Four Seasons season two review – Tina Fey’s best sequel is 30 Rock | Television

MThe idle years are a cruel time in life. As much as we know it, it’s worth it to be tested for laughter (unstoppable laughter that is often accompanied by tears, hardships, and, of course, death.) Enter the medieval comedy machine. Tina Feywho is Four Seasons – his zippy 2020s adaptation of the 1980s film of the same name, co-produced and written by Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher – has won again. The second season of his mid-range drama is more colorful, interesting and entertaining than the first one.

Again there are four great holidays that are split across the seasons, each given two packed episodes – a solid but neat device that allows for great moments to happen off-screen. Meanwhile we hear the sequence of the flood of Vivaldi and the jokes of lonely sad donkeys, hidden vapes that go wrong due to driving the thumb, and the misery of being an angry man, unleashing fifty-one in a T-shirt printed with “Shut up and Fuhgeddaboutit”.

The three families were also replaced after the death of Nick (Steve Carell) at the end of the first season. So there’s Kate (played by Fey) and Jack (a cute/soft couple planning their wedding on the floor), Danny and Claude (gay, cute, bickering forever) and Nick’s ex-wife Anne and the younger woman he left behind, Ginny – now pregnant with his child. “Women should not be in a relationship with a woman who has lost her husband,” laments Anne. Kate said: “You’re right. “There and no Beyoncé song on this. ” However, come summer the two mother and son have moved in together, and Anne is very happy with her new role as she tries Ginny’s pumps on her nose.

Summer time. The grieving sextet goes ashore to scatter Nick’s ashes from his favorite mountain. The first time they are interrupted by a group of Brownies. Again everyone hates each other, including Danny forgot the ashes. The third time they are shaken from a manhunt in the area that drags them into a retro motel at night, in the city so knocking “Tracy Chapman sped away from it” – a direct joke I heard that it was written for the middle age I, which is a special strength of Fey. There are moments in Four Seasons so funny I laughed like I was (re)watching 30 Rock. Which, considering I have a Romanian rescue dog named Lizzie Lemon, I really appreciate.

Summer: at the beach. Ginny has given birth, Danny and Claude (sort of, maybe) want a baby, and Jack has found a boyfriend to hang out with on the beach. Aw, says Kate (at first): “I never thought straight middle-aged men could make new friends!” The dialogue between Danny and Claude is funny, moving, and interesting. Meanwhile Kate and Jack are “free”: the name given to their decision to “grow on purpose”. If anyone else is writing letters this shouldn’t be a problem. Instead, what happens is a beautiful meditation on testing the endurance of long-term relationships.

The Big Thanksgiving culminates with Jack pushing the turkey down the stairs and twisting his knee. Little Thanksgiving goes back to the Covid pandemic when Steve was alive, and Anne was about to leave him. In many ways this second season is about Anne. She makes a delightful transition from a lonely, scared old woman to a contented (enough) single woman ready to dress up as an old witch for an Italian Christmas pageant. They get the best lines, and the most beautiful clothes.

It’s worth watching the Four Seasons for the knitwear alone. The humor comes from a Nancy Meyers movie, and this is Fey, there’s a joke about it, too. “Life is not a Nancy Meyers movie!” Anne said as she tried to chase the summer away. Of course, the joke is that the Four Seasons looks like a Nancy Meyers movie, but nothing like one. Pull on a knit rug with neutral fabrics and — how would Meyers put it? – and difficulties. It’s a dark and complicated world where good men break old cages, regrets, sacrifices, buried childhood hurts, and people who love each other want something completely different.

I found levels of green grass on the beach and crab cakes funny at first but when these mistakes, friends flailing was winter in the mountains of Italy and Kate was giving an Emmy award-worthy talk to Jack (running the race!) about his levels of the secret of depression, I was all over it. The top places are the attractions of murk for deep experiences. “I’m worried that you and I will be so weird and separate that we’ll be like strangers,” she shouts, “and all the neighborhood kids will skip our house on Halloween because we’re so scared. Just then Kate and Jack cross the finish line, hugging each other.