SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2, Episode 4.
Episode 4 of Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 feels more like it’s taking the temperature of the room rather than moving the story ahead. There isn’t a lot of plot development—but there are several moments where the characters in the Apple TV show stop and check themselves. Instead of suspense, there’s a fair amount of contemplation, set against the backdrop of a Passover seder.
The main storyline in “The Bread of Affliction” involves the frayed relationship between Tori Cooper and her mother Mel, and so many other people needing to comment on it, from Tori’s grandfather Ron to the ladies of Westmont Village. Partly due to Tori giving her the cold shoulder and partly due to another unexpected appearance by Samantha Levitt, Mel is a mess who gets so drunk at the seder that her daughter has to call an Uber on her behalf. Amanda Peet has done a fine job so far this season of playing a woman who is searching for something, and the interplay between her and Jon Hamm continues to be top-notch.
Elsewhere, Grace’s mother is meddling in her pregnancy. It’s both awkward and hilarious when Barney comes home to find his mother-in-law criticizing all the food in their fridge. Audiences know that this is going to build to a big moment for actor Hoon Lee, and it does when Barney finally has enough and tells off Grace’s mom before gently kicking her out of their house. Hoon Lee and Eunice Bae are so underrated, and their characters’ storyline is one of the best parts of Your Friends & Neighbors. It’s hilarious, but also relatable and the two actors are always spot on.
The one significant plot development is that Owen Ashe, while high on cocaine, calls Coop in a rage. It’s worth watching “The Bread of Affliction” just to see James Marsden playing someone out of his mind. Ashe goes through a number of different moods in this episode, from high on coke, to being somewhat vulnerable with Sam, to being the charming party guy when Coop finally gets his money into the vaunted Excelsior fund. It’s the latter that brings Your Friends & Neighbors back to what it’s trying to say in the first place. Coop calls himself “asshole number three” and talks about selling one’s soul, wondering if he’s actually just gone back to being the same kind of person he was trying to get away from. And it’s a fair query to make, considering the company he’s now keeping.
In one of the episode’s first scenes, Coop’s fence tells him that “blackmail has an expiration date,” and that may very well be true. Ashe claims that he deleted the incriminating video of Coop burglarizing his house, but viewers don’t have any reason to believe him. Yet what the script for Episode 4 makes clear is that the bottom line isn’t how Coop deals with Ashe. It’s how Coop deals with himself. His past is coming back in, between Jack Russell and an unexpected appearance from Liv Cross, plus he’s got Ashe on his shoulder like an annoying little brother. And however this resolves, he’s still going to have to look at himself in the mirror.
There are, as always, some funny details in Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2, Episode 4. This episode may contain the best example of the excess that Coop has such disdain for—after the seder, he breaks into the same house to find a $200,000 reproduction of a violin. It’s almost a quarter of a million dollars and it’s not even the real thing, and beyond that, this expensive replica has just been tossed aside in a storeroom and forgotten about. Jonathan Tropper and company never fail to skewer the rich and famous whenever they can. Yes, it helps make Coop a more sympathetic character, but it’s also really entertaining, too.
Some viewers may want to see more forward momentum in “The Bread of Affliction.” Four episodes into the season and there’s not quite as much mayhem as there was in Season 1; this is another episode where there’s only a bit of the heist material. But in terms of where the characters and their dysfunctional relationships are going, there’s a lot for viewers to sink their teeth into. It’s a good episode to re-establish where everyone’s head is at before revving up the engine of chaos.
Your Friends & Neighbors streams Fridays 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.
