Warning! This article contains spoilers for Your Friends & Neighbors' episodes 1 & 2.

Viewers who miss Breaking Bad will enjoy watching Jon Hamm's new crime drama series on Apple TV+, which boasts an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score of 83%. Breaking Bad premiered over a decade ago, but it still reigns supreme as one of the best (if not the best) crime dramas of all time. With an almost perfect Rotten Tomatoes critics and audience score across all seasons, Breaking Bad remains one of the finest portrayals of a character's gradual loss of morality and descent into criminality.

Many shows since Breaking Bad have tried to emulate its formula, but only a few, like Ozark, have even come close to being as compelling as the AMC drama. Interestingly, though, a new starring Jon Hamm, seems to share many narrative and thematic similarities with Breaking Bad. While only time will tell whether it will even be remotely as epic as Breaking Bad, the new series already seems to have immense potential.

Your Friends & Neighbors Brings A Capitalistic Spin To Shows Like Breaking Bad

Like Breaking Bad, It Follows A Man's Gradual Moral Decay

Similar to Breaking Bad's Walter White, Jon Hamm's character, Andrew Cooper, in Your Friends and Neighbors does crazy, unlawful things to be able to make ends meet and his family. However, despite his best efforts to do the right thing, he often feels empty and unappreciated. Like the Bryan Cranston character, Your Friends and Neighbors' Andrew Cooper initially believes that his illegal actions will go unnoticed and not harm anyone. However, before he realizes it, he finds himself neck-deep in a web of criminal entanglements he cannot easily escape from.

More than a desperation to survive, it is his desire to maintain a facade of material success that drives him every time he steals an expensive watch from a neighbor.

Despite being similar to shows like Breaking Bad and Ozark, Your Friends and Neighbors etches its own identity by giving its main character's moral decline a capitalistic spin. Instead of going down the criminal path due to an illness, Cooper starts stealing from his affluent neighbors in the series to be able to upkeep his wealthy image and keep up with his ex-wife and children's growing demands and expectations. More than a desperation to survive, it is his desire to maintain a facade of material success that drives him every time he steals an expensive watch from a neighbor.

Your Friends & Neighbors' Season 2 Renewal Hints It Will Become Even More Like Breaking Bad

A New Season Will Further Explore Hamm's Character's Moral Descend

Jon Hamm's Coop and Amanda Peet's Mel looking upset at something in Your Friends and Neighbors

From its early moments, Your Friends and Neighbors establishes that things will not end too well for the Jon Hamm character. In the show's opening scene, Cooper awakens next to a dead body and attempts to clean the blood stains on the floor before he falls into a pool and the show unfolds how he got embroiled in so much mess. The opening sequence suggests that the season will end with Cooper finding himself in immense trouble, which will force him to further embrace his moral decay.

Jon Hamm as Andrew Cooper and Amanda Peet as Mel Cooper in Your Friends & Neighbors

Your Friends & Neighbors Cast & Character Guide

Apart from walking through the double life of its main character, Andrew Cooper, Your Friends & Neighbors also features many memorable performances.

Posts

Since Your Friends and Neighbors' renewal for season 2 has already been confirmed, it is hard not to see how its main character will gradually become more and more like characters like Walter White and Marty Byrde. Like them, he did not necessarily have ill intentions when he decided to step into morally gray areas. However, the rate at which the boundaries between wrong and right are starting to blur for him, it will not be long before he turns into a morally compromised antihero like Walter White. This makes Your Friends & Neighbors a great Breaking Bad replacement.