The Four Seasons is theoretically the type of adaptation Hollywood should make more of because the original isn’t a classic. There’s untapped potential for a remake of a show or film that had a good idea, but didn’t work; rebooting a masterpiece is only going to result in unsparing comparisons. Alan Alda’s 1981 film is a routine ensemble dramedy that didn’t provide the humor it needed to compete in the post-National Lampoon era of comedy, but also didn’t offer any substantial commentary on fractured marriages. It was a rough version of what The Big Chill would be two years later, and Alda was an actor-turned-director who never had the individualism of Robert Redford or Woody Allen. There’s no reason why a television reimagining of The Four Seasons couldn’t be a completely standalone show that erased memories of its predecessor, but the series has suffered from the same issue. There’s nothing less pleasurable than watching people go on vacation; Alda and the show’s creator, Tina Fey, made an error in mistaking “authentic” characters for boring ones.
There’s nothing about the original The Four Seasons that was high-concept, and the Netflix show doesn’t do much to revise it. The series is about three couples who’ve stayed in touch by taking group vacations. The first season, which aired last year, saw the couple Kate (Fey) and her husband Jack (Will Forte) coping with middle-age malaise, which was in sharp contrast to the livelier couple of Danny (Colmon Domingo) and his husband Claude (Marco Calvani). Both sets of partners were deferential to the group’s ringleader, Nick (Steve Carrell), and his wife Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver) until the bombshell announcement that they were separating. Nick’s more-or-less the instigator of all conflicts in the first season, with his romance with a much younger girlfriend Ginny (Erika Henningsen) a major source of tension. It’s just around the time that Nick regained his friends’ trust that he was killed in an off-screen car accident; this wasn’t a bold creative decision, but a means to accommodate the schedule conflicts arising from Carrell’s commitment to a much better sitcom, HBO’s Rooster.
Season 2 of The Four Seasons is more watchable. Carrell may have helped to spearhead a new era of “cringe comedy” with his work on The Office, but The Four Seasons was too uncomfortable in its depiction of a fizzling relationship, especially when Nick and Annes’ daughter, Lila (Julia Lester), is trapped in the crossfire. However, Carrell’s absence also means that the second season doesn’t have a driving factor other than mourning his loss. The new eight episodes are almost entirely spent memorializing a character who was never that likable to begin with.
A comedy of misunderstanding can be funny if it’s amped up to a ridiculous degree of misheard lines and double entendres, but The Four Seasons has one legitimate conflict in its second season that’s surrounded by extraneous filler. The feud between Anne and Ginny, who both claim ownership of Nick’s legacy and saving, isn’t compelling because the characters are grating. The depiction of Anne is one of the most disastrous television characters to appear in some time; she’s bitter, spiteful, and framed as a self-proclaimed victim from the moment her husband leaves her. Conversely, there’s no suggestion that Ginny and Nick would have ever had a successful relationship of their own; the one point in which Anne’s correct is her assumption that there’s nothing Ginny and Nick, who are 30 years apart in age, could possibly have in common.
The other couples don’t have any meaningful marital issues because The Four Seasons isn’t willing to have real stakes. Danny and Claude are far too reasonable to have serious grievances with one another, even if the second season does attempt to explore their anxiety about potentially adopting a child. It’s a case where Calvani’s character is so streamlined to the bare essentials of the “outgoing Italian gay man” stereotype that there’s little that the actor could do to improve the material. Domingo worked hard to add some dimensionality to Danny, whose reckoning with mortality is by far the most interesting storyline within the season. Between The Four Seasons and Euphoria, Domingo deserves some sort of special recognition for redeeming two otherwise calamitous shows.
The most baffling performances in the show are those from Fey and Forte; they’re among the best comedic voices of their generation, and they’re miscast as an “average” couple who have normal jobs and can only bicker about their mutually misguided expectations about growing older. Fey has typically known how to cast herself in shows that she’s also created, but her role in The Four Seasons is to emulate the tedious part that Alda had played in the film. Conversely, Forte’s only given the occasional opportunities to exercise his zany humor, given that the worst that can be said about Jack is that he’s “too boring.” The biggest character development Jack has in Season 2 is learning to be friends with another married man who likes sports, steak, and Andor.
The Four Seasons might’ve been intended as a response to the stratification of sitcoms. There’s likely a demand for shows that aren’t high-concept prestige fare like Hacks or The Comeback, yet don’t have the rigorous production schedule of Abbot Elementary or Only Murders in the Building. The Four Seasons isn’t funny enough to ensure that it's not a bummer to listen to depressing ruminations about aging and friendship; that the show’s completely out-of-touch in regards to its characters’ wealth and privilege is even more taxing, given that multiple yearly vacations would be a luxury in most households.