‘The Four Seasons' review: Scenes from all marriages

Mint

2 days ago

Donald Sutherland was a fantastic 'Hawkeye" Pierce. Robert Altman's Palme D'Or winning M*A*S*H* film—an adaptation of Richard Hooker's savage novel—cast Sutherland as a smirking surgeon, detached and too hip for the wartime hell around him. Alan Alda, inheriting the part in the M*A*S*H* series, one of the greatest American shows of all time, added a splash of melancholy to his martini. His 'Hawkeye" talked more, joked more and, crucially, felt more. Both top-shelf performances, but where Sutherland served up a dirty martini, Alda poured one that was dryer and infinitely more unforgettable.
It therefore feels appropriate to see Alda back with the Netflix series The Four Seasons. Written and directed by Alda, the 1981 film of the same name has been adapted into a new series by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield, and it really works. Alda's film, sharply written and observed, is about a close-knit group of middle-aged friends regularly meet up for vacations together—and take turns unravelling. This episodic storytelling device naturally lends itself to the series format, where each seasonal getaway—Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter—gets two episodes apiece.
The series arrives features a mature cast who know exactly how to underplay the grand and overplay the trivial: which, when it comes to long marriages and longer friendships, is really the point. It's a sly, simmering show about grown-ups who spend an inordinate amount of time with each other, despite—or because—they often cannot stand one another. It's about the cold fronts in marriages, the blossoms of unexpected tenderness, the sudden summer squalls that arrive when someone dares to say what they actually feel.
Steve Carell, playing Nick, a man about to leave his wife, is superb. Nick isn't angry or grieving or desperate. It's worse than that: He's fine. 'We're like coworkers at a nuclear facility. We sit in the same room all night monitoring different screens," he says, describing his marriage and landing a line that is tragic, mordantly funny, and dangerously true for many watching. That's the kind of dialogue this show does so well—sentences that glance off the comedic and stick in your ribs later.
Colman Domingo's Danny is all eye-rolls and snark, a larger-than-life man who wants to be the centre of every moment. He's married to Marco Calvani's Claude, a gloriously high-strung Italian with a theatre-kid's lungs and a philosopher's grievances. When Claude is told to lower his voice during a confrontation, he responds with an operatic 'I'm Italian!". This is a moment so deliciously theatrical it feels written in all caps. (And, as it turns out, it was written decades ago: the line is taken directly from the 1981 film, where the response was a weary 'Everybody in Connecticut knows you're Italian.")
This new Four Seasons steals from the past with intention, not imitation. It nods to the Alan Alda original like a grown child reclaiming a family recipe and adding spice. Tina Fey's Kate, acerbic as can be, refers to someone as 'such a Zelig." It's a reference to her favourite Woody Allen film, a reference lost on many, but she's fine being her own audience. She plays a woman too sharp to soften, too tired to explain herself, and too loyal to leave the people who exhaust her. (Alda himself shows up, old but still twinkly-eyed, telling the couples 'not to fuss about the small stuff." 'I love you," Tina says.)
Kerri Kenney-Silver is lovely as Anne, the outsider-insider. She married into this friend group years ago, and still seems faintly surprised every time she's invited back. There's a generosity to her awkwardness, a woman who doesn't quite fit but really really wants to, and that yearning gives her scenes a quiet poignancy that sneaks up on you.
What the show captures best is how much long-term intimacy is made up of nonsense: repeated anecdotes, shared allergies, longstanding dinner orders. As Jack once said of Danny in the 1981 film: 'He's hypochondriacal, stingy, bossy, selfish, compulsive, and paranoid. He's the Muhammad Ali of mental illness." Or Nick's perfect marital lament: 'For a year and a half, all we talked about was zucchini. Then, for another year, it was green peppers. That was a nice change." These lines could easily belong to this new show, and that's the point.
In the 44 years between the movie and the show, it's astonishing how little has changed. People age, partnerships drift, tensions bubble under the surface of Instagram-friendly getaways. The clothes are better, the therapy is more expensive, but the core remains unchanged. We marry people we want to like, we befriend people we can't always stand, and we grow old hoping someone will know how we take our coffee (or martini) without asking.
Buckle up. The seasons will keep marching on, and we will inevitably turn into our parents—or, at the very least, the characters our parents watched on TV. Our edges will dull, our affairs will seem commonplace, we will appear out of touch to those who are young and exciting. If we are fortunate, however, we will get by with a little help from our friends. Love them, do.
Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen.
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