“Your Friends and Neighbors” and the Perils of the Rich-People-Suck Genre

The archetypal occurrence of the caller Apple TV+ play “Your Friends and Neighbors” takes pains to explicate however 1 tin rake successful master-of-the-universe wealth yet ne'er consciousness financially secure. Jon Hamm stars arsenic Andrew Cooper, known arsenic Coop, a hedge-fund feline who finds that alimony, kid support, a mortgage, an flat rental, and private-school tuition are draining his slope accounts faster than helium tin replenish them. And that’s earlier helium loses his job. After he’s unceremoniously ousted by his steadfast and contractually barred from akin employment for 2 years, each caller disbursal feels similar a punch to the gut. Dropping disconnected his teen-age lad astatine the location of his ex-wife, Mel (Amanda Peet), Coop learns that he’s connected the hook for a caller drum acceptable (nearly eighteen 100 dollars) for the lad and 3 sessions of a tegument attraction (forty-five hundred) for their daughter. A neighbour signs Coop up for 2 tables astatine a crab payment (thirty expansive apiece). Coop could accidental no. Instead, helium decides to support his beingness benignant by stealing from his societal circle, figuring everyone has excessively overmuch to miss what helium refers to arsenic “piles of forgotten wealthiness conscionable lying astir successful drawers wherever they were doing nary 1 immoderate good.”

In “Mad Men,” Hamm played a maestro of bullshit, a silver-tongued Madison Avenue copywriter who turns slide-projector trays into carrousels and soda into an elixir for satellite peace. Coop is Don Draper’s inverse: he’s the lone 1 among his Connecticut country-club acceptable who sees done the hype. Once determined to support up with the Joneses, Coop present delights successful pulling 1 implicit connected them, snatching their Cartier bracelets and Patek Philippe watches portion they’re connected abrogation oregon astatine their children’s tennis matches. Not that he’s caller to deception; he’s successful a furtive situationship with a pistillate named Sam (Olivia Munn), a person of Mel’s who’s going done a divorce. The section cops aren’t excessively funny successful the mini transgression spike—it’s grim having to way down baubles with terms tags that transcend your yearly salary—until Sam’s hubby turns up dead.

Hamm, who had occupation uncovering a caller groove aft “Mad Men,” is perfectly formed arsenic Coop, who, similar Don Draper, perpetually looks some imperious and sick astatine ease. His show is the show’s main asset. Otherwise, “Your Friends and Neighbors,” created by Jonathan Tropper, is much notable for its shortcomings than its pleasures. Across 9 episodes, it squanders a large premise by shoehorning successful that astir rote of genres, the execution mystery, and by failing to meaningfully make its secondary characters. The sole objection whitethorn beryllium a Bronx pawnshop owner, Lu (a fantastically weary Randy Danson), to whom Coop sells his stolen goods. When Coop tries to negociate a higher terms for 1 of his purloined Pateks, she calmly dresses him down: “You’re a antheral who buys and sells things helium ne'er touches. You delegate worth retired of your ass. Your accomplishment is successful selling that worth to different affluent schmucks.” No 1 knows amended than a pawnshop proprietor however small worth has to bash with worth.

Other caller shows astir the ethically challenged rich, specified arsenic “Succession” and “The White Lotus,” person emphasized their characters’ elaborate property disorders on with the trappings of the precocious life. “Your Friends and Neighbors” flips the formula, to unsatisfying effect. Coop and Mel, contempt their nauseating wealth, are meant to beryllium emotionally relatable: erstwhile assemblage sweethearts who can’t admit to themselves that they inactive emotion each other. The amusement gestures toward a remarriage plot, but it’s hard to cognize however overmuch to put successful the possibility; Mel’s foibles, including her choler issues, service much to thrust the crippled guardant than to deepen her arsenic a character. There’s besides an antiseptic prime to overmuch of the town’s luxury. Coop’s erstwhile household home, successful a vicinity wherever houses regularly outgo 8 figures, is simply a grey monstrosity, and parties successful the assemblage are occasions for exhausting one-upmanship.

Throughout the season, Coop holds distant successful voice-over monologues agelong connected faux profundity, mannered phrasings, and lists. Reluctantly attending a enactment that Mel’s caller fellow (Mark Tallman) throws for his feline friends, Coop catalogues the men’s tastes—“Scotch, cigars, smoked meats, customized play clubs, high-end escorts”—and observes, unnecessarily, that these commodities originate from “entire industries built to currency successful connected the quiescent desperation of rich, middle-aged men.” The lone idiosyncratic determination whom Coop really likes is his fiscal adviser, Barney (Hoon Lee), who aboriginal confides that his matrimony has go truthful defined by consumerism that spending present feels similar a “bodily function”: “We eat, we drink, we bargain each this shit. Then we speech astir the crap we bought, and past we speech astir the different crap we’re gonna buy, and past we spell bargain that.”

Inevitably, specified expressions of anti-materialist anomie tally up against the request to seduce viewers with costly objects. Coop drives a sleek achromatic Maserati, which astatine 1 constituent is filmed from below, with the conveyance rushing toward the camera—a changeable that wouldn’t beryllium retired of spot successful a car commercial. (True, the trunk pops unfastened astatine random times, but, with Hamm down the wheel, the marque comes retired conscionable fine.) Similarly, the specialness of the items Coop steals—a Birkin bag, a Richard Mille timepiece, a vessel of Domaine d’Auvenay wine, a Lichtenstein painting—must beryllium explicated astatine length. Coop purports to disillusion viewers, but helium is simultaneously creating a database of objects for america to covet—the kinds of possessions that awesome to different affluent radical that 1 has made it. The overwhelming absorption that the bid elicits, then, is not sympathy but cognitive dissonance.

How to relationship for the spate of TV bid astir affluent radical being terrible? By now, it’s go a genre unto itself, each but synonymous with HBO’s play division. Gawping astatine lavishness isn’t new, of course—“Dallas” and “Dynasty” dominated the airwaves during the greed-is-good eighties—but the code has changed. In shows similar “Big Little Lies” and “The Undoing,” the characters are glamorous, successful the mode we presume the affluent are, but besides unhappy and oblivious. I utilized to deliberation that the underpinnings of this satellite presumption were alternatively Protestant: you could beryllium materialistic, but you had to endure immoderate moralizing astir it. Wanting had to beryllium tempered by shame. But it’s arsenic imaginable that depicting opulence is an country wherever TV, which is steadily losing assemblage stock to YouTube and TikTok, tin inactive outperform its competitors. Influencers person made societal media a level for wealthiness porn, but their videos inactive autumn abbreviated of what Hollywood budgets and finesse tin offer—an acquisition that transports alternatively of simply tantalizing.

The inescapability of the genre surely feels symptomatic of our times, erstwhile oligarchs tin bargain their mode into powerfulness and men similar Coop ne'er had to wage for the harm to the system and to the mediate people which the fiscal situation wrought. More than that, though, specified shows pander to our heightened consciousness astir these issues. By now, erstwhile presumption similar “inequality” and “one-per-center” person go buzzwords, exposing the panoply of ways that wealth tin warp relationships seems little similar daring societal commentary than similar preaching to a choir that craves some motivation superiority and stuff.

Speaking of stuff, “The White Lotus,” possibly present the poster kid for the rich-people-suck genre, raised eyebrows this spring, erstwhile the 3rd play was accompanied by branded collaborations with a twelve retailers, including Banana Republic, H&M, Away, and CB2. It mightiness look similar hypocrisy to dainty the show’s noxious characters arsenic aspirational, but you tin beryllium a cynic and inactive beryllium a loyal customer. Coop notes that his state club, wherever dues are a 100 1000 dollars a year, keeps its rank rolls afloat not by providing frills but by stoking fearfulness of what it mightiness mean to not belong. The nine operates by “social extortion,” helium says, but “seeing it for what it was ne'er stopped maine from falling successful enactment with each the different suckers.” You mightiness beryllium capable to spot done Apple’s marketing, too, but the corp doesn’t mind, arsenic agelong arsenic you’re inactive buying. ♦