YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS Review: Sad Eyes and the Ugly Rich

What are you willing to do in order to support your lifestyle?

Your Friends & Neighbors
The first two episodes in the limited series begin streaming Friday, April 11, exclusively on Apple TV+ worldwide. Subsequent episodes will debut every Friday. I've seen the first seven of ten episodes.

Late in the new Apple TV+ series from Jonathan Tropper (Banshee, Warrior, See), a character comments upon the "sad eyes" that Andrew Cooper, enacted by Jon Hamm, constantly displays.

Indeed, Andrew Cooper is a bleak character, a hedge fund manager on Wall Street who is incredibly wealthy. Yet, simultaneously, he is incredibly unhappy. All his smiles are ironic as he endeavors to carry on his wealthy lifestyle as though he was not buried under crushing debt and an overwhelming sense of guilt for his sins of omission toward his ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet) and their two teenaged children, Tori (Isabel Gravitt) and Hunter (Donovan Colan), from whom Andrew is increasingly distant.

Within the first 15 minutes of the show, Andrew has been forced out of his company by his evil boss (Corin Bernsen), his reputation stained throughout his industry by charges that he slept with an underling, no matter that the 28-year-old woman initiated the brief affair and never mentioned it to anyone else. (Even though it's never mentioned, I caught of whiff of #MeToo resentment. But maybe that's just me.)

The first two episodes are challenging to watch, simply because creator Jonathan Tropper, who wrote them, makes his dramatic points with a sledgehammer, over and over again. (As he's proven many times before, Tropper is very good at setting up action sequences featuring strong and dynamic characters, but not as good at delineating emotional experiences.)

Primarily, Andrew is a middle-aged loser because he pursued what he perceived to be the American dream: get wealthy no matter what, accumulate an overabundance of material goods, and then train your children to do the same. Emotional or spiritual happiness never enters into the equation; that's not his dream.

Andrew and Mel separated and then divorced because Andrew caught Mel in bed with former professional basketball player Mark (Nick Brandes), an affair that turns into a loving, happy relationship, something that was not possible for Andrew and Mel because Andrew became preoccupied with his business affairs, so that his job became his mistress. Again, Andrew thought he was pursuing the American dream, when, in reality, he was chasing after the American nightmare.

Andrew's unhappiness is contagious; everyone he encounters, from his nuclear family to supposed friends to business associates to complete and total strangers, is drinking the same Kool-Aid, sipping on succor until they succumb to an early death. It would all be incredibly morbid, were it not that Mel maintains a soft spot for Andrew, long after her simmering discontent flamed into an affair that would put at end to their permanent relationship, she still pities the man she once loved.

Beyond the first two episodes, directed by Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya), the series gradually opens up its emotional terrain. Andrew, especially, slowly becomes more recognizably human, rather than a surly, constantly pouting man-child. The series also introduces a criminal element to the proceedings, first due to Andrew's desperate financial situation -- largely because he refuses to acknowledge, much less take any active measures, in order to live in accord with his reduced financial reality.

In other words, he's still fooling himself, thinking that he simply must provide his family with the material things that they have become accustomed to and expect as a matter of course. Do they really need those things, though, or is it simply that he thinks they need them in order to enjoy and/or tolerate life?

As the criminal elements move center stage, the series becomes more diverting and entertaining, but it requires a bit of patience to get there. If you can hang on long enough, the series becomes more enjoyable, even as it provokes additional, more complex thoughts.