Television Shows like “Your Friends and Neighbors” Seduce Us Into Accepting the Crimes of the Ultra-Wealthy

Confession: I binged Apple TV+’s Your Friends and Neighbors even though I’m about to disparage its spineless attempt to indict the corruption of the ultra-rich. I’ve watched Succession, Sirens, all the White Lotuses, Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Perfect Couple, Saltburn and The Menu. All of these shows attracted me with their real estate, sumptuous clothing and decent storytelling. But then I felt, well, tainted. I tried to justify my interest with “I must watch these shows! After all, I teach film and television writing!” Still, I cringed. I began writing this piece to better understand my complicity in patronizing these shows, but in the process, I uncovered a trend in television shows that lure viewers by portraying the lifestyles of the ultra-wealthy.

All of these narrative series could fit the “Eat the Rich” media classification, a phrase commonly attributed to the French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from a quote popularized during the French Revolution: “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.” Many shows from the last decade or so live up to this idea, wherein the super-rich— shameless, amoral strivers and consumers, neglectful of their families, oblivious to their servants—end up suffering consequences of their criminal or self-obsessed behavior. 

But of late, not terrible consequences.

Once upon a time, wicked wealthy characters found redemption or met their comeuppance. The last episode of Your Friends and Neighbors tells me there’s been a shift: these characters no longer need a redemptive arc. Morally gray characters have gone black. Greed is okay. Decency is for suckers. This is our America. 

Critics would call a show like Your Friends and Neighbors “Wealth Porn.” Their settings feature those twenty-million dollar homes you see on Zillow and characters who wear what most of us can’t afford. As I binged this series, the term “porn” made sense. I watched it privately and with shame, but kept on. If the settings, stories and characters of similar shows were so disconnected from my life, how did I get there? 

Gawking at wealth has entranced us since the 1930’s, when films featuring high society provided an escape from economic hardship. But many films of that time, particularly screwball comedies (My Man Godfrey, 1936), ridiculed the wealthy. In the 40’s and 50’s, wealthy primary characters are often unfulfilled by their riches (Citizen Kane, 1941; Sunset Boulevard, 1950), destroyed by their wealth (Written on the Wind, 1956) or ruined by scheming for it (Double Indemnity, 1944). During my film school education, I identified with the “good” boys or girls, not with the greedy, powerful antagonists. Further, I longed for evil characters to find redemption. They usually did. 

Then this simple construct shifted: protagonists’ “wicked quotients” increased. The precedent began with film: Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972), Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976), the The Joker (2019), and V inV for Vendetta (2005). Tony Soprano inThe Sopranos (1999) is a mob boss, sure, but he suffers from anxiety and depression. Breaking Bad’s (2008-2013) Walter White cooks meth and fights drug kingpins but is principally (at least in the first seasons) a family man with whom we sympathize because of his terminal cancer diagnosis and the fact that he built his drug empire to guarantee his family’s financial security. So by the time I arrived at the first iteration of Big Little Lies (2017), I felt comfortable empathizing with morally gray protagonists. I watched ultra-wealthy, privileged, non-diverse characters in their seemingly perfect lives in a gorgeous coastal California town struggle to solve a murder mystery. What fun! Screenwriters know that we’re wired to want to unpack a mystery. I wanted to identify the murderer despite the fact that most of the primary characters seemed to lack redeemable traits. As the show developed, I was thrown the bone of each character struggling with situations that exposed their vulnerability. Wasn’t that “deep” enough? 

Along came The White Lotus (2021), each season of which takes place in a super-luxurious resort and features well-heeled patrons or families struggling with their (oh, dear) personal issues. Each season is also fueled by a murder mystery, which again hooked me into the puzzle. Most primary characters in all four seasons suffer from disconnection, the damages of toxic masculinity, insecurity or perpetual dissatisfaction. Real world issues! But the show’s message doesn’t land as a condemnation of extreme capitalism. While some of the wealthy characters in the series show a tepid arc, the loudest message is that the wealthy killer wins. It was only at the end of the limited series Sirens (2025), which has a similar resolution, that I questioned my own malfeasance in bingeing these shows. Sirens, I concluded, does not advise that we “eat the rich” but perhaps that we should “be the rich.” 

So what? It’s entertainment. Escapism. Fantasy. Wish fulfillment? Uh oh. Maybe. Wishing for excess wealth is why so many accept today’s extreme income inequality. Slowly, I’d been enticed into a blithe admiration of, no let’s say, interest in ultra-wealthy protagonists and their lifestyles.

Nowhere is this stunt of beguiling us into moral turpitude more evident than in Your Friends and Neighbors. In the show’s pilot, John Hamm stars as Andrew Cooper (Coop), a divorced hedge fund manager who’s fired by his manipulative boss allegedly because of Coop’s one-night stand with a woman from a distant division of the firm. In truth, Coop’s boss simply wants Coop’s share of profits. Having signed a non-compete, Coop can’t seek work in his specific field, which leaves him with huge expenses and no way to pay them: a mortgage on a palatial house where his ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet) still lives (even though she was the cheater that ended their marriage), $100K dues for his country club, private-school tuition for his children, and a house rental for himself. More financial stresses emerge: a new drum set for his son, a charity benefit and an expensive skin treatment for his daughter. 

The pilot opens with Coop waking up in a pool of blood. Lying beside a dead man, Coop becomes a suspect. We are offered a solid setup for good storytelling with a protagonist who’s unemployed and finagles a sketchy way to get money while proving he’s not a murderer. Ah ha! Another murder mystery! How can one turn away when you need to know who killed so-and-so? Coop doesn’t admit to any of his friends or family that he’s lost his job. Instead, he secretly steals from his friends and neighbors and pawns the goods for cash. Citing his escapades in a Voice Over, Coop says that these people have “piles of forgotten wealth just lying around in drawers where they were doing no one any good” – as if this justifies his theft. Coop does not belabor the decision to steal from his friends. This is no Robin Hood move. This guy feels entitled to his friends’ spoils. A corrupt character, yes, but intriguing because of the puzzle. Further, I was riveted by this protagonist’s quest to prove his innocence. He wasn’t all bad! He was innocent of murder. 

Then I thought, “Wait. Get a job, man!” Unless we’re morally bankrupt hustlers, most of us would hit the pavement and seek employment or reach out to family or friends for help. But not this guy. A liar and a thief! Still, I stayed in. 

I wanted to watch the thrill of Coop proving he was innocent of murder, sure, but the morally superior schoolteacher in me enjoyed anticipating Coop’s comeuppance. If I couldn’t thieve my way to riches, Coop shouldn’t either. It’s just not fair. Then again, there’s nothing fair about today’s capitalism so I should have predicted his ultimate immorality. 

The tense robberies made for great set pieces, but they also exposed issues of story logic: Why don’t people in the community, all of whom attend the same country club, organize a community watch to catch this thief who is preying on all of them? My dispute seemed okay with most viewers. Nielsen data showed that it was Apple TV+’s most watched drama in its first 38 days. Why was I still in? Watching was like eating candy. I craved the sugar, knowing it might make me sick. 

Tonally, we’re reminded that this is a satire, much as we’re supposed to digest the series Succession. For example, when Coop contemplates stealing a Phillipe Patek watch, we are offered a brief sidebar “commercial” about the $200K timepiece: a funny commentary. Same with a Birkin Bag or Richard Mille watch. Further, most of the wealthy characters aren’t deeply rendered and as screenwriters know, characters with meager complexity don’t inspire identification or even sympathy. Shallow characters permit (allegedly) wannabe super wealthy viewers to claim that they’d be nothing like those rich people.

By the fourth episode of the first season, it seems the writers got the message that Coop is losing our loyalty: they shift focus to Coop’s Dominican housekeeper Elena (Aimee Carrero), with whom he collaborates on his thieving antics only after she catches him stealing. In line with the show’s tone, she gets wise: you don’t get what you work for. You get what you’re able to negotiate. The episode also features Coop’s attempts to restore his relationship with his ex-wife, Mel. The episode seemed to find the sweet spot between admiring Coop’s neighbors’ lifestyles and throwing a bone to the working or middle class, hoping to snare both classes of viewers while avoiding true responsibility for their inherent messages. By showing the housekeeper’s limited means, Coop’s alliance with her briefly indicts the corruption of capitalism before the murder mystery and Coop’s robberies distract us from her poverty and again becomes the focus of the rest of the episodes.

In the last episode of the season, Mel and Coop accompany their daughter to Princeton for a college tour. While the daughter is on her own, Coop and Mel break open a chalice in their alma mater’s church and munch on communion wafers with jam before having sex in a pew. For those who haven’t watched the show, yes, this truly happens. The sequence sustains the story line that Coop and Mel might someday reconcile, however it betrays the writers’ staggering lack of awareness of their viewers. Scores of Catholic Reddit users were appalled at the blasphemous incident and pledged not to watch the second season because of it. This story decision shows the writers’ lack of concern with the extent of Coop’s immorality. Sure, moral ambiguity is a natural component of contemporary storytelling, but embarrassing when the writers seem indifferent to a scene’s blasphemy.

The series had the potential to end with a genuine catharsis, but no. In the last episode, Coop is proven innocent of the murder and the entire first season avoids any examination of the consequences of income inequality or excesses of extreme capitalism. Coop and the housekeeper’s robberies are never detected. Instead, Coop is offered back his job, with even better terms. His boss and the woman with whom he enjoyed the one-night-stand wait at the private plane that will fly them to close Coop’s first new deal, but Coop doesn’t show. The plane takes off without him. Where is Coop? He’s burglarizing his malicious boss’s mansion. Cinematography, acting and soundtrack portray this as a victory.

After this, I finally woke up. I vowed not to watch the second season. 

When interviewed about this last episode, Tropper defends Coop not taking his former firm’s offer: 

“If he took it, he would go back to being the same sleepwalking, suburban, middle-aged man that he was before this happened. The goal of this story was always to wake him up. I think he was planning to take the job until the last possible minute, and it’s the realization that breaking the rules and robbing people and being in their homes became something more than just a means of making money for him. It actually liberated him from a script he’d been following his entire life.”

Liberated? Coop is merely strategizing a new tactic of wealth acquisition. How many of us would feel liberated from a multi-million dollar salary by robbing people? If Tropper is so critical of the racket or malaise of working as a hedge fund manager, why not give Coop a Robin Hood opportunity? Steal from the rich and give to the poor? Or make the radical decision to turn Coop into a 7^th grade teacher in the south side of Chicago? Coop’s life was not at all typical of a “sleepwalking, suburban middle aged man.” But this is what the show is teaching us: secure your liberation and wealth by breaking the law. Or perhaps Apple TV+ simply wants to repeat what they see as the first season’s success without caring about the immoral residue.

Tropper continues: 

“Morality has taken a backseat right now to self-discovery, and part of what his journey is going to be is reconciling his place as a father and family man with what he’s doing. His journey’s not complete yet, but the first step of his liberation is complete. Then the question is, now that you’ve been freed, are you going to locate your moral compass or not? Is morality a thing that still exists in contemporary society?”

I sure hope morality still exists. I know I’m not alone. Asking this question exposes a deeper malignancy that’s being sold to millions of Americans at exactly the wrong time in our divided society where the poor are getting poorer and the government is justifying why the rich should keep getting richer. If it’s possible that morality isn’t “a thing” that still exists in our society, the ministers of our screen stories should feel some responsibility to envision corrective paths.

Maybe showrunner Jonathan Tropper was only asking a rhetorical question, perhaps he wants us to bellow “of course morality exists!” and root for Coop to correct his path in season two. But we never saw Coop consider an alternative way of life. The first season never dropped a hint that Coop struggled with the morality of his larceny. For example, he could have started a job outside of his field or told his ex, Mel, of his situation and she could have forced him to maintain their lifestyle. She could have encouraged the robberies. It’s another screenwriter trick: to protect your protagonist’s reputation, blame his wrongdoing on another character! But Coop is never given those choices and we can’t blame other characters for his actions. Viewers are anticipating that “second-season Coop” will either get caught trying to one-up his prior boss with greater avarice or connive another scheme. Coop has shown no characteristics that lead us to believe he’ll be reformed. 

Before our current film and television era, most protagonists faced with tough choices ultimately chose morally and ethically “good” choices, even if the choice sacrificed their lives or lifestyles. See Spock in the Wrath of Kahn or BoJack Horseman, a deeply flawed anti-hero, who chooses responsibility over self-preservation, or more recently, Joel in The Last of Us as he lies to protect Ellie—an adopted daughter of sorts—from responsibility and heartache.

We’ve emerged out of the simple “good versus bad” anchor of movie and television narratives into something more complex—that, to me, is a good thing. Profound questions are raised when, at a story’s end, our protagonist makes the “bad” choice. We ponder how the character has been damaged by society or by other characters and reject that social/cultural blight. But now, more than ever, when anti-heroes don’t make “good” or redemptive choices, the social message is absent. Does that mean we should finally surrender to the damages, as did Simone in Sirens? I am not yet that hopeless. 

I strongly believe that we are at a time where we can’t afford to accept capitalism’s costs or allow ourselves to get lured into admiring unredeemable protagonists in our films and literature. Movies and novels are a modern Bible: What would I do if I lost my job and faced colossal expenses? How should I live? Who am I? These sorts of questions surface when reading the finest stories or watching the most resonant films and television shows.

Let’s be real: with a few exceptions, the preponderance of series about the super-rich and their resultant power supports this country’s tilt toward oligarchy. I kept watching these shows and sequestered that truth in my peripheral mind. But after this exploration, I won’t do that again. I worry that by featuring the glossy kitchens and acres of manicured gardens, I’m invited to forgive the one-percenters for protecting their wealth by not paying the taxes they should be paying. I worry that the series’ lukewarm, even ambiguous anti-capitalist messages are buried under the glorious spectacle of possessions. I worry that these shows invite me to think that I, too, could have all that, when I, like most of us, can’t. And I worry that the showrunners, feeling exempt from moral responsibility, know exactly what they’re doing. “Social critique is not our job,” they might answer. “We’re in the entertainment business.” But beneath those justifications, these creators also know: “We can’t upset the oligarchs; they finance our operation.” Showrunners know the hand that feeds them. Just look at what happened with ABC, Disney and Jimmy Kimmel. 

It’s interesting to note that Your Friends and Neighbors was renewed for a second season before its first season even aired. This is uncommon for the streamer. Executives are not measuring viewers’ “likes;” they are dictating them.

Are we—the viewers who care about social and ethical justice—okay with this? 

73% of Americans subscribe to streaming services. A vast majority of us, regardless of our wealth, have access to wealth porn. We can wish to have all that and wish so badly that we grow angry when we finally learn we can’t. It’s no wonder that countries like the U.S. with the greatest income inequality also have the highest crime rates.

At a time when extreme income inequality lives in tandem with political polarization, social unrest and violence, watching lavish lives corrupts our national psyche. These screen stories’ tender scolding of the crimes of the rich only nourish the cancer of late-stage capitalism.

Our schadenfreude at seeing rich people’s mild misery is no substitute for “eating the rich.” I’m promising to resist my voyeurism and protest television shows that coax us into sympathy for the very individuals who are victimizing the majority of Americans. I will push back against this dehumanizing power of wealth porn. I will avoid any assignments for feature film concepts that fall, lock step, into this trend. 

How can the rest of us, who are not television or film writers, register our protest? 

One start: make your sentiment known. Stop watching these shows.