YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS

Andrew Cooper has everything in his life. He lives in an affluent suburb, has a beautiful home, two good children, is successful in his work and is the kind of person others are jealous of. This changes very fast and we see that his wife cheats on him with his best friend and he loses his job and his financial stability.

But he doesn’t tell anybody what happened to him and tries to cover his expenses and his lifestyle like before, which is obviously not possible. One day, just like that, he starts stealing from his neighbors.

Obviously, stealing is not a good thing and I don’t understand why he is doing what he is doing, and this is what makes me crazy while watching. I understand that he loves his children and I understand that he feels like it is not his fault what happened and it was not fair, but stealing from his friends and neighbors, just because they have so much, is not ok. And even if I understood it, which I don’t, understanding why someone makes a decision does not mean thinking the decision is right, and Andrew makes many decisions that are very difficult to defend.

What I like about Your Friends & Neighbors is that it does not make Andrew simply good or bad. He keeps finding reasons to explain his choices to himself. Sometimes he believes he is doing everything for his family. But while watching, I kept wondering how much of it is really about protecting his children and how much is about protecting the version of himself he does not want to lose.

What is super interesting is that we see a lot of what is going on in his neighbors’ real lives when he goes inside their houses when nobody is there. Seeing what happens behind closed doors, we see that most of the perfect lives are not what they pretend to be.

And I think that is something our teenagers know very well too. They are growing up in a world where comparison is everywhere. They don’t only compare themselves with the people sitting next to them at school. They compare themselves with people on social media or only the parts of someone else’s life that this person decided to show.

Andrew is doing the adult version of this. He is surrounded by people who seem to have more, and he is desperate not to become the person who has less. The financial pressure is real, but what fascinated me more is how much his self-worth seems to depend on what he owns and what he can provide.

Another thing I kept thinking about is that Andrew’s children are watching him. I think we sometimes underestimate how much our teenagers notice about us, even when it looks like they are not paying attention. They hear how we talk about money. They notice how important appearances are to us. They see how we react when someone else has more. And they see how we behave when something in our own life goes wrong.

I think Your Friends & Neighbors gives us a good opportunity to talk about good and bad and instead of simply asking our teens whether Andrew is a good or bad person, because I think that makes the answer too easy, we can ask them if they believe he is really doing all of this for his family or mostly for himself. Their answer could tell us a lot about how they see responsibility, money, and the things parents think they need to provide.

We can also talk with them about what success actually means. If someone loses their job or has to change the life they were used to, does that mean they are less successful as a person? And I think that can be especially interesting with teens because they are at an age where so many things can start to feel like proof of who they are.

Your Friends & Neighbors is entertaining because there is crime and dark humor, but there are a lot of adult activities as well, which we must be aware of if we want to watch it with our teens. For me, it is only possible to watch with mature teens, but for them, it can be helpful to talk about money and comparison and what life should look like and should be.