If you’re like me, you love a good scroll through Reddit’s Am I the Asshole? community.
Each post lays out a conflict, from roommate disputes to marital squabbles, with the poster wanting to know whether they are the wrongdoer in the situation. The enjoyment of reading these stories goes beyond assigning moral correctness, though. The best of the best AITA stories are the ones that reveal a deeper, often upsetting truth about the poster, especially when they’re in the wrong and don’t realize it. (I often think about the man who purposefully misled a woman on a hike in order to “spend more time with her,” totally oblivious as to why that would make her uncomfortable.)
That these stories are presented as real (although I’d take that with a grain of salt, especially in the age of generative AI) adds an extra layer of WTFery to the reading experience. Surely these people and these conflicts couldn’t really exist, right?
Enter HBO and A24’s new unscripted series Neighbors, which highlights the very real, very bizarro kinds of neighborly conflicts that would be right at home on Reddit. If written up, these arguments, captured by filmmakers Harrison Fishman and Dylan Redford, would come with innocuous titles like “AITA for mowing my lawn?” or “AITA for putting up a gate on my road?” But read further, and you’d discover sheer ridiculousness: conspiracy theorists, online harassment, and so, so many death threats.
(At one point, a neighbor follows up a death threat with an invitation to come over for barbecue, one of many astounding tonal whiplashes Fishman and Redford manage to capture over the six-episode series.)
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Each episode of Neighbors follows two real pairs of neighbors locked in battle with one another. Their cases tend to be tangentially related. In one episode, people are angry at their neighbors for putting a wall around their house. In another, people’s many animals cause distress for their neighborhood.
The flashing back and forth between each “storyline” doesn’t add much to Neighbors beyond a sense of freneticism, one that’s already present in Fishman and Redford’s up-close-and-personal documentation of these feuds. But what really stands out are the characters at the heart of each argument. Neighboring Halloween enthusiasts who treat a decorating competition like it’s a matter of life and death. A self-proclaimed “first amendment auditor.” A cat lady who writes scripts about Jesus — but only “traditional” (read: white) Jesus. QAnon believers, doomsday preppers, several Florida Men and Women… They’re all in Neighbors, and they’re all convinced that they’re absolutely right.
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To prove themselves correct, many of Neighbors‘ subjects document themselves and their opponents, plastering their arguments all over the internet. (A good chunk of every episode is footage of people filming each other and demanding the other stop filming.) Some disputes go viral on TikTok. Others make it to Judy Justice. In the digital age, when people ask strangers to weigh in on their relationships on Reddit, even our neighborly disputes are up for dissection online.
Ultimately, Neighbors is a surreal portrait of American individualism at its most belligerent. Almost every person involved believes that just because they own a piece of land, they can do whatever they want with it, with no thought or care for the community. Episodes frequently conclude with attempts at mediation, but they rarely go anywhere. It seems people would rather prepare for a shootout with their neighbor than part with a small strip of their lawn.
That’s a disheartening realization that can be summed up with one common verdict from Am I the Asshole: Everyone sucks here.
Neighbors premieres Feb. 13 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
