Jon Hamm’s impressively varied and prolific career outside of “Mad Men” has leaned heavily into roles where he’s enforcing the law, breaking it, or doing both at once. Whether Hamm is playing FBI agents in “The Town,” “Bad Times at the El Royale” and “Richard Jewell,” a police chief in “Maggie Moore(s),” criminals in “Baby Driver” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” or corrupt lawmen in “No Sudden Move” and Season 5 of “Fargo,” he’s never less than compelling—delivering layered and authentic character actor work in a leading man’s visage.
In the slick, sudsy, and entertaining Apple TV series “Your Friends & Neighbors,” Hamm has one of his best roles yet as the hedge fund manager turned high-end cat burglar Andrew “Coop” Cooper. If you start digging into the plot machinations and the decisions made by the wealthy, status-consumed, and often terrible characters in this series, you’ll be rolling your eyes at the glossy absurdity of it all. From the get-go, I decided to just go with it—and I’ve gobbled up every episode of a series that plays like a spiritual sequel of sorts to the 1968 Burt Lancaster vehicle “The Swimmer”—which was based on a short story by John Cheever, and the works of Cheever and John Updike often come to mind as influences on this material.
Dark humor and painful melancholy permeate the lives of these affluent, privileged people who almost never appreciate their good fortune, as they’re too busy wallowing in existential crises of their own making. And yes, we feel a sense of schadenfreude watching them turn on one another as if they’re in an upper-class suburban enclave version of “Lord of the Flies.”
Season 2 of “Your Friends & Neighbors” finds Coop exonerated on murder charges and welcomed back into the (fictional) Westmont Village world of country clubs, charity balls, lavish brunches, gossiping by the pool, pulling strings to get your kid into Princeton, and fancy cocktail parties. Still, instead of re-entering the legitimate (at least on the surface) world of investment strategy and risk management, Coop is doubling down on the B&E game, partnering with Aimee Carrero’s savvy and resourceful housekeeper Elena.
With Elena parked nearby, posing as a ride-share driver and serving as lookout, Coop sneaks into his neighbors’ homes, pockets obscenely pricey items, and fences them to the hilariously acerbic Lu Varga, played by the great Randy Danson. (Starting in Season 1, we’ve often heard Hamm’s smooth pitchman delivery in voice-over as he describes an item he’s purloining, using descriptive phrasing that sounds like collectible or jewelry-porn, e.g., “The Richard Mille Felipe Massa automatic chronograph with a signature rose gold and titanium skeleton and flyback function goes for upwards of $225,000…”)
Coop’s relationship with ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet, deftly handling one giant emotional arc after another) remains…complicated. Lena Hall is a standout as Coop’s sister, Ali, a talented singer/guitarist who lives with bipolar disorder. The subplots involving Coop’s children, particularly daughter Tori (a very good Isabel Gravitt), feel like unnecessary diversions – especially when there’s so much juicy stuff going on with the adult characters. Notable returnees include Olivia Munn as Sam, who is now a pariah in the community after trying to frame Coop for murder, and Hoon Lee as Coop’s best pal, Barney Choi, who can’t seem to catch a break.
Just as a pennant-contending ball club strengthens its position in the off-season by acquiring a slugger, “Your Friends…” ups its game with the addition of James Marsden as the brash and manic Owen Ashe, who has more money than even the richest of the rich denizens of Westmont Village. (Marsden seems to be everywhere these days, and isn’t that fantastic?) Ashe introduces himself to the town by throwing a party that Jay Gatsby might have deemed over-the-top, and soon becomes enmeshed in the lives of Coop, Barney, NBA star-turned-TV analyst and gym owner Nick (Mark Tallman), and Sam, among others.
Getting into bed with Ashe, literally or figuratively, is instantly tempting—but there’s something unnerving about this guy. He’s either going to become the best friend you ever had, or your worst nightmare, or a little of both. Marsden is a force in portraying a dashing, charismatic, powerful, and possibly dangerous man.
One of the things I love about this series is Coop being something of a cinephile. He has framed posters in his home, “Psycho” and “Vertigo”—two Hitchcock films about people who aren’t what they seem to be. (To put it mildly.) Coop goes to revival houses to see the likes of “Night of the Hunter” and “Kiss Me Deadly,” and sinks into his sofa late at night to sip Scotch and watch old films. In Season 2, he opens a boxed edition of a 1970s horror classic, complete with a toy prop; there’s also a nod to a certain Michael Mann film that feels almost too spot-on. This man is the star of the movie of his own life, which veers from thriller to sexy romance to dark comedy.
The unsubtle yet effective symbolism extends to the visuals; we get a LOT of scenes, some of them dreams, with characters literally under water, and boy does Coop always seem to be under water, in hot water. “Your Friends & Neighbors” works as an upper-class crime story, a biting and insightful satire of the rich and infamous, and a portrait of a man who sometimes narrates his own story, always starting with, “This is what happens…” It’s as if Coop is constantly surprised by how his life has turned out, even though he’s the one at the steering wheel.
