Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 makes Season 1 look tame. The Apple TV comedy-drama returns with Jon Hamm on his A-game, series creator Jonathan Tropper finding new ways to be sharply witty, and stakes that viewers can’t look away from. Oh, and James Marsden arrives on the scene and the Paradise alum threatens to steal the entire show.

What led Your Friends & Neighbors to be so successful was Tropper and Hamm striking the perfect balance between bitingly funny and just biting. Season 2 has preserved so many of the elements that were laugh-out-loud funny, such as the asides giving detailed information about the things that Andrew “Coop” Cooper is in the process of stealing. And there’s still Coop serving as the self-deprecating, brutally honest narrator. Hamm keeps that delightfully deadpan tone, while the scripts give him the right lines to skewer his character’s own behavior. So many comedies try to make social commentary, particularly within the world of the affluent (see Apple’s own Imperfect Women as a recent example), and this show actually hits its targets.

The target in Season 2 is a big one: Owen Ashe, portrayed by Marsden in the middle of a great run that included his return to Paradise and starring in the zany Hulu comedy Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. Just like Jon Hamm is so well-suited to be Coop, nobody could’ve played Ashe but Marsden, because he makes Ashe the character audiences will love to hate. He’s the perfect foil for Coop, gregarious and full of himself from the moment he makes his splashy arrival. He exemplifies everything that Coop is raging against. But at the same time, viewers can’t totally loathe him because this is James Marsden. He’s charming, he’s funny and even watching him work a room is vastly entertaining.

Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 is a battle royale between Coop and Ashe, in more ways than one. But this is also still a heist show, and Tropper avoids the sophomore slump by finding ways to make the story bigger that actually make sense for the characters. Events from Season 1 have clear, direct effects on Season 2 (and for Apple TV viewers who missed that, the season premiere has a very canny way of explaining everything). And while there’s still a madcap sense to the caper part—reminiscent of the underrated ABC sitcom The Knights of Prosperity, minus Mick Jagger—nobody gets off easy. In fact, the entertainment value comes from how much it gets worse.

Crucially, even though Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 has a big-time addition, the show doesn’t push its existing cast to the background. There are new developments for several other characters independent of Coop, most notably Grace and Barney (the fantastic Eunice Bae and Hoon Lee) as well as Coop’s ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet, still delivering her best performance since Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). These characters have their own continuing goals and problems to figure out. Under the fun of suburban crime and the cutting observations about rich people, there are still storylines about aging, about identity, and about what the heck it is people want out of life. Tropper doesn’t get too serious or melodramatic, but he’s also maintained the sense that Coop’s actions are just a catalyst for the people around him to break out in their own separate, less criminal ways.

The biggest weakness in the season comes in the storylines involving Coop’s children. Your Friends & Neighbors treads some of the same ground that is so common in TV shows with teenage protagonists, from romantic drama to getting up on their soapbox. And when the whole rest of the show isn’t getting up on its soapbox, that sameness stands out a little bit more. But if that’s the only significant issue in a show that manages to maintain several different tones, service a large ensemble cast and pull off heist scenes that feel like a movie, that’s a relatively small complaint.

This is a series that knows exactly what it is and found a way to make that even bigger. Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 is by turns hilariously wild, charmingly self-deprecating and quietly moving—often all three of these things in the same episode. Not many TV shows can put all of these things together and make them work. But with Jon Hamm leading the way, and James Marsden creating an equal and opposite force of chaos for him to bounce off of, the second season is even better than the first.

Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 premieres April 3 on Apple TV. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.