The 'Your Friends & Neighbors' Finale Just Revealed Who Killed Paul and Framed Coop

Elle

2 days ago

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Spoilers below.
Throughout its first season, AppleTV+'s Your Friends & Neighbors has explored the trappings of money and status, and what the wealthy class will do to maintain appearances. The season 1 finale 'Everything Becomes Symbol and Irony' hammers its thesis home via the reveal of what actually happened to Paul Levitt (Jordan Gelber), the man Andrew 'Coop' Cooper (Jon Hamm) had been accused of murdering. After perusing Sam's (Olivia Munn) phone records, Coop realizes that his number doesn't appear anywhere in the files—a stark omission given the two were sleeping together and regularly in contact. This leads Coop and his accomplice Elena (Aimee Carrero) to search Sam's house for a burner phone. Instead, they find Paul's suicide note.
When Coop confronts Sam, Your Friends & Neighbors swaps the POV. Sam narrates her side of the story, detailing her humble beginnings as a waitress and her initial draw towards Paul's money and the life it offered her. When he began cheating, she realized how unhappy she was in her marriage, and she knew that a healthy divorce settlement would be her only way of maintaining her lifestyle.
Paul called her on the night of his death begging for forgiveness and to salvage their marriage. But when she didn't immediately concede, he pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head right there on FaceTime. Sam began to call 911 but stopped when she realized that deeming his death a suicide would nullify his life insurance policy—money she was banking on (literally). Instead, she drove from Boston to New York to stage a murder scene, shooting his already limp body twice before stashing the smoking gun in Coop's faulty Maserati trunk.
Coop takes this evidence to the police to exonerate himself, and he's surprisingly chill about the fact that his former lover tried to frame him for murder, especially because her reasoning is pretty weak. 'You weren't very kind to me,' she reasons when he initially pushes her on her motive, and he seems to accept this without pushback. Coop was far from an angel in Your Friends & Neighbors, but he didn't mistreat Sam in a significant way to warrant this kind of backstabbing. And Sam only slightly pays for this—she's arrested, but it's later hinted that she'll get off with a fine and community service.
Until that point, Coop spent most of 'Everything Becomes Symbol and Irony' preparing his loved ones for what seemed to be an inevitable conviction and sentencing. His attorney Kat (Heather Lind) thinks a plea deal for manslaughter in exchange for an eight year prison sentence (versus 25 to life for first degree murder) is his best bet, and Coop is this close to giving in and giving up. He gifts his son Hunter (Donovan Colan) one of his most prized and expensive watches as a keepsake, and tries but fails at a real conversation with his daughter Tori (Isabel Marie Gravitt). His bipolar sister Ali (Lena Hall) openly acknowledges Coop's lifelong support during one of her performances, before also blasting her married ex-fiancé in front of the crowd, whom she started sleeping with again.
The watch tips off Coop's ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet), who scolds him for not fighting hard enough—not just for his life right now, but also for their marriage. Mel's real talk is a wake-up call for him, and is the stimulus for his eventual liberation. The soulmates don't exactly get back together—Mel tells Coop at a charity gala late in the episode that she's going to fly solo for a while—but Your Friends & Neighbors is leaving the door open for their eventual reunion. After all, Coop admits to Mel that he was able to forgive Sam so easily because he didn't love her, in contrast to the grudge he held against Mel for her cheating.
As for Coop's new career as a professional thief? Despite the predicament he found himself in due to this decision, he can't stay away—even when he has the option to walk. Coop's former employers return to offer him his job back, citing a Swiss client that will only work with Coop. He negotiates his offer, demanding 20 percent of that deal and 25 percent overall, sensing they're desperate enough to say yes.
It turns out he's correct, and they agree to convene that evening to fly to Europe for a meeting. But when the time comes, Coop opts out. He leaves the gala early, telling Mel on the dance floor, 'This is where I leave you' (likely a nod to show creator and showrunner Jonathan Tropper's eponymous novel-turned-movie). On his way out, he finds time to threaten Tori's tennis rival's mom to secure his daughter's spot at Princeton, revealing that he knows about the SAT test answers in their home and isn't afraid to announce it to everyone. Some light blackmail to indicate he's no longer the black sheep and is back in the mix of the Westmont Village interpersonal politics.
When Coop finally leaves, he detours to a mansion and gets to work instead of heading to the private plane launch pad, leaving his hedge fund colleagues to take the meeting alone. He nicks a piece of art from an unidentified neighbor's home, and leaves without a trace. As he drives away, the trunk of his car pops open one more time.
Your Friends & Neighbors has already been renewed for a second season with James Marsden joining the cast as 'a guy who comes from money and has a relationship with Samantha,' according to Deadline. While Coop's stock seems to be up by the end of the first season, there's no question that his past with Sam and his choice to continue robbing his wealthy community will land him in hot water again when the show returns.