The Four Seasons Review: A Familiar Trip That Doesn’t Warrant a Return Visit

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May 1

Tina Fey’s all-star Netflix remake offers plenty of baggage, but not enough payoff.

Netflix’s The Four Seasons, co-created by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield, arrives as a glossy, actor-laden adaptation of Alan Alda’s 1981 film of the same name — a middlebrow cultural touchstone about marital strain, changing friendships, and the fraying social fabric of longtime relationships. In this updated version, the premise remains the same: three long-married couples retreat together each season, escaping to picturesque destinations where their relational tensions bubble under the surface and occasionally erupt. But while the premise suggests a character-driven meditation on middle age and long-term friendship, the results are less profound than pedestrian — more soft chuckle than belly laugh, more mild discomfort than emotional gut-punch.

Steve Carell leads the ensemble as Nick, a man in the throes of an identity crisis, who opens the series by announcing to the audience — and later to his stunned friend group — that he’s leaving his wife Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver) after 25 years. The moment, meant to be a bombshell, is delivered with the same emotional register as a coffee order. That flatness underscores a larger problem: The Four Seasons rarely finds a tonal center. Is this a comedy of manners? A raw drama about marriage dissolution? A satirical look at middle-aged privilege? The show toys with each, but commits to none.

Each of the show’s eight half-hour episodes is themed to a seasonal vacation: a springtime lakeside weekend, a summer getaway to a pretentious eco-lodge, an autumnal college visit, and a New Year’s ski trip. These aren’t just seasonal markers — they serve as metaphors for the relationships in question: budding crises, overheated conflicts, slow decay, and forced new beginnings. But even when symbolism is present, the storytelling often feels inert. Events occur, characters snipe and retreat, and emotional arcs meander toward vague resolutions.

Tina Fey plays Kate, a Type-A neurotic whose emotional repression manifests in harshness, while Will Forte plays her ineffectual husband Jack. Their dynamic is familiar to anyone who’s seen 30 Rock or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: she delivers sardonic barbs; he sheepishly absorbs them. But the rhythms here are sluggish. Without the rapid-fire pacing of her earlier work, Fey’s brand of misanthropic wit loses its sting.

Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani play Danny and Claude, a couple whose relationship seems perpetually one minor argument away from collapse. Domingo, an actor of immense charisma and gravitas, is underutilized — his character mostly functioning as a foil to Fey’s. Claude is rendered in broad strokes as a melodramatic artiste, but without the complexity such flamboyance demands.

And yet, within this uneven ensemble, there are glimmers of something deeper. Kerri Kenney-Silver’s Anne is a revelation — a woman grappling with unexpected abandonment not with hysteria, but with a deeply felt mix of confusion, sorrow, and flickers of resilience. Erika Henningsen, as Nick’s much younger girlfriend Ginny, begins as a one-joke punchline (a fitness influencer archetype), but gradually emerges as one of the show’s most grounded and empathetic characters. Her awkward attempts to integrate into this older, bitter group — while maintaining her own sense of self — provide some of the show’s more nuanced observations.

Thematically, The Four Seasons purports to interrogate marriage: its demands, its decay, and its capacity for renewal. But despite recurring conversations about therapy, resentment, and compatibility, the series remains emotionally surface-level. The show’s central conceit — that these characters remain friends because of shared history — never fully convinces. Their connection often feels like inertia rather than affection, duty rather than delight.

In this regard, The Four Seasons mirrors the malaise of its characters. The friendships are long-lasting but emotionally brittle. The marriages are not abusive or toxic, just quietly exhausting. But this realism doesn’t translate into compelling drama. Scenes unfold without momentum. Conflicts are introduced and resolved with the speed of a sitcom, but without the payoff. It’s not that nothing happens — it’s that nothing lands.

Visually, the series embraces a middlebrow aesthetic: beautiful homes, tastefully decorated Airbnbs, snow-dusted landscapes, and foliage-laden campuses. Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who direct the early episodes, bring a competent eye but little in the way of directorial signature. The series’ visuals are pleasant but anonymous — as polished and unmemorable as a Pottery Barn catalogue.

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In its final episodes, The Four Seasons reaches for sentiment. Nick tries to justify his midlife crisis. Kate reevaluates her marriage. Jack stands up for himself. Danny and Claude find a new normal. It all leads to a climactic sequence that gestures toward emotional catharsis, but lacks the narrative groundwork to feel earned. The show closes with a romantic gesture and an epiphany about soulmates that rings hollow — not because it’s untrue, but because the show hasn’t done the work to convince us that these characters have really changed.

Ultimately, The Four Seasons is a watchable, mildly diverting ensemble dramedy that wants to be a cross between The Big Chill, Scenes From a Marriage, and White Lotus, but never reaches the incisiveness, elegance, or bite of any. What remains is a show that ambles along on the strength of its cast and a few poignant moments, but rarely challenges or surprises. Like a vacation you agree to out of obligation, it’s mostly pleasant, occasionally frustrating, and ultimately forgettable.