SPOILER ALERT: This story incorporates spoilers for the sequence premiere of “Your Associates & Neighbors,” streaming now on Apple TV+.

“It was at moments like these … once I realized how far you possibly can drift away from your individual life, with out truly going anyplace.” — Andrew “Coop” Cooper

And therein lies the life lesson of Coop, the uber-wealthy New York hedge fund supervisor performed by Jon Hamm in Apple TV+’s “Your Associates & Neighbors,” which premiered on April 11. At first look, it’s kinda arduous to be sympathetic to Coop after he’s fired from his high-profile job and has solely six months of cash socked away wherein to keep up the lavish life-style his household is accustomed to. Boo hoo, proper?

The excellent news is that Coop rapidly discovers a option to proceed to herald the massive bucks with nobody being the wiser to his unlucky flip of luck. The dangerous information: That “approach” might end in buying and selling his mansion for a 6-by-8 jail cell. In the event you get caught, grand larceny doesn’t pay properly.

“It’s like Robin Hood — nearly. Apart from one fairly evident a part of it: He doesn’t actually give to the poor,” Hamm says of Coop, who finds a hefty revenue by stealing high-price gadgets from his super-rich associates and neighbors (thus the present title). “I believe there’s a relatable facet to Coop, for certain. Not everyone is worrying about how they’re gonna pay their $300,000 mortgage or repair their $200,000 automotive. However aside from the arithmetic of scale, I believe these are issues that individuals have.”

From Coop’s perspective, there are many “assholes” within the neighborhood with mansions “stuffed with costly shit” that will by no means be missed and that nobody, together with the police, would ever suspect a man like him because the perp.

“The lie he’s telling himself is that he must feed his household, however there’s ‘feeding your loved ones’ after which there’s ‘maintaining your loved ones of their 10,000-square foot house,’” says present creator Jonathan Tropper. “However he’s not ready to confess defeat, and be shamed in entrance of this neighborhood. He’s not ready for anybody to know [that he was fired]. He can not pay these payments, and he’s not ready to surrender the consumerism and the striving that he’s been raised on. And so it’s gonna be a journey for him to know that what these robberies actually are each, in a way, maintaining with the Joneses and likewise lashing out on the system that failed him.”

Coop’s internal monologue is successfully woven into the episodes, wherein the troubled character explains what he’s doing, why he’s doing it and what he actually thinks about himself. Virtually like what Coop would say to a therapist after years on the sofa. Tropper says he wished Coop to personal the sequence’ perspective, and the voiceovers have been the way in which to make that occur.

“I assumed it’s a enjoyable reverse anachronism to have a type of ’60s noirish voiceover in a really up to date present,” Tropper says. “What’s actually fascinating to me — and the explanation I believe these voiceovers work — is it doesn’t matter what you’re watching on display, you’re listening to from the particular person from a distinct vantage level. You’re listening to from a lot calmer, indifferent particular person than the one who’s going via it in the intervening time.”

Tropper provides that utilizing the voiceovers as a tool allowed him to “lock within the tone of the present to an extent.” They illustrate the distinction between the self-destructive, dangerous issues we see the character doing on display, and when he’s reflecting on them later: “Coop is in your ear making a type of ironic statement about life.”

Hamm thinks of it as Coop stepping again and observing his life from the skin. “In a roundabout way, he kind of disassociates from himself, or the model he used to consider himself, possibly that’s establishing one other higher model of himself. Perhaps that’s how we develop. However he’s at the very least self-aware sufficient to look at that he’s adrift.”

Though his robbing from the wealthy and, properly, maintaining it for himself does serve a monetary goal, is there one thing else behind it that, possibly, Coop enjoys the problem, the hazard?

“I don’t know if I wanna put a reputation to it, and I don’t suppose it’s essentially the hazard,” Hamm says. “I believe it’s extra of the absurdity of the quantity of wealth that’s accrued on this neighborhood that offers him some weird pleasure to alleviate folks of a few of that.”

Tropper interjects: “It’s very straightforward to get misplaced within the trappings of the horny plot machine of the present, which is a hedge fund supervisor robbing homes. However to me what this present is actually about is a couple of household. It’s concerning the dissolution of a household, and it’s a couple of man who hasn’t come to phrases with the grief of the dissolution of his household.

“Earlier than he obtained fired [from his job], he obtained fired from his marriage — he misplaced his spouse,” Tropper continues. “And it nonetheless hasn’t occurred to him that that occurred as a result of he took his eye off the ball. He was specializing in the incorrect issues. And to me, the true hazard in buying wealth is there’s nothing evil about wealth, per se: The hazard is the quantity of effort and time you spend buying it. It turns into consuming, and also you’re placing your vitality into that as an alternative of your loved ones and your marriage and issues that may truly imply much more to you down the street.”

However, as Coop comes to search out out, once you take a chunk out of the legal world, it bites you again.