I recently reconnected with a high school friend who for a myriad of reasons I still can’t quite grasp insists on communicating by e-mail. Picking up a phone, whether it’s because of insufficient charging capability or being within earshot of someone he’d rather not hear his conversations, seems to be beyond his current capacity (no lie, I can identify). That’s especially ironic, since in our youth we literally could spend hours upon hours on the phone when that was the only way to immediately communicate–so much that I was persistently threatened with castration from my aghast mother when she’d realize we had been using the “unlimited” line that charged double the rate for calls outside a certain perimeter (which we were).
And since his ability to recall deeply recessed and long forgotten events is superior to mine I was both flabbergasted and inspired when he dredged up this memory:
I clearly recall attending a performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with you and __ at a theater at Queensboro Community College…You and I were so bored. Assuming that the piece starts with January and goes through December, I remember you saying out loud “Dear G-d, may it please be Thanksgiving already.” I burst out laughing from your comment and someone shushed me”…Maybe now we’d appreciate it more or at least pretend that we do.”
Yeah, that does sound like something I would have said then–and kinda wished I had recalled since it would easily fit into my current repetoire of snark. (And then I recalled that I was so bored I took out my keychain and began to read the names of the manufacturers that were etched into the various ones that had been pressed against my back pocket and causing me enough discomfort to offset the fact that for a change I was actually out with a cute girl who seemed to be into me.)
That memory raced back from my subconscious as I was enduring the second season bingewatch of Netflix’s THE FOUR SEASONS that I endured this past weekend. I feel even more ashamed to confess that than I apparently was at my rudeness at that recital a half-century ago. Especially in light of the fact that I really enjoyed season one when it dropped last spring and that many of the critical reviews it’s received have been quite favorable. Witness what HUFF POST’s Erin E. Evans and Njera Perkins gushed last week in the wake of what I suppose could be classified as seasons five through eight with equal accuracy as calling it season two is:
Who doesn’t need a little escape with your hilarious besties right about now? …In Season 2, the gang’s back together — season after season at new vacation locales — grieving the loss of their friend, forming new bonds and, of course, getting caught up in some hysterical hijinks.
I love that we got another breezy, bingeable season with this funny group of characters. Season 2 picks up with the aftermath of Ginny’s (Erika Henningsen) pregnancy news, with everyone still mourning Nick’s (Steve Carell) death. They, of course, turn something as simple as sprinkling his ashes on a mountaintop into pure shenanigans, but this is what I enjoy most about this show. It manages to squeeze ridiculous moments of comedy out of what could be mundane storylines. Like Jack (Will Forte) getting fed up during the Thanksgiving episode and kicking the turkey off the porch — I literally screamed. I took my time watching this season this time because I knew if I let myself, I’d watch it all in one sitting. It’s just that entertaining. — Njera
I waited for as long as possible to start the season because I knew I’d sit and watch it in one sitting. Breezy is the perfect word to describe it. It’s also just downright hilarious in some moments. The cast works together really well. I’m obsessed with the chemistry between Tina Fey and Colman Domingo. Domingo, once again, gets some of the funniest lines — I love when a character says something in a situation that I would say. It’s so natural which is part of what makes the show so great. Kerri Kenney-Silver was great once again, and she has some really good physical comedy moments that had me cracking up. (The AeroBed and the dumbbells? Incredible.) By the end of the season, I felt like I’d caught up with some old friends and was just very satisfied with all their updates. — Erin
Even those perhaps not guzzling Universal Content kool-aid to this extent were reasonably complimentary. SCREEN RANT’s Cher Thompson for one:
Netflix’s The Four Seasons season 2, which drops on Thursday, May 28, faces what feels like an impossible task with a graceful touch and an emotionally resonant sense of humor, even if it’s sometimes predictable…Throughout its first season, The Four Seasons felt like it leaned too heavily into Nick, Ginny, and Anne’s issues, leaving every other character dynamic on the fringed edge. While The Four Seasons season 2 doesn’t avoid pitfalls, it meditates on the right questions and offers a moving set of answers.
COLLIDER’s Meredith Loftus for another:
Good friends are there to help pick you up when life gets hard. Lasting friendships can endure grief, heartbreak, celebrations, and milestones — the changing seasons of life, which The Four Seasons embraces…Although these friends seemed like they could survive Nick (Steve Carell) and Anne’s (Kerri Kenney-Silver) divorce after 25 years of marriage, nothing prepared them for Nick’s death in a car accident on New Year’s Eve, leaving his new, younger girlfriend alone and pregnant. In the wake of that loss, what does life look like for these friends moving forward? The Four Seasons Season 2 tackles this question and (mostly) succeeds.
Perhaps these ladies are in a better place than I am now so that they could appreciate all that was attempted in this first-ever true extension of the IP that began with the 1981 movie that I truly enjoyed in the theatre and countless times on the various pay cable services I was able to receive for free when I first became a subscriber. Netflix’s first season was a loose reimagining that stayed true to the movie, give or take the evolution of one of the couples now being same-sex. The easter egg of having the movie’s heart, soul and indeed rights holder Alan Alda as a guest star was something I found to be especially uplifting. To me, it was upgraded comfort food along the lines of what I tend to fall back on when I binge watch anything these days.
Season two (five-eight?) just isn’t all that appetizing or appealing to me. The two-episode arcs that each de facto season are divided into seem forced and extended. The spring arc that sees the gang on a hiking vacation in the netherlands of upstate New York to scatter those ashes has a cliffhanger that has them stranded inside a decidedly downscale country inn where, naturally, hijinks ensue. The summer beach house week at the Jersey Shore focuses on the respective infatuations with a handsome divorcee consistently referenced by both his first and last name (Mark Brett, played by RESCUE ME alumnus Steven Pasquale) that Jack and Anne both develop. Their Thanksgiving is actually two different ones, respectively set both in the present day and in the backdrop of the one we endured during COVID where folks like our heroes were obsessively testing, social distancing and over-masking to the extent where press conferences were being held urging people to take smaller bites of their food to avoid having their mouths open enough to possibly get infected. (We do get cameos from Carell and, albeit briefly, even Alda, so it wasn’t a total loss). I was one of the “fools” who dared to see their own family at that time, and if nothing else I got the chance to fly first-class in a luxurious sleeper pod while the rest of the half-empty plane was literally wearing hazmat suits while gripping their seats in a pereptual state of paranoia. Hey, I gave in and wore a damn face shield, so even I played along.
I was so triggered by the choice of dredging up this memory that I failed to find all that much positive in the Christmas coda that teased some potential new storylines and venues for season three (nine-twelve?). If anything, I’m willing to at least align my bottom-line reaction with the relatively more open mind that VARIETY’s Aramide Tinubu demonstrated:
The freshman season of “The Four Seasons” worked because it was so willing to pull the rug from under the daily lives of a group of fifty-somethings, but Season 2, which has less wit and seemingly lower stakes, never quite reaches the breezy, banter-filled charm. Yet, with several new locations, including the Italian Alps in all of their winter glory, and a group of utterly talented actors whose chemistry leaps off the screen, the show remains a world very much worth checking out.
Anything that has Tina Fey, who G-d bless her looks even more perfect now than she did two decades ago as a rising SNL legend, as well as the practically ubiquitous Colton Domingo has promise. There is always the possibility for stunt castings aplenty as their “core group”–as Forte’s Jack annoyingly references them as while he attempts in vain to maintain the status quo that existed in Nick’s lfetime–diffuses to different parts of the globe. The early returns on Netflix audience size point to a renewal, though the 69 per cent “popcorn meter” side of Rotten Tomatoes that stands in stark contrast to the much more favorable 89% number to date on the “tomatometer” side that contrasts critics from vox populi suggests that said renewal may be done with a lesser vote of confidence than this one. This was seemingly timed to make it eligible for Emmy award consideration first and foremost–but honestly I couldn’t even support Fey, who does have an intriguing evolution in the season finale, being able to get one in such an overcrowded landscape.
If for no other reason to see how Fey defies the idea of aging, I’ll likely be at least willing to drop in again. And this time I’ll tried to avoid reading my keys.
Until next time…