Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 Episode 10 Review: The Night of the Hunter

Critic’s Rating: 4.75 / 5.0

4.75

Did you really think Ashe’s death was going to be easy?

We already knew it would be utter chaos once reality set in. And with three best friends arguing over a dead body, we got just that.

And then… wham! A shocking second reality kicked in, and it went from an accidental death to murder, or, at the very least, manslaughter. It got real very fast.

What’s really shocking is that by the end of Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 Episode 10, Coop is more or less at peace with himself, as if returning a billion dollars made up for the fact that they failed Ashe on every level.

And they did. By letting Barney determine that Ashe was dead and not offering life-saving measures of any kind, and by deciding to take the law into their own hands rather than take their chances with the justice system, they were responsible for taking another man’s life.

It’s funny how fast things can go sideways.

And it really makes you wonder how many senseless deaths in real life come about in the same way.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Ashe was a piece of work. He wasn’t a good man. But despite his flagrant flaws, he wasn’t predestined for an early death, either.

He had his good side. Everyone fell for it. Someday, if the law had been successful in bringing him to justice for his own vast array of crimes, he may have seen the light. Now, he doesn’t get that chance. Now, his daughter has no father.

And now, Coop, Barney, and Nick are on the hook for murder.

It never had to be that way. But actions have consequences, and all four of them have been acting in their own best interests for so long that things got away from them, and one of them is dead.

And if that’s not scary enough for you, Coop’s voiceover about shock and secrets — three can keep a secret if one of them is dead, which Pretty Little Liars explored in great detail — makes what happens next even more sobering.

Because these are not bad men. They are good man making questionable and even bad decisions. Life is constantly throwing you curveballs, and you’d have to be an MVP to make it through unscathed.

It’s also unsettling that Sam got dragged into it. Your Friends & Neighbors Season 1 sent her spinning when her husband committed suicide. Hopefully, that experience will mitigate some of the impending doom she’s expecting.

She’s already making plans to leave town. She was heading to Ashe’s that night to break up with him once and for all. Instead, she walked in on something surreal — her ex-lover and his best friends carrying her boyfriend’s undead body across the foyer.

The absurdness of it made me laugh out loud. How can you not see what’s happening as absurd? 

The show wants you to see the absurdity of it. But what Your Friends & Neighbors does so well is that they also want you to see the humanity underneath.

They’ve done it so beautifully this season with Mel’s menopause struggle and Coop’s father’s death. In the first season, Ali did a lot of the heavy lifting. 

As she says once Coop finally tracked her down, landing comfortably on her couch for the night after He admitting he’s more lost than ever and feels like he’s in a dream and can’t wake up, it’s his turn to face the strange.

And I must admit, until she brought it up, like Coop, I was in the dark about that song and its lyrics. Happy to sing along without really listening. Now, I understand.  

Just think about how fast the absurd left the room as the show asked for something different from viewers.

When the trio realized Ashe was in the backseat and they had to move him to make their story more plausible, the reality of it hit me like a ton of bricks. Why? 

Mad World, performed by Michael Andrews featuring Gary Jules, is one of the most moving songs of the last several decades, and once it started playing, it added unexpected weight to that scene.

The absurdity of the situation was buried under water with Ashe. It was no longer funny, but desperate. And that’s been another running theme of the series overall.

Just look at Sam. She seems so beyond repair right now. Why else would she insert herself into Coop’s tragedy by offering a place to hide the body? Thank God they never made it to the property. 

She was immediately worried that she would be caught up in this drama regardless, so offering a spot she’s associated with to bury the body would have been another layer of guilt and stress she didn’t need.

Yet it says a lot about Sam and Coop and how they’re continually pulled into each other’s orbit. They truly care about one another, and that’s a rare commodity these days. Even framing him for murder couldn’t break that bond.

I also appreciated her second chat with Coop, in which she described life in the fishing bowl that is Westmont Village, and the nonstop performance of living there. So much of our lives is a performance now. 

So many people have crafted lives for every different facet of their existence. They’re different with family, friends, coworkers, employers, and a myriad of online life simulations, aka social media. Because is social media anything other than portraying yourself as a SIM? 

It’s depressing when you think about it. And it’s exhausting. But if we’re all doing it, at least we’re not alone. But it does make it harder to stop. 

Coop, Barney, and Nick, who consider themselves best friends, were even performing for each other. And as expected, the three major players in the cover-up are handling it differently. 

Coop, who just lost his own father, was left comforting Deliliah after taking hers. It was an awkward yet touching scene. She knew her father was a bad man. She also knew he was dead because if he ever went on the run, she’d be at his side, hating him for it.

I guess we can look on the bright side. By taking Ashe’s life, Coop spared her the misery of hating her father. She’ll have some compassion for him, which is a better alternative, you might say. (insert sarcasm here)

Barney was, as always, the middle-of-the-road guy. He was worried about the national implications of their actions. With Nick involved, it’s far more than a local story. It goes national, and probably worldwide, without any effort at all, thanks to Nick’s celebrity.

Barney, as ineffective as he usually is, was trying to plan their way forward with the least amount of damage, even while knowing he’s probably the least capable of forging that path.

Hell, even his wife doesn’t trust him. Why would anyone else? At least, he’s still got Coop. Otherwise, he’s lost everything, Grace and the kids included. And I can’t imagine any scenario in which he can make up for what he’s done to his family. Every road seems to lead to making it worse, not better.

Nick wanted out — immediately. But his friendship with Coop and Barney was real, even if they took advantage of him, and he can point directly at them for bringing him into the mess.

He didn’t abandon them, and it was he who carried Ashe’s body to the car. 

As an aside, didn’t he notice the body was still warm and pliable? Surely, it took them a couple of hours to clean the house. They’re not pros. They have maids for that. They have Elena for that! (The irony.)

So by the time they carried him to the car, Ashe, if dead, would have been cold, probably losing color, and rigor mortis would begin setting in, so a little stiff. Yet Barney’s word about his death was taken for granted. 

I would beat myself up for that oversight for the rest of my life. 

Elena’s story, as usual, just abuts the others again in the finale. She’s always on the periphery, and I seem to understand her less every time she appears. 

She’s been asking Coop for her money back for a while. She’s just as desperate as they are, but they have each other, and she has nobody. She feels like a fool, and when Coop admitted he’d had $600 million in his bank account, she almost collapsed.

But she was wrong about the money they do or don’t have. As Coop said, “There are no other pockets.” Yet if he’s not honest with her, how would she know that?

That she was desperate enough to invite the man threatening her to Nick’s place to take something of value was both telling and stupid. If she was willing to go that far, she should have taken what Nick would be the least likely to miss and pawned it for herself. 

Like she said to Coop, “We’re thieves!” But there is no honor among thieves, and they’re all swimming in their own pools of despair, each weighing the other down in some way or another.

Because the bottom line is that nobody on this show is honest with anybody. They are all harboring life-altering secrets, with few exceptions.

The only pure people on the show right now are Grace and Ali. They have put all of their failings and misgivings on the table. Ali was judged for them. Grace doesn’t need judgment. 

As things came crashing down at the Father’s Day celebration, another Westmont Village performance ritual that Coop shouldn’t have even gone to, given his own father’s recent demise.

Nick unloaded on Barney and fired him. They fought. Coop got caught in the melee. Grace left Barney. And eventually, Coop took his family, the one he needs and could have again if not for his secretive nature, and went bowling.

And that’s where Coop started to feel like himself again. Scorched earth was in his rear-view mirror, and he felt like things were looking up. 

Yet when Mel, who is arguably the love of his life, offered herself to him, the secrets she thought he was sharing were nothing compared to the secrets he’s sharing now. Just like Barney and Grace, Coop and Mel are a burning bridge too far to ever recover.

Even so, for a brief moment, Coop seemed to believe he’d finally outrun the consequences of that night with Ashe. But then the seeds for Your Friends & Neighbors Season 3 were firmly planted, proving how wrong he was. 

Demille somehow (how?) found Coop at the bowling alley, and cryptically explained he’d return the money Coop returned, and that he could just turn out to be the best friend Coop ever had. You know what? I believe him.

Coop was living a little too fast and loose for his own good, and he took a lot for granted. One such thing was Cricket Birch, who was likely behind his “kidnapping,” such that it was. She’s got goons and minions, and a burning desire to set him straight for screwing her financial future via the Excelsior fund.

Jack could mitigate that if he really finds the $400 million to plug Ashe’s hole, as he shared with Coop on Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 Episode 9. Or he could die trying.

Even if he does, that won’t stop Cricket from doing whatever she’s going to do. Interestingly, Jack promised Coop that nobody outside of that room would ever know about the jostling money. That’s not how finance works. Of course, Cricket knew her investment was threatened.

And like they say on Criminal Minds, there are only two motivations for murder: financial and passion, and sometimes, the two intermingle. Cricket is passionate about her money.

But that’s not all, folks! 

The pond they left Ashe to rot in? It’s not that deep, and his car is on the hook. 

Yes, next season is going to be a whopper. As Mel pulls the threads of the tapestry of lies Coop has carelessly woven with her new book, every aspect of his life is about to collide with the others. 

It’s going to get ugly, and it’s going to be absolutely delicious devouring it when it finally arrives.