Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 Episode 9 Review: Propaganda From the Cowardly

“Propaganda From the Cowardly” began with the lamest kidnapping known to man and ended with a shocking death.

Talk about a pendulum swing!

In between, we had everything from sex with a near-stranger to a vasectomy to the end of a long-term rivalry. So, how did we get here?

Let’s start with Mel to get warmed up. Her life has taken a turn in a direction much different from Coop’s.

She went from sobbing on the lawn while trying to fix the grass over Arlo’s makeshift grave to sexing it up with the contractor she’d been flirting with all season.

I thought for sure that large, Arlo-sized, impromptu spot of upturned ground would get her in trouble. It didn’t. She almost got herself in trouble because the guilt was eating her alive.

If Coop hadn’t shown up with the kids when she and her watering eyes were calling out to the neighbors, she might have been in jail again. This time, for animal endangerment.

Mel was feeling at her lowest when she attended Grace and Barney’s baby shower (after Barney got snipped, by the way). She’s watching one of her best friends prepare to bring new life into the world, and she’s feeling washed-up and unsexy.

Even after Sam told her how she really feels about Ashe, Mel couldn’t help but wish someone was singing karaoke love songs to her. And I have to say, if this method of magnetism works as well as it’s been working for Mel, I’ve been missing out.

She spilled her guts to Coop, and she almost got laid. She spilled her guts to the contractor, and she did. And very well, I might add.

It seems like that chapter of her life might be over, but is anything really that simple? She’s still living next door to two self-centered people who didn’t care enough about their dog to keep it safe.

But it’s safe to say that Mel is probably moving forward with a new attitude. Her daughter is home, her libido is taken care of… what more could she want?

There is a point during Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 Episode 9 when Coop wonders to himself how many other people in his life will be left holding the bag for mistakes he made. 

We don’t have a full understanding of that right now, but we have three people holding little Coop bags now. Liv, Barney, and Nick. I’m sure the list will increase the longer this plays out.

Coop’s kidnapping was nothing more than a scare tactic, and while it did the job, it had an unwitting effect that whoever planned it is likely to regret.

I have a feeling I know who did it, but I’ll keep mum and let you put the pieces of that particular puzzle together. Hint: the seeds were scattered for the possible reveal elsewhere in the episode.

If the idea was to keep Coop managing Ashe’s money, the opposite happened. 

His first desire after being set free was to find Ali. She didn’t leave a forwarding address, and she’s not taking his calls, but that’s not stopping Coop from trying to find her anyway. Sam’s real estate connections will come in handy.

With the kids living with Mel again and Ali gone, Coop is lonely. He even tried getting Elena (who still has little purpose in the series overall) to hang out with him after she tried breaking in to discuss her financial situation.

Coop figured that Ashe was responsible for the kidnapping, and the guy holding the knife did seem like he could be DeMille under a winter cap. But Ashe was adamant he wasn’t responsible and angry that Coop decided that’s how he conducts business.

I almost fell for Ashe with those shower scenes, until he slapped back at Sam. Yet that wasn’t entirely on him, either. He was just there to have a good time, and Coop accused him of kidnapping him. Sam got caught up in the aftermath.

Whether Coop just didn’t believe Ashe or if he already made up his mind to take things straight to Jack at Bailey Russell, I don’t know. But we can’t count out how Coop’s chats with Lu have been influencing him. 

He took the bull by the horns on Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 Episode 8 when he walked right out the door, risking being caught by his friends for burglarizing their home, and after a chat with her here, he went right to Jack. 

Lu helps him unburden himself. Whether that’s a good thing or not remains to be seen.

Jack has his own crap going on, namely dying of cancer. The timing was right from that aspect, at least.

Jack isn’t in the mood to be petty anymore. He did fire Liv for not coming to him, but part of that was almost fatherly. Like he wanted her to fall off her bike and brush herself off, riding off to better things. 

For Jack, having to hunt down another $400 million to plug the hole in the fund before Cricket chewed him out was like having a last adventure. It would keep him getting out of bed in the morning. It’s a reason to live.

He even promised Coop that nobody outside of those walls would know anything about it. Dying puts things in perspective. He wronged Coop, and he knows it. This is like a gift before dying. He even asked if he’d like to take in a game of squash sometime.

Things got really interesting when the guys went to Ashe’s place for a guy’s night out. They were all holding deep secrets, and when they arrived, finding Ashe coked out and shooting ketamine, the stage was set for them to come tumbling out.

And tumble out they did. 

Ashe genuinely seemed thrilled to have pals. What’s so great about James Marsden is that he can play charming and terrifying interchangeably. He does manic like nobody’s business.

He didn’t even think he was talking out of turn when he mentioned the money laundering. Nick was shocked and hurt, as he should be. His friends used his business to do something illegal.

But he was more hurt that they didn’t just ask him because he probably would have understood. Of course, that was based on the false narrative that they were hiding Coop’s money for tax reasons after he was canned by Jack.

Another lie. Even when the truth does start to trickle out, your reaction is to dig another, similar hole to cover your ass. Honestly, Barney and Coop worked that number quite well, almost playing off each other as they lied to their friend.

Nick was also pissed that Barney almost scuttled the deal with Ashe to protect his nefarious activities when Nick’s future was on the line.

As Ashe tried brushing it all over under the assumption that they were all in the midst of making a lot of money together, the final tidbit was revealed. Uh, not so fast, Ashe. 

Ashe operates under the guise that he’s helping others.

He said as much to Sam when he called her ungrateful for not falling at his feet after reuniting her with her friends following the murder debacle, and he used the same line of thought when he told Coop he had given him the yellow brick road back to investing.

Ashe is not used to people turning on him. And he’s certainly not used to people threatening his life when he threatens others.

But Coop has had a lot of time to think about what’s important to him. Threatening his family was the last straw. 

I don’t know what he thought would happen when he launched himself at a drug-addled and manic-seeming Ashe, but he didn’t anticipate the gun, Ashe catching on fire, or his subsequent death.

Coop has been down this road before. The first time, he wound up in jail for something he didn’t do because Sam was afraid to tell the truth about what her husband did.

Will Coop, Barney, and Nick learn from that and tell the truth about what happened to Ashe?

Where the hell is the fun in that? Who knows what scheme they’re about to cook up, but the odds that they call the police to let the chips fall where they may are next to nothing.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to miss Ashe. He was a jerk, for sure, but he was an interesting jerk. 

Expect Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 to go out with a bang next week.