Summary
The net tightens around Coop more than ever in Your Friends & Neighbors Episode 6, but his focus shifts to something even more urgent — his family, and hope that he can regain what he has lost.
If we’re being frank, Your Friends & Neighbors hasn’t been an especially contemplative show, which is perhaps why Episode 6 is such a standout installment. “The Things You Lost Along the Way” has a deeply wistful, almost moving quality to it, which is territory that the Apple TV+ show, as good as it is, hasn’t really ventured into until now. Paul’s death in the previous episode leaves Coop closer to being caught out than ever, but, for once, he has other things to focus on.
It’s all in service of a last-minute rug-pull, of course. If nothing else, this episode and its lamentations for the past, for how things used to be, exists to remind everyone, Coop especially, that those days are gone and probably aren’t coming back. But while I was anticipating something, I wasn’t anticipating a sudden burst of violence that seems to result in another death, this one much more impactful than Paul’s.
But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
In the meantime, what’s going on with Detective Lin? The early portions of Your Friends & Neighbors Episode 6 unfurl from her point of view as she turns up at Sam’s house to find Paul dead in the foyer, having suffered three execution-style gunshot wounds, and then follows her through the neighborhood during various interviews, including ones with Sam and Coop. And it’s clear Lin has a grudge against rich people that is bordering on a personal crusade.
Sam has an alibi, of course, but that doesn’t stop Detective Lin from treating her with open contempt and suspicion. Is she right to? Was the messiness of Sam and Paul’s divorce and the fact that she stands to inherit his life insurance policy enough motive for murder? Would she even have the resources? I’m unconvinced.
Coop seems a more viable suspect since his alibi isn’t exactly watertight and his confrontation with Paul at Nick’s house implies friction between the two (imagine if word of Coop’s relationship with Sam got out). But there still isn’t enough to really pursue him as a lead, so Coop takes the opportunity to burn his clothes and then hop on a road trip with Mel, Tori, and Hunter.
Sandrine Holt in Your Friends & Neighbors | Image via Apple TV+
This stuff constitutes the bulk of the episode. While Elena tries and fails to get through to Coop after hearing about Paul’s death, he does everything he can to get back in Mel’s good graces. When Tori leaves to be shown around Princeton by a bunch of students, and Coop pulls a few strings to get Hunter a day in the campus studio, he and Mel spend the day getting drunk, shoplifting, breaking and entering — in a church, of all places! — and, of course, climbing into bed together.
There’s a lot of inevitability to all this, but Jon Hamm and Amanda Peet are really superb in this episode, and they sell not just the sexual tension and the easygoing familiarity of a long-time couple but also the ache of their separation, and the dissatisfaction with the lives they now lead independently. There are little hints here and there, too. Mel steals a jar of jam without telling Coop, and he leaps to her defense when the shopkeeper confronts her; his forthrightness is new, probably a consequence of recently flouting the law. Would Mel be able to perhaps come to terms with Coop being the neighborhood thief? Is there hope for them yet?
One suspects that all the progress made here is likely to be undone when Coop’s relationship with Sam is inevitably exposed. Speaking of Sam, she gets perhaps the standout scene of Your Friends & Neighbors Episode 6, when an overeager cashier tries to upsell her on cosmetics to keep her looking fresh, and Olivia Munn brilliantly scatterguns her with everything that’s going on in her life at that precise moment. But after “The Things You Lost Along the Way,” I can’t help but root for Coop and Amanda.
To be fair, the episode’s climax might upset their reconciliation, too. The Cooper clan decides to stop for dinner on the way home and enjoy an evening with Barney and his family, but when Coop heads out in the rain to collect an umbrella from his car, he’s viciously assaulted by several goons. Barney rushes outside to assist him, but he’s hit by a car, landing on the concrete headfirst. With Coop beaten, Barney potentially dead, and Mel and Grace screaming in the road, we get a brief glimpse of Christian in the back of the car. This is clearly payback for what happened at the club. But how is Coop going to explain that?
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