The moment is so uncomfortable, such an apparent misinterpretation of signals, that I watched with the sheets pulled halfway over my face like a child watching a horror film. Shockingly, Amanda continues to respond positively, and even provides her phone number.

Smiechowski returns to his rented bungalow with his head in the clouds. In another perfect distillation—this time of the Boomer psyche and its inability to present a coherent self via text—Smiechowski’s opener to Amanda includes neither context nor names nor opening banter, but merely “Hello”.

Amanda responds, naturally, “who is this?”

In another surprise twist, the relationship doesn’t end there. She agrees to a date.

A vignette gives us some more background on Amanda. She turns out to be a civil engineering student at the University of South Florida (undergraduate or graduate, it isn’t really clear; she appears to be over 30), but what she’s really looking for is a prospective sugar daddy. “I’m hoping that Danny can sponsor my music career,” she narrates, before going into a complex hypothetical about what her schedule as a touring musician/college student/sugar baby might look like. All in service of her ultimate goal, “helping to resolve world sustainability issues.”

Her financial motive makes the prospective relationship with Smiechoski congeal into something that makes sense, but that isn’t really what makes it fascinating. Amanda is, seemingly, dating Smiechowski for the money, and self-narrates her ulterior motives directly to the camera. But she’s also his perfect inter-generational foil: a true eccentric with grand, somewhat confusing plans, who quickly shoehorns new characters she meets into her own hero’s journey.

“I want a Bugatti, a G-wagon, Bentley Bentayga, Gucci bags, I want the whole collection,” Amanda says to the camera at one point, the whole thing fading into a sort of materialist slam poetry, her affect flatter than the Montana plains.

The ensuing date between Smiechowski and Amanda is one of the greatest depictions of two people talking without ever connecting ever recorded. It’s like a movie dialogue where each actor was shot separately and when they edited it together the eyelines were off.

“Have you ever heard of D-Day, 1944, June 6th?” Smiechowski asks in one opening conversational gambit. Soon he’s telling Amanda, apropos of who knows what, about his mother’s house being destroyed during the Normandy landing. Amanda performs an adequate impersonation of a person taking all of this in, and soon finds her moment to introduce what is, to her, the point of this interaction.

“Did you know I have a music video that went viral on Worldstar Hip Hop?” she asks, words that would stir the heart of any red-blooded, 71-year-old nudist.

She succeeds in getting an extended clip of that video, “A$$ for Day$” into this HBO docuseries, which seems like it was perhaps Amanda’s motive all along. (The video was available in its entirety on YouTube as this article was being drafted but is private now, suggesting perhaps that she had second thoughts.)

A single show discovering just one character like Amanda or Danny Smiechowski would be a coup. That Neighbors finds them both, and gets them to interact, is a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. Of course, they’re far too similar to ever be able to truly spend quality time together, and so Amanda—after going radio silent for a few days after Smiechowski asks her to move in with him on the first date—has to break the news that they’ll be proceeding separately over Facetime video. Halfway through this Dear John Facetime, Amanda just starts rapping her viral song again. Smiechowski, agog, nods in feigned understanding, while revelation seems to wash over his face, his eyes saucer wide as if his entire life is flashing before them. His gift of “My favorite red Jessica Simpson pumps” was perhaps not up to Amanda’s Bentley Bentayga standards.