‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Star and Creator Unpack Season 2 Premiere Twists, Coop’s ‘Unsustainable’ Life

Note: This article contains spoilers from “Your Friends & Neighbors” Season 2, Episode 1

“Your Friends & Neighbors” Season 2 begins much the same way the Apple TV hit’s first did: With Jon Hamm‘s former hedge fund investor Andrew “Coop” Cooper sitting down at a bar and meeting eyes with a beautiful woman. The similarities end there, though, as Coop’s potential hookup is interrupted this time by his ex-wife, Mel (Amanda Peet). What begins as a flirtatious conversation between the two former spouses ends with Mel marching away, offended and grossed-out by Coop’s arrogance and very Don Draper-like belief he can get any woman he wants.

This scene serves as a mission statement for not just the episode, titled “We’re Here Until We’re Not,” but the entirety of “Your Friends & Neighbors” Season 2.

“When you have a show that is a hit, the trickiest part is coming back and being like, ‘Okay, now let’s do it again. How do we do it?'” Hamm told TheWrap. “Fortunately, [series creator] Jonathan [Tropper] is very good about telling a story and saying, ‘Okay, well, we set this whole thing up, and there were all these repercussions and aftershocks. How do we deal with those? We have to deal with them.'” For his part, Tropper did not want “Your Friends & Neighbors” Season 2 to feel like a retread.

“The biggest guiding principle was not to repeat Season 1,” Tropper said. “The good news was the show hadn’t aired yet when we wrote Season 2, so it wasn’t a hit yet. So we didn’t think, ‘Oh, my God, it’s a hit. We have to do the same thing again.’ We thought we had made something really special, and we just had to avoid the temptation of doing it again.”

Its opening bar scene is not the only time that the “Your Friends & Neighbors” Season 2 premiere subverts viewers’ expectations. Later on, when Coop and Westmont Village housekeeper Elena (Aimee Carrero) are in the midst of pulling off another one of their late-night robberies, Coop bends over the wrong way and throws his back out. Collapsed on the floor of a home that is not his, Elena and Coop are forced to call the latter’s best friend and business manager, Barney Choi (Hoon Lee), to help them make their not-so-clean getaway.

The twist, which comes early in the episode, represents another instance of Coop being forced to make an uncomfortable, risky decision in the name of keeping his illegal hobby a secret. Things only become even more complicated when Barney later tells Coop in the episode’s closing moments that he wants “in.”

“If it was up to Coop, that circle would remain him and Elena, but it’s not now,” Hamm said of his character’s growing criminal circle, teasing, “It becomes exponentially more difficult to manage with Barney [now involved]. We’ll see the results of managing that, and they’re not great.”

Coop’s thrown-out back is representative of another topic that Tropper and his team wanted to explore more this time around: The awkward, uncomfortable physical and mental realities of middle age.

“I think one of the themes that we’re really exploring more deeply in Season 2 than we did in Season 1 is middle age and the psychological, emotional and physical damage you’ve done to yourself by this point in your life,” Tropper explained. “The whole premise of the show is Coop’s midlife crisis, right? That’s going on all through the show, and you’re starting to see some of the more physical representations or manifestations of that with Coop in Season 2.”

That theme will be expressed not just in Coop’s journey this season, either, but also Mel’s. “In Season 1, Mel was really like a rock for Coop. She was holding it all together. But we have an actress like Amanda Peet, and we wanted to let her use some more of those acting muscles and just really let her start spinning out,” Tropper teased. “So Season 2 became much more her midlife story as well.”

It is not just Coop’s back and his growing number of co-conspirators that will cause him trouble throughout “Your Friends & Neighbors” Season 2. There is also the season’s biggest new character, Owen Ashe (James Marsden), a cocky, abrasive rich guy who storms into Westmont Village and quickly starts ingratiating himself into the affluent neighborhood’s community.

Coop and Ashe do not share much screentime in the show’s Season 2 premiere, but the episode pointedly ends with the two characters locking eyes across Ashe’s “Great Gatsby”-like welcome party.

Tropper said bringing in Marsden’s character turned out to be a vital part of building on the foundation established by the series’ first season. “The novelty of Coop robbing houses is over. So, while robbing houses is still part of his M.O., that can’t be the thing you hang your hat on,” Tropper explained. “How do we raise the stakes, both emotionally and physically, for Coop? That required a disruptor, bringing someone else in.”

While viewers will have to wait for future episodes to learn more about Marsden’s character and see the ripples that his arrival causes, Hamm called the character a “tremendous, disruptive force,” teasing, “We’ve set up quite a few chess pieces that are going to get moved around over the course of the season and they do — very compellingly.”

As for Coop, Hamm told TheWrap that “Your Friends & Neighbors” Season 2 will continue forcing the investor-turned-amateur thief into accepting the fact that he has even less control than he believes. “He thinks he’s kind of got this under control. He doesn’t. No one really does,” the actor said. “That’s his first mistake, and I think that he’s going to learn that lesson sooner rather than later, and he better be ready for it.”

“Part of what Season 2 looks at is what happens when the foundation starts to crack. Moving forward, in the story of Coop and this neighborhood, his life is really unsustainable. So what happens when you can’t sustain it?” Hamm mused. “I think that is a real interesting question to ask, and an interesting thing to see from an audience standpoint. To get to watch it all unravel is exciting.”

New episodes of “Your Friends & Neighbors” Season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV.

The post ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Star and Creator Unpack Season 2 Premiere Twists, Coop’s ‘Unsustainable’ Life appeared first on TheWrap.