Plot: Coming off a hard year, our group of friends carries on their tradition of vacationing together — now with a baby in tow. The Four Seasons picks back up with the core group — Kate, Jack, Anne, Danny, Claude, and Ginny – as they journey from the familiar comforts of the Jersey shore and upstate New York to the stunning landscapes of Italy. With warmth and wit, the group’s personal blind spots surface as they each grieve their late friend and embark on new adventures.
Review: The first season of The Four Seasons, based on the 1981 film written and directed by Alan Alda, was a nice surprise. A mature comedy-drama from Tina Fey and co-creators Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield, The Four Seasons drew inspiration from the famous Vivaldi concertos, which are themed around the changes in the annual weather. Comprised of eight half-hour episodes per season, the series was a nice blend of romance and relationship dynamics among four couples, one of whom was going through a divorce. At the end of the season, Steve Carell’s Nick died, leaving the series with the cliffhanger that his much younger girlfriend, Ginny (Erika Hennigsen), was pregnant. The new run keeps the two-episodes-per-season format as we follow the friends through the year after Nick’s death. The result is a less poignant narrative but a welcome return for this outstanding ensemble cast.
This season picks up the Spring after Nick’s death, with the friends visiting an upstate New York mountain to spread his ashes. Ginny joins the group, and there is an immediate clash with Nick’s ex, Anne (Kerry Kenney-Silver). Jack (Will Forte) tries to cope with Nick’s passing while Kate (Tina Fey) supports him. Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani) try to keep things civil even as they struggle with what comes next in their relationship. The opening episodes set the tone for the season with the two couples hitting points in their marriages where having kids or being empty nesters is driving the conversation of where they go next. Ginny navigates expectant motherhood, and Anne needs to figure out where she goes now that she is single and a sort of widow. All of the actors get to play with the conventions of their direct relationships, while the expanded roles for Erika Henningsen and Kerri Kenney-Silver add another dimension to the season.
While we do revisit Nick and Anne’s upstate New York home, the setting for the opening episodes of the first season, the trips the core group of friends take this year include a summer at the Jersey Shore and winter in Italy. The new locales offer shifts in the dynamics among the various characters and introduce new faces, such as Steven Pasquale’s Mark Brett, who brings unexpected chemistry with several ensemble members. The standouts this season continue to be Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani, whose marriage moves from being an open relationship to something much deeper than we have seen before. Tina Fey and Will Forte, longtime Saturday Night Live co-stars, are also excellent as the longest tenured couple in the group, who are recovering from a rift they had last season. What works nicely about this series is that no one is perfect, nor do they try to be. Everyone has their struggles to contend with, and we see pairings of each combination this season, along with new ones not explored last year. The Four Seasons works best when the ensemble shares the screen to contend with a new wrinkle in their vacation, offering hijinks that are funny without being too broad.
This season moves quickly, with each two-episode arc working as halves of an hour-long story, which keeps the formula from getting stale. There is a fun flashback midway through the season that adds some context to the long-running friendship shared between the ensemble, but outside of that, the stakes feel far smaller than they did in the first season. Steve Carell’s presence in the majority of the first season shifts the tone of season two, but the writers found a way to ensure Nick’s presence is key to how this season develops. The first season ended on a cliffhanger that left the door open for this second year of vacations, and sure enough, a third season has a lead-in with a final scene that could really add to the great cast already in place. I had fun with these episodes, but some of the struggles the characters endure felt like rehashes of the first season. Everyone gets a happy ending this year, even if it does feel a bit rushed by the last chapter.
Showrunners Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield all wrote an episode this season with Fey directing the second entry, paired with Colman Domingo’s directorial work on the premiere. Lang Fisher directed two episodes, while Tracey Wigfield directed one, along with Jeff Richmond, Robert Pulcini, and Shari Springer-Berman on the remaining three. The Four Seasons expands beyond the story structure of the 1981 feature film with this new season, which may account for it feeling less structured than what we saw before it. The Vivaldi musical cues are still nice reminders of the inspiration for The Four Seasons, but it does start to get a bit repetitive as the sophomore run comes to a close. The Four Seasons is far from being bad, but it does not have quite the same bite as the first season, especially when we are forced to feel bad for these wealthy, upper-middle-class characters complaining about staying in motels or not being able to get modern technology installed in their Italian villas.
The Four Seasons is a nice show to binge and an easy series to watch. All the characters are a balance of likable and annoying, just like real friends. It is difficult to mine this formula for an ongoing series without the formula losing some novelty, but Tina Fey and her co-showrunners keep the short episodes moving, and the annual narrative keeps the momentum in the right direction. The COVID-19 callbacks reminded me of just how much time has passed since the pandemic, while the Italy-set episodes filled me with wanderlust, but that could just be the comfortable feeling you get when watching this cast have fun on screen. The Four Seasons could benefit from a shake-up next season, but even if a new character is added, I would be happy to spend another set of vacations with this cast.
The Four Seasons returns for season two on May 28th on Netflix.
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