Given its premise and trailer, one could be forgiven for thinking that the AppleTV+ series, Your Friends and Neighbors, is a thriller or dark comedy. An unfairly maligned hedge fund manager, Andrew Cooper, commits white-collar crimes while fooling everyone around him about his identity? It seems the perfect role for the debonair, articulate, and virile Jon Hamm, who masterfully played an advertisement executive in Mad Men and a formidable criminal villain in Baby Driver. The series could have been a fun mix of two other excellent shows, White Collar and Breaking Bad.

One could also be forgiven for thinking that Your Friends and Neighbors offers some much-needed criticism of the hypocrisy and vapidity of today’s elites. Audiences might then root for Cooper as he robs and sabotages people who daily do the same to American society. A show like that would take its cues from American literary classics like The Great Gatsby and Bonfire of the Vanities, but update it for Generation X and Millennials.

What cannot be forgiven in Your Friends and Neighbors, however, is that instead of doing either of these two things, it offers a pretentious and tedious story of a rich man who, because he is going through a midlife crisis, begins making poor choices that happen to involve robbing his “friends and neighbors.” And if this sounds boring and cliche, that’s because it is.

This is not for lack of resources. True to AppleTV+ form, the show features a talented cast, slick production values, and a capable team of seasoned writers and directors. Yet for all of this, the show works hard to prove wrong Aristotle’s dictum that the “whole is greater than its parts.”

This problem is easiest to see in the performances of the actors, which vary widely in quality. Even as he portrays a thoroughly unlikeable character, Jon Hamm as Cooper almost singlehandedly carries the show through his sheer charisma and presence. Similarly, his female counterparts—played by Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn—deliver fine performances as Cooper’s ex-wife and current lover, respectively. If the show had just centered on this trio, dramatizing the love triangle arising from the messy divorce of a rich power couple, it might have worked better than as a mere subplot to Cooper’s own vaguely defined personal crisis.

Outside of this trio, unfortunately, are the rest of cast—and they don’t measure up. Delivering the lines they are given with wooden, one-note performances and generally just being annoying, the show would have been better off without them. The biggest offenders are Cooper’s friend and money manager Barney Choi (played by Hoon Lee), his bipolar sister Allison Cooper (Lena Hall), the maid Elena (Aimee Carrero), and the quirky Detective Lin (Sandrine Holt).

This wouldn’t matter so much if these characters were not continually brought in to pad the show’s run-time, as that’s obviously what’s going on in their performances. Worse still, all of these characters play to a stereotype that makes them come off more like tokens than real people: the Korean husband and son-in-law contending with a culture of shame, the artistic woman driven mentally ill by an unfaithful lover, the Latina immigrant valiantly hustling in an America that oppresses her, and the nonchalant female officer who is tougher and smarter than the men around her. Despite the attention that the writers devote to these characters, none of them have any kind of arc or experience any kind of growth.

That said, these mediocre performances cannot solely be attributed to the actors. Some blame rests with the writing and the production as a whole. Besides the underwhelming characters, the pacing of the show is atrocious, frequently inflicting mental whiplash on the viewers. All the action happens in a handful of scenes that it takes the whole season to get to, and all the plot exposition happens in a handful of montages accompanied by Cooper’s narration. This leads to most episodes proceeding at a snail’s pace, with interminable scenes of the characters moping, drinking, and having shallow conversations. Only occasionally is the tedium offset by the opulent settings, unresolved conflicts (every episode ends with a perfunctory cliffhanger), and Cooper’s occasional heart-to-hearts with his friends and family members.

Most likely, these schizophrenic tone shifts and unexpected focal points are intended to be ironic and keep the show interesting, but mainly it generates confusion.

Is the show intended to be a satire punctuated with serious moments, or a drama punctuated with satirical moments? Are Cooper’s crimes meant to symbolize his internal struggles, or are they ultimately secondary to the real story happening with him and his loved ones? Is there some argument or lesson being made about today’s world? So much is left to the audience to decide—assuming they’re still paying attention after the first episode.

Setting aside the misleading synopsis, the flat characters, the excessive plot-filler, and the unnecessary straddling of so many genres and themes, Your Friends and Neighbors fails even on its own terms. Assuming the show is meant to be a compelling drama for mature audiences about affluent older adults grappling with midlife pressures, thereby discovering deeper truths of the human condition, none of this comes to fruition as the series develops.

No one learns anything, no deeper point is made, and almost none of what we see is relatable. Sure, Cooper and his friends struggle, but they come out of these struggles largely unfazed. Sure, there are Cooper’s voiceovers meant to convey his wry observations and poignant reflections, but these don’t go any further than what the viewers can already see for themselves. And sure, all the characters have their human moments, but they also seem to enjoy unrealistically vast sums of wealth that put their experiences far beyond the reach of most people’s imaginations.

Moreover, none of these characters are ever shown working or demonstrating any plausible degree of competence in any remunerative occupation. They all just seem to make millions of dollars while they spend their days playing golf, attending galas, snorting cocaine, and drinking expensive scotch. Even if one agrees with the idea that the elite enjoy an unfair amount of privilege for what they contribute, it is impossible to accept the show’s fantastical depiction of this world being comprised entirely of bumbling fools who are only good at spending money and sharing gossip.

Because of these shortcomings, the writers of Your Friends and Neighbors end up squandering most of the audience’s goodwill. It’s a shame, since the final episode of this first season is obviously ushering in a second, which had already been approved last year.

Given what has been shown so far, there’s slim chance the second season will be anything more than ongoing personal drama, smarmy voiceovers, and new characters introduced just to pad out the runtime. As for the actual thrill and intrigue that viewers might have experienced watching a hedge fund manager become a common criminal and turning the tables on the people who built his career, that ship (or fancy yacht, in this case) has sailed.