Your Friends and Neighbors Episode 5 Recap: This Tourist Has Balls

Apple TV+’s ‘Your Friends and Neighbors’ follows the chaotic journey of Andrew Cooper, a hedge fund manager who turns to thievery after he is fired from his job. It starts as an excuse for survival, given that Coop has suddenly been robbed of all his wealth by his former employers. Over time, however, he starts to get better at it, and now comes the point when, despite being almost caught by the cops and being bitten by a dog on his leg, he has no intention of slowing down. If anything, he ups the stakes because the higher they are, the higher the rewards. By the end of the episode, he is forced to reconsider his stance on taking risks. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Coop Decides to Steal a Painting

When Andrew Cooper started robbing his neighbours, his intent was to target small things that would fetch him a good price but whose absence wouldn’t be immediately noticed by the owners. Now, however, he has done enough of that. Instead of carrying out a robbery on a regular basis, he wants to target something that would get him enough money to last a while before he has to rob someone again. This means that he must target something of great value, and this is where art comes in. He finds a Lichtenstein on the walls of one of his neighbours. He knows that art is real because the man who owns it is more concerned with the thing being real than the meaning it holds. This is why Coop also knows that if the real art is replaced with a fake one, the owner will most likely not notice it, or at least, he will notice it for a while.

Coop proposes this plan to Lu, through which he comes in contact with a man who can produce the forgery with which the real one can be replaced. This man, Christian, turns out to be a weird one, but Coop and Elena are too into the plan to give him much thought. He gets them the fake, and with the help of Elena’s cousin, who gets them the code to the house, they slip in with the fake and slip out with the real thing. While Christian sends the art to be authenticated by his experts, the trio goes out to celebrate their win. Christian does drugs and offers some to Elena and Coop, both of whom partake in it a little bit.

Things get a little weird as Christian gets high on more drugs and asks Coop about his relationship with Elena. The thief denies having any romantic feelings for his partner, but it seems that the same might not be true the other way around. As they dance together, things take an unexpected turn, but before anything can happen, both of them break it off. Elena goes away to freshen herself up, but is found by Christian, who tries to force himself on her. When Coop sees this, he attacks Christian, but the other guy is much more powerful. In the end, Elena steps in and pepper-sprays both of them.

Coop’s Friends and Family Go Through Personal Upheavals

While Coop plans his next robbery, he has to deal with the problems at home, which seem to have escalated while he is away. He and Mel are called to Hunter’s school, where they are told that he will be expelled for distributing drugs to other students. The drug in question is the Adderall that Hunter is prescribed, and while he gave it to the others to feel a sense of belonging with them, it is still enough for the school to consider whether they want to keep him. To secure her son’s future, Mel offers to donate some money, which turns out to be more than she expected, and now, Coop has another reason to steal the painting.

Her son is not the only one Mel needs to fix things with. Following the weird situation during her birthday party, she has to make amends with Nick, who is busy promoting a luxury commode. Fortunately, it is easier for her to make up with him than to talk to her son and find out what’s really going on with him. Meanwhile, Ali, who has been doing better for a while, decides to visit Rick’s gym and is surprised that her ex also goes there. When they cross paths, they have a fun conversation where she tries to show that she is doing better now. At the same time, Sam goes to her parents to take a break from all the stuff with her ex, Paul, and Coop.

While Coop is dealing with his financial problems, his best friend is also busy figuring out some stuff. The renovation of his house keeps getting more expensive, and if that were not enough, his in-laws come to visit. That he doesn’t speak Korean is one of the basic things that work against him, but he is more concerned that they see him struggling and don’t miss a beat before letting him know how disappointed they are in him. His mother-in-law offers him a cheque as an offering for help, but he knows that there is more to it than that. When they leave, he gets drunk and burns the cheque, but with that, he also ends up setting the renovations on fire and, fortunately, douses it before it can get too big to consume the whole house.

Coop’s Next Robbery Takes a Wild Turn

When Andrew Cooper started telling his story in the first episode of ‘Your Friends and Neighbors,’ he started with the fact that he woke up with a dead body next to him. In this episode, we catch up with that event as Coop decides that stealing a painting is not enough for the day. After he and Christian are pepper-sprayed by Elena, she explains to Coop that she was trying not to do anything that would affect their deal. She wanted to get the money before tackling Christian and his unwanted advances. But Coop’s interference has created a huge problem for them. After the argument, Elena leaves, but Coop now has new things on his mind. He knows Sam left for her parents’ for a while with her children, which means her house is empty. He also knows that the place has enough of the pricey stuff to help him make some extra cash. Above all, he knows that her back door is never appropriately locked, so he enters through it.

But before he can find something to steal, he slips and falls hard, knocking himself out for a minute. When he wakes up, he discovers that he slipped on blood and is lying next to a dead body that turns out to be Sam’s ex, Paul. This is where we met Coop in the first episode, and we know the rest. He tries to remove any sign of his presence by cleaning up the blood. As he tries to run away, he falls into the pool, and for a moment, actually considers allowing himself to drown. But his survival instincts are much stronger than that. So, he comes up for air, goes back inside the house, has a shower, washes his clothes, and leaves as if he were never there. The next morning, he meets with Barney, and when they ask each other what they were up to last night, neither talks about how close they came to destroying their lives.