Summary
Coop finds an unlikely ally in Episode 4 of Your Friends & Neighbors, but things are still going from bad to worse.
All good criminals need a partner in crime, and it looks like Coop has found his in Episode 4 of Your Friends and Neighbors. But having an accomplice doesn’t seem to be doing him any favours. In fact, things only get more complicated thanks to Elena’s involvement, and there’s only an exceedingly slim chance that Coop gets away with any of this. And that’s to say nothing of his rapidly complicating personal life.
That’s good news for the viewers if nothing else. If the two-part premiere got us on Coop’s side, and Episode 3 started to send things a little out of control, it’s Episode 4, “Literal Dragons”, where everything really kicks into gear. This where Coop starts getting more comfortable with the idea of robbing his privileged community for his own gain, but its also where his reach begins to exceed his grasp, and where he realizes that no amount of money will repair his relationship with his daughter, his ex-wife, or current “girlfriend”. It’s all going to go wrong regardless. He might as well be as wealthy as possible when it does.
Anyway, picking up from where we left off, the telltale clack-clack of a gun being primed isn’t as much of a problem for Coop as it seemed. It isn’t Nick or Mel holding the weapon, but Nick’s put-upon housekeeper, Elena. And Elena sees Coop’s attempt to steal Nick’s championship ring as an opportunity. She’ll keep her mouth shut just so long as he cuts her in as a partner. After all, she has even more reason to defraud these people than he has. As the episode makes clear in an opening sequence detailing her journey to work, and then later when she takes Coop out of Westmont Village to her own neighbourhood, there’s real wealth disparity at play here. And the wealthy don’t care about the people who keep their homes clean.
Elena is also pretty useful. As a worker she’s able to come and go as she pleases; she’s part of an expansive network of downtrodden hired help who’re never noticed but notice everything. She also introduces Coop to her cousin, Hector (Gino Vento), who can provide security codes for home alarm systems for a heavy fee. Elena’s loyalty to her family outweighs her fear of things going wrong. But it’s Coop who pays the price when Hector only provides the code for the main alarm, and not a secondary one guarding a collection of Hermes handbags. The resultant chase through the neighborhood, while Coop is hounded by a dog, is very funny. But it’s also a reminder that the net is closing. He can’t keep getting away with this.
To make matters worse, Episode 4 of Your Friends & Neighbors reveals that everything else in Coop’s life is also going wrong. Barney, who Coop is technically keeping afloat with the proceeds of purloined jewellery that he now knows the police are investigating, is approaching financial dire straits. Like Coop, he doesn’t want to let his lifestyle go, and he’s easily swayed by his wife, Grace, but they’re on a sinking ship, and if it goes down, Coop is likely to go with it in some way. I strongly suspect that Coop will end up cutting Barney into his arrangement with Elena, especially down the line, but we’ll have to see about that.
Eunice Bae and Hoon Lee in Your Friends & Neighbors | Image via Apple TV+
Either way, Coop can’t rely on his high-priced lawyer, Rick, to negotiate fair recompense for Bailey’s coup, since Rick is clearly in bed with Bailey. This is spotted by Liv, who still feels guilty about her weekend tryst with Coop having ruined his life, and risks her job to warn him. In an uncharacteristically tender moment she gives Coop a kiss on the cheek which is witnessed by Sam, who is still trapped in emotional limbo not knowing how to perceive or pursue her relationship with Coop.
A lot of this comes to a head at Mel’s extravagant birthday party, which Nick has thrown for her despite her expressing very clearly that she didn’t want one. Sam heads to the bathroom moments after arriving and being confronted by her ex-husband and sends Coop some saucy pictures – pictures which Elena receives, since she happens to have his phone at the time. She doesn’t do anything with that information immediately, but I imagine she’ll store it for later, just in case she needs something to blackmail Coop with if their arrangement goes wrong.
Mel feels so awkward at her own shindig that she literally flees when Nick tries to force her into saying a few words. Luckily, Ali is the only person in the zip code with any emotional intelligence, so she takes to the stage with her guitar so nobody notices Mel’s absence. She spends that absence with Coop, on the trampoline where they clearly made a fair few happy family memories. Later, she plucks Coop’s un-showy birthday gift out of the pile of designer bags and realizes he is the only person who put any thought at all into the process. She eats her favourite candy alone on the floor, sobbing at the realization that her life hasn’t turned out in quite the way she thought it would.
But Coop leaves with Sam. When he gets in the Maserati, she’s already in the passenger seat. Just when it seems like a reconciliation with Mel is on the agenda, Sam is more forceful than ever in her advances, and Coop can’t say no. Correction: He likely doesn’t want to say no. But I’m not sure Coop knows what he wants, which is why he’s spending his evenings running away from guard dogs. The house of cards is closer than ever to collapsing on his head.
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