Apple TV+John Ham excels in Apple TV+’s “emotionally realistic but absurd” drama.
John Ham plays his best role since the Mad Men, bringing it all to it as Andrew Cooper, known as the hedge fund manager who manipulates his work and manipulation for his work and manipulation, and manipulates his work and manipulation to maintain his own sense of self. If you took Don Draper to drop him in 2025, he might be a charming charm of coop, a broken marriage and two teenagers, a decent guy, and overall bad judgment. Your friends and neighbors are not only emotionally realistic and influential, but also absurd, interesting and unusual combination.
The show begins with waking up in a pool of blood next to the man’s corpse in the foyer of his neighbor’s mansion. He cleans blood – bad moves – and in one of the many mediator narrations that run through the series, he looks back at four months to reflect on “the swirling hot mess of my life.” His worst choice is to replace his lost income by stealing booty from his friends. Robbery is the vein of the story’s manga, but it is also the Trojan horse in the drama. His loss of marriage hurts and distracts Coop, but the theme resides next to the Caper-like theft. The series is sharper and more clever than its funny surface suggests, tackling issues of family, class privilege, vapid materialism and toxic masculinity.
Like most series, this could start a little faster as Life Coop is used to its huge homes and country club communities outside of New York. that It was His life is discovered in bed by his wife Mel (Amanda Pete) along with former basketball star Nick (Mark Tallman), who is what is known as a friend, Nick (Mark Tallman). The divorce sent Coop out of his vast house to a small rental house nearby.
But soon the first episode reaches the boldest turn, when you see why Coop lost his job. A woman who works at his company who has never met and has not reported to him comes to him at the bar. A few months later, the agreed connection leads to him being fired for violating the company’s HR rules. Pop culture immersed the toes in a theme of sexual harassment. On the morning show, Steve Carell’s character, a toxic predator, was sent off the cliff to die. But nothing was more complicated. The show doesn’t deny Coop’s bad judgment, but it makes it clear through the woman herself and Coop’s ruthless boss that HR Rules is a handy excuse to drive him away while keeping his clients behind. The show doesn’t go far beyond that in exploring the issue, but sets the series’ complex realism on social standards.
Non-competition clauses make the cooperative out of hand, but he insists on maintaining its appearance. His robbers are treated like an adventure, separated by mock ads describing the gorgeous items he is lifting up, and echoing the ham badly in all those Mercedes-Benz commercials. “Patek Phillippe Nautilus: 18 carat white gold sealed…” Coop says. needs.
But the true strength of the series lies in his relationships, most of them driven by his injured pride, and the way his identity is tied to his role as a successful man in the world. Ham smoothly navigates the tone change, and while humor doesn’t allow him to flag, he makes him see the emotional pain coop not revealed to anyone around him. There is a lot of surviving affection between Coop and his cheating ex-wife, and Pete becomes sympathetic. When Mel is worried and asks him what’s wrong, he sees a classic alpha man who can’t share his feelings. “I’m fine,” he tells her when he’s clearly not. Olivia Munn is less than anything to do as Sam, a divorced neighbor and occasional fugitive for Krupa. And Lena Hall is amazing as Coop’s younger sister Ali. Easily leaving her medicine, she steals her ex-fiance and sits on his lawn with a guitar and a song. Hall, who won Tony for her role in Hedwig’s Broadway Revival and her role in Angry Inch in 2014, sings occasionally throughout the series. This is an asset, not an invasion. She empathizes with Ali, is funny and warm, and the bond between her brother and sister is touching. After she returns to the drug, her romantic subplot suggests that they are truly a family full of bad choices.
The issue of whether Coop will pay for his crime will be prolonged as the second season of the show has already been ordered. The plot is an effective hook, but his increased resonant emotions and self-knowledge make the show stand out. At a party of male friends hosted by Nick – why is the coop even there? Worst choice – he looks around a man who still has work and money and sees who he might have become. “Their future has already been written, so the quest to stop the emptiness has begun,” he says in a voiceover, observing his dedication to “scotch and cigars,” and “custom golf clubs and high-end escorts.” He recognizes that there is “a whole industry built to cash out on the quiet despair of wealthy middle-aged men.” Even acknowledging that despair through a sympathetic hero is fundamentally different to any other show, but he’s wrong on his path to self-awareness.
Your friends and neighbors will be on Apple TV+ since April 11th.
