Post-Humans: No, Not AI Bots, But Characters in Apple TV's "Your Friends and Neighbors"

 Andy Coop, played by Jon Hamm of "Mad Men" fame, is a caricature of the very wealthy, those chasing getting there, holding on to it and, yes, ensuring they have the biggest house among the tribe (even it that involves nosebleed costs for added space). 

That's the emotional, moral and spiritual plane Hamm is made to travel in the April 2025 Apple TV original series "Your Friends and Neighbors." Like that signature character Don Draper from "Mad Men," Coop is plenty flawed. Self-absorbed, no identity outside a work one, arrogant and drinking too much he should be positioned and packaged as needing salvation. And like Draper, Coop loses his marriage and his job. In the tarot that kind of collapse is symbolized by the tarot card.

But the difference is this: As a review points out, we in the audience don't care about Coop. Or his family. In contrast, we did become involved with not only Draper but his daughter Sally. The child was unraveling because of the family dysfunction. There was, for example, the famous masturbation scene which catapulted her into therapy.

The genre of "Your Friends and Neighbors" is dark comedy. But we're also not laughing or enjoying the satire of this depiction of life in Westchester, New York. 

Perhaps too recent in our minds is Barack Ohama's criticism of lawyers whose consuming focus is the money needed for home renovations in the pricey locations where this tribe settles in. That, indicates Obama, opens them to a flight away from the old-line values which made America what it had been. Coop is a former hedge fund guy, not a lawyer. And to keep up the lifestyle after being fired by a corrupt superior, he morphs into pilfering high-priced items from neighbor houses when they're out doing superficial socializing. 

Will this role as Coop hurt Hamm's legacy? The series got a second season. That means the actor will keep working. No AI bot will take his job. 

But what happens to actors when they leave us with characters we can't bond with? The gap between the very wealthy and ordinary people has widened to the point when there is no connection. Recall that Draper was a working stiff. Yes, the job was glam and well-paid. But after his divorce he wound up in a dismal apartment, not buying a second big house as did Coop. 

Why human beings come to tarot readings is usually this: to deepen or restore connections with other human beings. Is the real takeaway from "Your Friends and Neighbors" that the rich are beyond being human? The research on human neurons at the end of the 1990s found that what made us human was our capacity for empathy, that is reaching into other human beings and their reaching back. Has the wealthy in America evolved to the point that they lack mirror neurons? Is that tribe post-human?

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