Your Friends and Neighbors episode 4 review: Dragons, drama, and domestic Intrigue

When your housekeeper turns your partner in crime, your lawyer goes rogue, and your ex shows up with sweets, it’s another mundane Tuesday in suburbia.

With the fourth episode of Your Friends and Neighbors, Apple TV+ is still churning with suburban secrets and darkly comedic implosions of family life in ‘Literal Dragons’, a title that is at once ungentle and self-complimentary. Surprise- no one is going to set Eagle Rock and cul-de-sacs on fire with fire-breathing dragons, but yes, people are hurling legal and emotional fire, metaphorically speaking, from trampolines.

Let’s dig into this week’s spicy casserole of crime, heartbreak, and existential trampoline therapy.

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The Elena effect: Cleaning houses, cracking safes

Elena completely transforms Coop’s half-baked B-grade burglary into what can only be described as “Ocean’s 2.5.” With her cousin, who just so happens to work in security, as well as intel gathered from fellow housekeepers, the two become an almost unbeatable pair, but that is until…

One rogue Hermes bag and a surprise second alarm later, Coop finds himself limping back home devoid of his pride after a canine cop gets the best of him—and all he has to show for it is Elena’s disappointed eyeroll.

The moral of this story is simple: Never trust a house with only one security code.

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The legal circus: When your lawyer plays both sides

Where Coop had planned to exact revenge on his ex-employers, he runs into a greasy brick wall when his “loyal” lawyer is seen wining and dining with the opposition. Liv is both the bane we didn’t know we had and the hero we need thanks to her ‘eagle eyes’, sharp BS radar, and the quick wit that allows her to keep tears underneath the perfect eyeliner.

It turns out the man supposed to defend Coop could very well be working for the Ferris wheel of pretentious martini bars, scheming behind his back.

This plot twist has no flaming reptiles, but is comparable to a Game of Thrones: Corporate Edition.

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Mel’s birthday bash: Existential crisis, but make it fashionable

Poor Mel's birthday party is worse than any awkward birthday party you attended, and that's an understatement, as it's a party that resembles a war zone and feels like a dredged-up spa retreat. Each and every single one of her ex-in-laws attended the birthday party on top of the outsourced judgmental parents she hasn’t quite forgiven yet.

This is where the ‘drama’ starts to unravel. Between being emotionally bulldozed by Rick’s over-the-top speech and figuring ways to dodge her feelings like Neo in The Matrix, Mel ends up bouncing solo on a trampoline, which is both childlike, tragically relatable, and relatable at the same time.

Coop joins her for a nostalgic jump down memory lane long enough to add some fizzy feels and murky “what ifs” to the already spiralling emotional turmoil.

By the episode’s end, Mel opens Coop’s gift—a stereotypical brown bag filled with her all-time favourite candies—and starts sobbing. Which, as it is her dramatic self, ends up also stuffing her face with them. Understandably, I stand with her.

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Candy, codes, and complications

Episode 4 is yet another instance of a blend between a heist comedy and real-life soap opera as well as therapy. It alternates between intense nostalgia to soft, warming moments and memories in a surprisingly skillful way.

The writing persistently manages to mix the absurd with heartfelt emotions– just when you think they might be taking it a bit too far with the goofiness, they yank you back in with something excruciatingly real (like sobbing over jellybeans. We’ve all been there. Probably).

The performances by the actors portraying Coop and Mel doing a fantastic job continue to stand out as conveying complex emotions such as regret, resentment, lingering feelings of love, and softness in even the most mundane actions like trampoline walking or sharing candy.

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Final Verdict

I'll give this episode a 9/10⭐

"Literal Dragons" illustrates that there is more to Your Friends and Neighbors than theft and neighborly disputes—it also outlines reinvention, regret, and the even more peculiar crime of stealing with your housekeeper.

The episode’s off-beat charm, coupled with how devilishly fun it is to watch, makes me think that it was crafted with the same sense of humor as good birthday parties, where people burn the cake but somehow still ensure everyone has a good time.

Now bring on Episode 5. But this time, please bring a dragon, and make it real.