Don’t Forget About ‘Your Friends and Neighbors’ Stars Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn This Emmy Season
True to the title of the hit Apple TV+ series “Your Friends & Neighbors,” Amanda Peet’s Mel and Olivia Munn’s Sam are both. But they’re also one massive bundle of emotionally wounded nerves, fighting to be content in their little corner of a very privileged lifestyle where they instead feel bitter, desperate and trapped. The moral of their story: money can’t buy happiness, and it certainly can’t buy love.
Aside from huge swanky homes in the affluent, exclusive Westmont community, Mel and Sam have something else in common: Andrew “Coop” Cooper, a hedge fund manager turned thief played by the always on point Jon Hamm. Although Mel is his ex and she’s moved on with a handsome, charming and super-wealthy NBA star Nick (Mark Tallman), her heart still aches for Coop, which seems to annoy her to no end. As Peet puts it, “She can’t stand the fact that she’s still in love with him.”
Peet plays each beat of her storyline with such complexity that it’s impossible to put a label on it. The dialogue is supreme, but it’s in the silent moments when her expression says it all that brings the audience closer to understanding her. When her eyes alone are doing all the work — like when she isn’t verbally sparring with Coop (or locking lips with him on a church floor between the pews) or slugging the living daylight out of Sam during a self-defense class or having a heart-to-heart with her teen kids — that is when we really get a look at what is boiling underneath.
Sam, for her part, attempts to mask the disappointment of how her life has played out so far — of how the choice she made to marry not for love but rather for money and security has led to discontent, despair and some self-loathing. She came from humble beginnings and managed to climb the social mountain to establish herself as a prestigious figure in high society. She created a life that she deeply craved… but always has feared losing. Sam frequently found short-term comfort in Coop’s bed, but it was nothing more.
Her happiness was already spiraling downward when she witnessed on FaceTime her estranged, philandering husband Paul (Jordan Gelber) point a gun at his temple and pull the trigger. Realizing she and their children’s future was questionable without his financial support, Sam tried to stage his suicide as a home invasion robbery gone bad so she could collect his life insurance. Instead, Coop found out the truth and she was arrested.
Both Sam and Mel have attempted to fight the little voices in their heads, but have both lost that battle. They each have to climb a steep hill to regain any form of sanity they lost while mixing with — and keeping up with — the rich and famous in their circle. The question might be whether or not the characters learned something about themselves during this first season and if, they have, will they make changes for personal growth that could actually bring them some peace. That’s unlikely, because their brokenness and their longing for happiness yet inability to get it and keep it, is what gives the characters life.
Peet and Munn have proven that they have the acting chops and the personal depth to take Mel and Sam to even lower lows if given the opportunity. But one thing is for certain — whatever series creator Jonathan Tropper gives them to do in Season 2 (which is currently in production), Peet and Munn are going to do it brilliantly. Members of the TV Academy, take note.
Aside from huge swanky homes in the affluent, exclusive Westmont community, Mel and Sam have something else in common: Andrew “Coop” Cooper, a hedge fund manager turned thief played by the always on point Jon Hamm. Although Mel is his ex and she’s moved on with a handsome, charming and super-wealthy NBA star Nick (Mark Tallman), her heart still aches for Coop, which seems to annoy her to no end. As Peet puts it, “She can’t stand the fact that she’s still in love with him.”
Peet plays each beat of her storyline with such complexity that it’s impossible to put a label on it. The dialogue is supreme, but it’s in the silent moments when her expression says it all that brings the audience closer to understanding her. When her eyes alone are doing all the work — like when she isn’t verbally sparring with Coop (or locking lips with him on a church floor between the pews) or slugging the living daylight out of Sam during a self-defense class or having a heart-to-heart with her teen kids — that is when we really get a look at what is boiling underneath.
Sam, for her part, attempts to mask the disappointment of how her life has played out so far — of how the choice she made to marry not for love but rather for money and security has led to discontent, despair and some self-loathing. She came from humble beginnings and managed to climb the social mountain to establish herself as a prestigious figure in high society. She created a life that she deeply craved… but always has feared losing. Sam frequently found short-term comfort in Coop’s bed, but it was nothing more.
Her happiness was already spiraling downward when she witnessed on FaceTime her estranged, philandering husband Paul (Jordan Gelber) point a gun at his temple and pull the trigger. Realizing she and their children’s future was questionable without his financial support, Sam tried to stage his suicide as a home invasion robbery gone bad so she could collect his life insurance. Instead, Coop found out the truth and she was arrested.
Both Sam and Mel have attempted to fight the little voices in their heads, but have both lost that battle. They each have to climb a steep hill to regain any form of sanity they lost while mixing with — and keeping up with — the rich and famous in their circle. The question might be whether or not the characters learned something about themselves during this first season and if, they have, will they make changes for personal growth that could actually bring them some peace. That’s unlikely, because their brokenness and their longing for happiness yet inability to get it and keep it, is what gives the characters life.
Peet and Munn have proven that they have the acting chops and the personal depth to take Mel and Sam to even lower lows if given the opportunity. But one thing is for certain — whatever series creator Jonathan Tropper gives them to do in Season 2 (which is currently in production), Peet and Munn are going to do it brilliantly. Members of the TV Academy, take note.