Netflix is back with a second iteration of “The Four Seasons,” the Tina Fey production modernizing Alan Alda’s 1981 film of the same name. And these eight episodes make for a more entertaining experience than the first, largely because the show has figured out how to manage its comedically bittersweet tone.
In the 2025 episodes, “The Four Seasons” gave us a pretty damning portrayal of life in your fifties—the cast of long-time friends, consisting of three couples who go on regular vacations together, all seemed stuck. Unhappy marriages, poor communication, empty nests, and unfulfilling work/life were everywhere.
This season is still sad, but the show has given its protagonists specific things to be sad about, rather than just a broad moroseness of middle age. Now, they’re mourning the friend, Steve Carell’s Nick, who died at the end of season one. They’re still traumatized by COVID and what living through the pandemic really looked like. And they’re making hard decisions about how they want to spend their remaining years, realizing that life and energy are time-bound.
Part of what they come to appreciate is the role of friendship in their lives. Fey’s Kate and Colman Domingo’s Dannt get a particularly sweet arc on this front, testing and reaffirming their connection. It turns out old friends are really like no other. And their chemistry—as friends, as actors, and as comedians—gives the whole thing lots of weight and laughs (see Fey’s physical comedy sequence in the penultimate episode with Domingo playing the straight man).
Domingo’s partner, Claude (Marco Calvani), finally gets some justice this season, freed from his ditzy characterization in season one. We get to some in his native Italy, oozing confidence and strength in a way immigrant Claude, speaking in a foreign language, just isn’t able to. He’s clearly right in many of his arguments with Danny. And what he brings to their relationship has never been clearer. The evolution is palatable but not overwrought as Calvani hits his comedic and dramatic beats with equal ease.
Unfortunately, Fey’s fictional husband Jack (Will Forte) doesn’t fare so well, stuck in the downer role. Forte does what he can with this sad sack, but the show just keeps hurling more fuel for his depression at him. It’s hard to watch, but even as the couple tries various strategies to pull through, it’s hard to figure out what we should make of Jack’s arc. Sometimes people go through dark times, I guess, and there’s nothing to do but stick around.
Of them all, though, Anne (a mischievous Kerri Kenney-Silver) has the best story. The widow and ex of Carell’s Nick, she starts the season needing to sort her emotions about how she feels both about Ginny (Erika Henningsen), the woman Nick left her for, and, of course, the baby she’s carrying. In response, Anne tries on a variety of different identities, effectively creating her own coming-of-(middle)-age story. She’s free to be whoever she wants now, and her attempts at exploration are hilarious, echoing the fierce young woman she once was and the more experienced widow and mom she is now, even if she gets frustrated about her own lack of “executive functioning.”
In this iteration of “The Four Seasons,” the characters grow in compelling, hilarious ways. Anne gets to share prescient truths of early motherhood in one episode, while making a sexting mistake in another. Danny must face his limitations even as he protests that somehow, the little Italian car he’s attempting to move just doesn’t understand that he’s “good at everything.” And the list goes on.
These juxtapositions make your fifties seem, if not something to aspire to, not something to dread either. We can laugh at the vagaries of getting older without positing that they’re the only thing there is. And getting to do that with Kenney-Silver, Fey, and Domingo is a real joy, delivering on the promise of this series in its second outing. Some things really do get better with age.
Whole season screened for review. Currently streaming on Netflix.