tori (Isabel Gravitt) get to continue their teen storylines while Coop’s sister, Ali (Lena Hall) gets a fair amount of screentime. Every actor gets development this season, and the balance of keeping Coop’s storyline moving while providing space for every character is an achievement
The structure of this season, one episode longer than the first, manages to pack a lot of story into ten episodes. From the first to the finale, every episode of Your Friends & Neighbors clocks in at close to a full hour and builds on the story developed in season one. Creator and showrunner Jonathan Tropper, who wrote the first episode and the last. has a background as a novelist, and this series feels more like a book volume than a traditional television show. There is so much layered into each episode that cascades into the next that it is challenging to keep up with Apple TV’s weekly release schedule. As I binge-watched all 10 episodes, I found myself ready to dive into the next chapter as soon as the previous episode’s credits began to roll. Director Stephanie Laing returns from the first season to helm multiple episodes, along with Stacie Passon and Phil Abraham, who turn what could have been a Desperate Housewives soap opera into marquee television. Between the curated soundtrack of great songs and the stellar writing, it is hard to find much to complain about in this series.
After the first season, I called Andrew Cooper the anti-Don Draper, but that is a disservice to Jon Hamm’s performance. While Hamm may never play a character as iconic as Draper, he brings a level of nuance to Your Friends & Neighbors that is far more layered than his role in Mad Men. Coop is funny, smart, good-looking, and caring, but he is also his own worst enemy. This new season of Your Friends & Neighbors changes the series’ dynamic without losing its core themes, while expanding the cast, making it the best entry in the series to date. Your Friends & Neighbors is more than a series about a thief stealing from his friends, but also a story about aging, greed, life goals, and knowing when enough is enough. If I know one thing, it is that I cannot get enough of this series, which also proves, once again, that James Marsden makes every project he is in just a little bit better.
Your Friends & Neighbors premieres on Apple TV on April 3rd.
The post Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 TV Review: Jon Hamm and James Marsden make great suburban adversaries appeared first on JoBlo.