Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 Episode 5 Review: Halfway to Invisible

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

4

The first half of this episode was, dare I say, a bore.

I wasn’t even halfway through Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 Episode 5, and I was already checking the time to see if we were coming to a close.

The magic of the show doesn’t lie with Coop’s investments, Barney’s work with Nick, or Elena and her family troubles. It’s more complex than that. Thankfully, there was a method to the madness, and the final third of the hour paid off handsomely.

This hour clocked in at over an hour, and it was bordering on depressing as hell, particularly if you’re on the dark side of 40 and desperately clinging to relevance.

Yet, somehow, Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 is working overtime to make me grateful that I have already accepted the inevitable. 

I’ll both blame and attribute that general malaise to a lack of money because nobody in my orbit is dealing with the problems Coop and friends are encountering, partly because we’re not interested in them but primarily because we couldn’t afford them if we were.

It’s not easy to put yourself in other people’s shoes, and Hollywood often forgets that we’re not all rich and that we don’t even want the entirely new set of problems that comes with the distinction.

Still, it amazed me how different my reaction to the story was by the end of the hour, as it recovered so nicely in the last 20 minutes that every other minute felt worthwhile.

Everyone is struggling, some more than others, and each has their own challenges that make them feel incredibly alone.

And despite the fact that we’ve, more or less, landed on certain characters to carry the weight of the show — Coop, Mel, Barney, and Sam — there are still many others to service along the way. 

For example, Nick has been on the periphery this season, but he’s getting dragged into the limelight again in a very ugly way.

Ashe has come in like a tsunami, rushing over us and leaving us breathless with the anticipation of his expected downfall.

And Jack has returned as Coop’s former nightmare boss and genius money manager, completely entangled in the main story through Nick’s and Ashe’s surge of activity.

And other than myriad choices that many of them regret, what they all have in common is coming face-to-face with their own mortality.

Mel’s alone, adrift from her daughter, unemployed, and feels betrayed by her body.

Coop is trying to keep a spring in his step by straddling not one, but three worlds — family man and friend, a fledgling criminal, and dipping his toes back in the financial waters.

Barney has a keen eye for business, but is hoisting his sails on losing propositions, from Nick’s Strong Ass Gym to Coop’s burgling their friends and neighbors, all while preparing to welcome an unexpected addition to his family late in life.

It’s hard to watch them flounder around, unmoored from the reality they once lived. Marriages break up, jobs are lost, relationships fracture, and everyone keeps struggling to stay afloat.

Doing it with a smile on their faces becomes more impressive by the day.

As much as I want to chalk a lot of this up to the problems of rich white people, we’re all in this together, even if we can’t afford to show off our wealth by yacht size or freshen up our lady bits with the MonaLisa Touch.

But my gosh. I have to ask if it’s healthy to be as consumed with appearances and sex and partying as this crowd is.

Mel’s unsuccessfully fantasizing about the foreman building a wall between her house and the neighbor’s (that whole neighbor story is enough to make my head explode), Coop’s jumping into bed with the biggest investor in the Excelsior Fund, and Jack’s taking multiple “boner pills” to get it on with a woman half his age.

Then there is Nick, a former NBA player hoping to leave a legacy behind. But for whom? He has no family. Why not just enjoy the hell out of yourself with what you have rather than worry about how your name will be viewed in history?

I mean, come on! Give it a rest. You’re embarrassing yourselves.

My favorite part of the episode, by far, was between Mel and Sam on Nick’s basketball court. 

Earlier in the hour, Mel’s reaction to being in an overcrowded sauna with Sam was visceral. Sam felt it without even needing to see her face.

That scene showed how close they once were, and that what Mel feels isn’t hatred but a deep betrayal by her friend, one that she can’t reconcile.

I knew right then that their destiny was to reunite, and if their time on the court is any indication, that could come sooner than later. I loved how Sam was watching Mel and followed her out of concern, as it allowed them to begin airing out their differences.

Sam knows what she did was wrong, from screwing Coop to framing him for murder and pulling his family through the mud. 

And yes, it was hard for Sam to hear that Mel was angry about her dalliance with Coop since it happened after they were divorced. But girl code says you don’t do that. Some men are off-limits, especially to close friends.

The dried husk that Mel feels like? So relatable. It’s natural to want to lash out at the world and want to blame everyone for things that are so far beyond your control.

But what worked here is that Sam pushed, revealing that she wasn’t feeling much different when she made her questionable decisions, as Mel is feeling right now. She was and still is bumbling her way through her new normal, hoping for the best. That’s what we all do.

And my gosh, did Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn act the hell out of that scene. It was genuine and raw and messy in all the right ways, and their expressions sold it far beyond their words and actions. 

I wonder if Mel would go easier on Sam if she realized what Coop is up to. I sure as hell hope she’d warn Sam away from Ashe if she was privy to what’s going down with him and her ex.

Ashe is infiltrating every aspect of the storyline, and it’s threatening. Coop is working on behalf of an assumed weapons dealer, Barney is on board, and now he’s financing Nick’s gym. 

Coop sat there straight-faced and lied to Cricket Birch before he screwed her, assuring her the money he was prepared to drop on the Excelsior Fund wouldn’t taint her investment at all. We know that’s not true.

In one of his voice-overs, Coop said that you spend your life trying to avoid certain realities. Aging is one of them. We’ve covered that. 

Death is another, whether our own or that of someone you love. Now he’s got the one-two punch, and we know why Michael O’Keefe’s Ron Cooper, Coop’s dad, has been around more during Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2.

His death is about to teach Coop another Very Valuable Lesson that will make his current pursuits pale in comparison.

But it won’t change the inevitable.

He’ll still be aging. He’ll still be making bad choices. And he’ll still be trying to find a way out of it all so that he can focus on what matters before it’s too late.

Because once you hit a certain age, you are “Halfway to Invisible” a lot faster than you realize, and while it was a creep to get to that point, it’s a slide once you’re on the other side of it.