Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Four Seasons

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Tina Fey returns to TV on the charming Netflix comedy The Four Seasons. It's about a group of couples whose friendship dynamic is rocked by their midlife crises. The impressive cast includes Colman Domingo, Will Forte, and Steve Carell. And while the jokes may not fly quite as fast as they did on 30 Rock, Fey's comedic sensibilities are written all over it.To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's been over a decade since Tina Faye last start at a TV show, and now she's back in Netflix's The Four Seasons, a charming comedy that makes for a great weekend binge. It's about a group of couples whose friendship dynamic is rocked by their midlife crises. The cast is pretty impressive. It includes Coleman Domingo, Will Forte, and Steve Carell. And while the jokes may not fly quite as fast as they did on 30 Rock, Faye's comedic sensibilities are all over this thing.

I'm Glenn Weldon. And I'm Ayesha Harris, and today we're talking about the four seasons on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is entertainment journalist Christina Escobar. She's the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LatinaMedia.com. Welcome back, Christina. Thanks so much for having me.

Great to have you here. So in the four seasons, three married couples come together for their semi-regular vacation weekend hang. There's Kate and Jack, played by Tina Faye and Will Forte. You know, even in a thruple, somebody's got a clean ear for her. Exactly. Even in an ethical situation, ship, you can't. as a car payment.

Claude and Danny are played by Marco Calvani and Coleman Domingo. You know I need to be there person to see all the furniture, touch all the fabrics. Why do you have to be so tactile all the time? I mean, it's sexy, but I'm so little frustrating. And then there's Nick and Anne, played by Steve Carell and Kerry Kennedy Silver. Nick and Ann are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, but everything's thrown out of whack when Nick announces to some of the others in the group that he's unhappy and plans to leave Anne.

I built her. That pottery shed, she hasn't made one thing. All she wants to do is play this farm game on her iPad. I look over her shoulder some nights. She's really high on the leaderboard. What a way to throw a grenade in the middle of a vacation, man. So the rest of this show follows the couples as they navigate the follow-out from their breakup and their own relationships to one another over the course of the next year or so. This is based on the 1981 movie that was written, directed by and starred Alan Alda. Tina Fey is a co-creator of the Four Seasons, and it's streaming on Netflix now. Glenn, I am going to start with you because I know that this is catnip for both of us. This cast, the premise. So how did this strike you?

That's the thing. I mean, I love these individual components. Every member of this cast and the premise. I love the Ellen Alda movie back in. I saw it as a tween. I went to theaters at age like 12, but I was really, I thought it was so wise about, you know, middle age. I really liked it more than I should have. But as a whole, it kind of didn't hit me as hard as I thought it was going to.

I mean, for instance, I love Carrie Kenny Silver getting to dig a little deeper than she gets to do in a very broad, silly show like Reno 9-1-1. The only actor in this entire main cast that I don't have a pre-existing, long-standing, parisocial relationship with is Marco Calvani, who you mentioned, who actually he wrote and directed a pretty great indie film called High Time. He plays Claude, and Claude is a character you keep waiting to get a moment to deepen or complicate or surprise us in any way, and that never really comes. And I guess it counts as progress that a character that underwritten is played by a gay man instead of a woman, as it would have been done in years past. I guess that counts. This is not a sign, Danny. Thunder, volcano, when a fish looks at you're riding in the eye for no reason. These are signs.

This is a fixable problem, and I'm going to fix it. Okay, just breathe, okay? The rhythms of this show, as you mentioned, are not those of 30 Rock or Kimmy Schmidt, and that's fine, because that's the way it should be. Different comedies have different rhythms and pacing. But it is less broad. It's less manic. And because it is deliberately less joke-dense, it ends up being less funny. And again, that's intentional because the show wants to trade, you know, mile a minute yucks for depth, for insight, for saying something about marriages and long-term relationships of all kinds.

And that means we have to want to spend some time with these couples, even when they're not making us laugh. And I mostly did. Yeah. I mostly did. Even if the show around them ends up being, again, I'm surprised by how conventional, maybe even a little stayed. Yeah. Now I have some pretty, admittedly, bougie taste. And the show is pretty bougie.

But, you know, it doesn't overstay. It's welcome. And it goes down easy on a weekend afternoon. I was fine with it at the end of the day. Yeah. I think it's worth noting, as you said, because this is not 30 Rock or Kimmy Schmidt. The basic framing of this series is that every two episodes is a different. season, hence the four seasons. And so they take these trips to various places. And, you know,

it's interesting the way it's set up. And it causes some complications, including the booge gets really heavy when we're visiting their alma mater and northeast, like very Tony, whatever. Christina, I am very curious to hear your thoughts on this show. Because you and I are brown the same age, I think. So this is a show about middle age. How did this make you feel about Middle age. Yeah. I'm a bit younger than these characters, but not that much younger. So I have kids, but they're not in their elementary school and not in college.

So they've got a good 10 plus years on me. And I loved all of the components of these shows, some of my favorite actors. I like the fantasy of grown-ups being able to take four vacations a year together, which is just like absolutely wild. But I felt like it was a downer. I felt like usually in shows when you have multiple representations of a certain type. And this is really about people in their 50s that you therefore get a diversity of experience because you have like six characters all going through the same things. And man, they were all going through the same thing. Everybody was having a hard time talking to their partner and it was messing everything up.

I think we should get shows about middle-aged marriage. That's an interesting topic, but it didn't quite work for me. I would say the one thing where they veered away is when there was this conflict between Coleman Domingo's character, Danny and Tina Faye's character, Kate, like a friendship conflict. I was like, ah, yay, something else to think about. Thank goodness. Because the rest of the time, it really felt a little too one note for me and just like sad. Like, man, I hope there's more in my 50s than. fighting with my partner. Yeah, no, I loved that conflict between Danny and Kate. It felt very real. And

it also kind of speaks to what you were talking about, Glenn, with the Claude character, Danny's partner, Claude, which is that, like, there's not a lot going on there. He's very, he's very sweet. He's the one person who's the bright spot. He's like, I'm trying to make everything happy and everything's great and I'm so excited about everything. And he's got an accent. So, like, I feel like there's a whole lot of like stereotypes going on here. It's like, I'm the feminine gay, slightly younger than everyone else, Ditsy. And at one point, Kate sort of like mentions that to Danny. I admire how you've set up your life. You have me for intelligent conversation and then you get to go home to that handsome, ridiculous person that you married. Okay, Kate, you're drunk. And it's my marriage. So please

stay the fuck out of it. That was real, yeah. That was real. I've been there. I've been on both sides of those things. I've been Kate and I've been Danny. And I totally hear you both on this idea that it is kind of, for the most part, we're just seeing more or less the same kind of conflicts amongst three different couples. At the same time, it was enough for me. I can't say that I'm taking four trips a year with my friends, but I have quite a bit of experience traveling with other couples and also traveling with other friends. And when you're in these confined spaces for short periods of time, and especially if you don't get to spend all that much time outside of those vacations together, things come up. And when couples are on the rocks, that can affect the dynamic. And I thought, especially the sort of central breakup between Nick and Anne, the ripple effects of that really kind of stuck with me. It felt like this is the way that things might actually pan out if the core couple and the group breaks up. This is where I admit that I have never seen Reno 9-1-1. So I was not familiar. with Carrie Kinney Silver before this.

But my goodness, I think she has some really great moments. I thought at first she was going to be kind of like the female analog of Claude. And then once she's like dealing with the breakup, there's a very sad and very cringy moment where she is trying to open a gift. It's so real if you've never been to a gift shop on a resort or whatever. They're like, we're packing this for you to fly away with it. And she's trying to open it like to impress someone or to flirt with someone. And it just goes so wrong. They wrap it for the airport.

Yeah, I can see. And it went on just a little too long. And I liked those moments. Like those moments kind of worked for me. Yeah, it gets a surprising number of things right. I'm speaking to you all from the doldrums of middle age. So I can say it gets something. I was surprised about how it gets something right about gay couples.

There are ways that a gay couple acts around their straight friends that is different from how we act around our gay friends. Yes. I liked how, like, Coleman Domingo's character has a different relationship with the character played by Carrie Kenny Silver than she has with, say, the Tina Faye character, because I think that speaks to him having a different relationship to the concept of traditional marriage and the Tina Faye character does. So, like, Tina Faye looks on this woman with pity, whereas Domingo's character is encouraging her to take next steps. I think that's a smart little nuance there. You don't need to hide. You need to get yourself a massage, go shopping. thing, have yourself an adventurous, spend all his money.

You could pair off pretty much any two of these characters in a scene and get something different except for Claude. Claude would just be, I love my husband, where's my husband? It gets something right about middle age. When Will Forte's character buys Tina Fey's character some record albums, they're all my favorite bands. And it was like, oh, I feel targeted, ruthlessly targeted. And as an ex-theater critic, it gets something right about terrible theater.

At one point, we see a play that the daughter of Steve Carell and Carrie Kenny Silver Oh, my God. Love that scene. The messy aftermath of your practical joke. Your absence left me with only my tears as companions. That actor is Julia Lester, and she's very funny, and she wrote a terrible play, the kind of play I used to see all the damn time. Same. And this is the point, though. I think it gets group dynamics right.

To your point, Ayesha. I mean, at one point a character observes that the Tina Will couple always complain, and that felt like I was listening in on couples gossiping about each other. which is a thing that happens on vacations and at home. And that's what I like so much about the 1981 Alan Alda movie. We're looking in on this couple as they read each other to filth in a real way. That's my favorite part of this show. No, no, I'm not going to make it. Between my hunger and Claude telling me about a dream he had two years ago.

I mean, you know I love Claude. Yeah, we all love Claude. But you said you would be a little buffer. I mean, I'm also curious, once Nick and Anne the Corell and Kenny Silver characters, breakup. We do get introduced to Ginny, who's played by Erica Henningson, and she is the person that he starts dating after. And she is significantly younger. And we've seen this before. And we've seen this in real life. Like, I think actually Nick's daughter is like, this is the definition of a midlife crisis. Like she says she has the personality of squats, which I was like, oh, so funny.

Yes. That was the best part of the play. Yes. And there is a way and like we all have our feelings about May-December romances, especially when December swings in the male direction and May is the female direction. It's very cliche. And I'm curious what you thought about the way it presents itself, because of course there's a way everyone else's response in the group to this is exactly how you would kind of expect it to be. She's got more energy. She wants to do all these things that younger people want to do. But she also, like the show, I think also tries to be sympathetic or even like a little empathetic toward her character. I thought they did a good job trying to make her a person, but they didn't fully leap.

You know, I think her and Claude are the least developed. That said when Anne and Nick were talking to their daughter and she's like, Ginny's a symbol of everything that's wrong. I was like, er. And then it was Anne, you know, the jilted wife who had to say, Jenny is not a symbol. She is a person. So thanks a lot to both of you for making me be the one to have to. say that out loud.

Motherhood. No. And I felt like that moment was really powerful and the right thing to do. And Anne was then mad that she was the one who had to do that, which also felt really human. I did think this show had some good insights and pushed us to have empathy for all of these people, even if they were silly, even if they were being jerks, which I really appreciated. I like a show where none of the characters are all the way good or all the way bad. And there was sort of empathy for everybody and some sort of like understanding. I thought the show did that well with Ginny, although towards the end, we get to see her with some of her friend group.

And that felt a little bit exaggerated to me, who is older than Ginny. I was kind of in the middle here. I was like, hmm, this is an old people's view of what a young person's life is like. Definitely. The vegan, we're not drinkers. I was like, yeah, I mean, sure, some of us are like that. Maybe. We're not all not eating meat.

I'm just saying. Yeah. Yeah. And the Steve Carell character, you know, could easily come off as a jerk, and that's the extent of his character. But because it's Steve Carell and he's got, you know, he's got a woundedness to him that even when he's talking and saying some really selfish things about how, you know, my wife doesn't even try and kind of see, you never lose the vulnerability. He knows he screwed up and he knows how bad it looks, but he's still searching for something. And, you know, you can judge him as every character on this show does. But they do that because that's exactly what would happen.

That's real. I think that especially comes alive when he's talking to his daughter. And he seemed to think that her being in college would make it easier. But it's like, no, these are still your children. And, you know, just because you're not a small child anymore doesn't mean it, it doesn't still hurt. I stupidly thought that if I waited until you were in college, then this wouldn't be such a big deal. Oh, God, that's so dumb. Yeah, I'm a fucking idiot.

Most adults are fucking idiots. I appreciated that aspect of it. I was kind of, it took me well to kind of get lock into this show's tone because, you know, I just have this thing with Will Forte. Every word out of his mouth seems like it's a bit, like it's a put on. And so when he plays it straight and sincere, it just takes me. I have a learning curve. And with Tina Faye, I want to know what you guys think. I mean, she's not playing Liz Lemon here.

Liz Lemon is the character that's always the butt of the joke. She's engineered to be funny. Sometimes when you watch Tina Faye act in a conventional comedy like baby mama or mean girls or sisters, there is a sense that she's very conscious of how she's coming across. There's an intellect there. Maybe that's the writer's sensibility or in this case the producer's sensibility, but it leads her to kind of hold back a bit. And you kind of get a sense of her standing outside herself kind of next to the character, listening to how she's saying the words.

Do you guys know what I'm talking about here? Yes, absolutely. I thought so. Yeah, I can totally see that at the same time. I think for this character, it works just because of her whole, like, especially Kate and Jack's dynamic as a couple together. Like, I kind of, not including Nick and Ann, but like out of the three couples, it feels as though they are the most, like, afraid to step on each other's toes in a way. And for me, that sort of guardedness and her feeling a little, maybe still did is what you're getting at, Glenn.

But like, I felt it worked for the interactions that she has, especially with Jack. I didn't mind it. But I don't know. I think for me, I'm like a Tina Faye apologist sometimes. She has definitely done a lot of things where I'm like, okay, Tina. I don't know. It was nice to see her back in a show and, you know, being a little bit vulnerable or trying to be a little bit vulnerable in a way that. that like, you know, 30 Rock could get to sometimes, but not always because that wasn't, it wasn't the same show.

So this is different. This is Tina Fey in her 50s. And I'm, I don't know. I'm curious to see more of that from her. For sure. Yes, I felt that distance, but I felt her mostly charming and vulnerable, right? Like, she's a person who always thinks of herself as the smartest person in the room. And when that doesn't work, she doesn't really know how to handle herself. And I felt that that was a good fit and that she was able to be kind of slyly funny without hamming it up, which, you know, I appreciated at the end of the day. Absolutely. Yeah. And again, I do love Kate and Danny's relationship. I feel as though they were the most, like, I could totally see them being friends in real life. They just, for sure. They had a very good rapport. So I would love to see more Tina Fey and Coleman Domingo teaming up together because that's fun. I know it's a nightmare for you because you're just like me. You love making jokes and picking fights.

I don't like picking fights. I like winning fights. Okay, do you want to win or do you want to have a nice life? When do you need an answer by? And I also want to say it was nice to see Coleman Domingo out of a... Drama. Trauma? Out of a drama, out of the trauma, just like being a man doing his stuff. It was like, ah, it's so nice to see him just like having everyday problems, not saving the world, not running from spies, just like having friends and going on vacation.

I was like, we need, we need this for you. And he's a joy always to watch. And arguing with his partner in the middle of a three. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it. Yeah. Well, it sounds like we all liked it to some degree, and it's fun. You should definitely check it out if you haven't already. And we want to know what you think about the Four Seasons. If you have had a chance to check it out, find us at Facebook.com slash PCH.

That brings us to the end of our show, Glenn Weldon, Christina Escobar. Thanks so much for being here. This is fun. It was. Thank you. Thank you. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio.

and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katsif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Kamin provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Ayesha Harris.

We'll see you all next time.