Since I don’t have a review for the first season of Your Friends and Neighbors, I’ll give you a brief statement about how I felt. I was not terribly enthused about Jon Hamm coming into this. He was coming off an excellent recurring role on The Morning Show, and of course, it’s hard to talk about Hamm without talking about Mad Men. So I know Apple was looking for another Mad Men-esque show with Your Friends and Neighbors, but the first season didn’t quite do it for me. It was a bit of a mixed bag as we followed Cooper trying to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, and pretend like everything was okay when he really didn’t have a steady income and had to find creative ways of making money instead. He lives apart from the rest of his family, leading to tenuous and strained relationships with them. He also has a sister, Ali (Lena Hall), who is suggestively a version of mentally unstable. And on top of all of this, he decides to become a burglar.

Cooper knows what’s inside his neighbors’ homes and how their extraordinary wealth means he could take even just one object valued at six figures, and it’s unlikely they would even notice it was missing. That was basically the first season. The second season decides to sideline a lot of the actual burglaring for a new character, Ashe, played by James Marsden, who is new to the neighborhood and becomes a target for Cooper’s usual antics. But after a hidden camera catches Cooper, he finds himself beholden to Ashe. What exactly does that mean? Cooper quickly learns that it means far worse than the kind of stuff he was already getting into, because Ashe deals in things Cooper would not want to touch and has made hundreds of millions while doing it.

The problem is that Ashe needs to be able to clean that cash and make it look like there’s some legitimacy to what he does. So Ashe blackmails Cooper into finding a way to maximize his investment, which Cooper uses as an opportunity to get into this exclusive fund at his old firm. All the while, Ashe has evidence lording over Cooper’s head, and those who were helping him fence stolen items are finding themselves in a bit of a pickle without their thief. Cooper doesn’t have time to continue his regular illegal job because now he has to do this other, far more important illegal activity for Ashe.

We still get to catch up with Mel, played by Amanda Peet, who is now separated from Nick (Mark Tallman), who is living his own best life, opening up a series of gyms and trying to use his own image while people still remember who he is as an athlete. Mel has a strained relationship with her daughter, while Hunter, her son, is still sympathetic and mostly stays at home, although he does visit his dad a lot. Her daughter goes to visit and stay with Cooper and her aunt, Ali. Mel didn’t really capture me in the first season. I know some people found Peet’s work to be mature, but I’ve never really seen that from Amanda Peet. However, there were actually a few scenes in the second season where I could see the growth in Peet, and her maturity and emotional connection to the role have grown quite a bit from season one to season two.

I could say the same thing for Olivia Munn, who plays Sam. She’s another actress not necessarily known for her dramatic weight, and the first season didn’t do her any favors. However, the second season puts her in the crosshairs of Ashe as she quickly becomes his plus-one. Throughout the season, Sam has some wonderful beats as well. So both of the ladies got far more interesting work in the second season, and the show is better for it.

Also, Barney, Cooper’s friend played by Hoon Lee, has an increased amount of screen time here as he helps Cooper launder money through Nick’s gym. I really enjoyed Lee this season because Barney seems to be somewhat thrilled by this newfound power that comes with being someone who colors outside the lines. Yet he doesn’t quite have the confidence to be the alpha male that Cooper acts like or that Ashe clearly is. Still, it allows him to have a more dominant presence in the bedroom, which leads to an interesting plotline for him about becoming a father at his age.

There are some other side plots, subplots, and storylines that develop over the course of the season, but my job isn’t to break down the entire season for you. It’s to entice you to watch it, or to warn you and try to steer you away from it. In this case, it’s actually enticing. Your Friends and Neighbors is one of those shows where the second season is actually better than the first, something I’ve seen quite a few times over the past year. Even with a show I already liked, like Paradise, I thought the second season grew and made the series better. I was a little scared about Paradise going into that because the first season had such a compelling plot that I thought it couldn’t possibly go up from there. And yet it did.

Your Friends and Neighbors started at a point where I think my grade for season one would have been Fresh, but marginally so. A soft recommend. And now, in season two, I’m all in. I’m sort of captivated by how much growth the series has had, almost like there was a little bit of an injection in the writers’ room. It can’t completely be attributed to James Marsden, can it? I know he’s the new cast addition here, but it can’t just be one actor joining a second season and suddenly bringing this new life and energy to it, focusing the plot and the characters in a way that allows all of them to benefit. It might be a balance of both. Marsden does deliver a terrific performance here, but really, the entire ensemble was elevated this time around.

Jon Hamm isn’t quite at his Mad Men level, but he’s very entertaining here, and Cooper is a character I can see myself getting invested in over future seasons. Apple already has this locked in for a third season, and I have a feeling it will end up repeating beyond that. The series finally got at least a little bit of Emmy recognition this time around. It’s rare for a series to be ignored in its first season and then actually get recognized in its second. I think that goes to show just how strong the second season is in comparison to the first.

The audio description here is done by Pixelogic, and in general, most of it is really good. There are a couple of times where I thought the audio description could have done more. Specifically, because the finale is at the front of my brain, I’ll use the example of Cooper going over to visit his sister for the very first time at her new apartment. When we walk inside, there are some jokes about the maid having the day off, so it’s obviously a little cluttered or dirty because she wasn’t expecting him. But there really isn’t any description to let us know what her new place looks like. He just kind of enters, a conversation begins, and I’m completely unaware of what the space is that she’s in, or that they’re both in at that moment. There are moments like that, but not consistently. The audio description is mostly fine, but it does occasionally feel like there are some beats they should have made a stronger effort to bring attention to, not just to help things make sense, but also to continue shaping the series and the world these characters inhabit.

I was not terribly enthused to start the second season of Your Friends and Neighbors, but from the moment James Marsden enters, I felt the energy, and it felt like I was watching something fresh and new. From that point on, it really just kept getting better and better. While Marsden is not returning for a third season, I think the series is in a good place to take off from where he left it. It’s possible that the series owes James Marsden a thank you, but I’d like to think the writers’ room finally hit its stride as well.

Your Friends and Neighbors is a pleasant surprise, a show that got far more fun, a lot more mature, and gifted its cast with better storylines and beats than it did in the first season. If you haven’t started watching Your Friends and Neighbors yet, season two will make it worthwhile.

Fresh: 8.6/10