Colman Domingo On Returning To Comedy In ‘The Four Seasons’ On Netflix
‘The Four Seasons’ is a breath of fresh air for two-time Oscar nominee Colman Domingo.
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Spoiler alert! The following story contains details about the Season 1 finale of Netflix’s “Four Seasons” (now streaming).
For much of the “The Four Seasons,” Jack (Will Forte) and Kate’s (Tina Fey) relationship is on thin ice.
The college sweethearts frequently struggle to communicate throughout the Netflix dramedy (now streaming). With their own daughter, Beth (Ashlyn Maddox), off at school, Kate is frustrated by Jack’s lack of initiative, while he sees her as overly critical. But after a near-death experience on a frozen lake during the winter, the couple takes stock of their love and reaffirms that they are soulmates.
“We are rooting for them to stay together,” says Lang Fisher, who adapted the show from Alan Alda’s 1981 movie with Fey and writer-producer Tracey Wigfield. “There are hills and valleys in every relationship, especially long relationships. If you recently became empty nesters, you’re like, ‘Who have we become? Do we still work together? At this point in our lives, what do we want out of our marriage and for ourselves?’ They are having these growing pains over the season, but in the end, you want them to be like, ‘No, I choose you, and I will take a step towards you when things get tough.’ I hope people will find that very romantic and hopeful.”
Fey first saw the movie roughly 40 years ago, and says she wanted to preserve “tentpole moments” that stuck with her, such as a key fight between Jack and Kate during a college parents’ weekend. But with eight half-hour episodes, she also had time to explore characters such as Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver) in “a more detailed way.”
Here are a few big questions that we had after watching the “Four Seasons” finale:
Why did the series kill Nick, Steve Carell’s character?
Much of the show’s drama revolves around Nick (Steve Carell), who leaves his wife, Anne, for a younger woman, Ginny (Erika Henningsen). During a ski vacation in the seventh episode, Ginny complains that Nick is not being fully present with her friends. It’s their last conversation before he dies in a fatal car crash on a late-night trip to the grocery store on New Year’s Eve.
Although the series otherwise closely follows the storyline of Alda’s original film, Nick’s death is a major departure.
“We regret it now, because it was great having Steve on the show. What are we going to do for Season 2?” Wigfield jokes. “No, we thought about it a lot, but we made the decision to kill Nick early on (in the writing process). This show is all about middle age and the real stakes of life when you’re in your 40s and 50s. You think your life is so settled, but it’s not so crazy for a friend in their 50s or 60s to die unexpectedly. If we’re doing a show about friends who have seen each other through the good things and the worst things, part of that was wanting to see this group come together in the wake of tragedy.”
The eighth and final episode revolves around Nick’s funeral, as Kate, Jack, Anne, Ginny, Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani) wrestle with how best to memorialize him.
“It shouldn’t be the job of one person to remember someone,” Wigfield says. “Only a big group of friends can truly remember all that a person was.”
What does that pregnancy cliffhanger mean for Ginny (Erika Henningsen)?
From the moment Ginny is brought into the fold in Episode 3, Nick’s pals struggle to accept his bright and adventurous new girlfriend. Ginny eventually calls out the group following Nick’s funeral, explaining that just because they dated for a short period of time it doesn’t mean the relationship was any less meaningful to her.
In other films and TV shows, “you’ve seen the younger woman who might be a little ditzy or shallow, and we wanted to make sure this character felt real,” Wigfield says.
Anne and Ginny ultimately reach an understanding by the end of Episode 8. And while sitting down for dinner in the last moments of the season, Anne reveals to the entire group that Ginny is pregnant with Nick’s baby, just before the credits roll.
“It’s a funny episode, but a sad episode, too,” Fisher says. “We liked the idea that there’s a hopeful tag at the end. Also, in setting up a possible Season 2, it ties Ginny into the group and presents interesting dynamics with her and Anne. Now, they’ll have children who are siblings of very different ages, and it lets Ginny still be part of this group as we see them in the next year moving forward.”
Where might Kate (Tina Fey) and friends go in a potential Season 2?
Netflix has not yet announced whether “The Four Seasons” has been renewed for a second season, but the cast has plenty of ideas about where they would like the show’s core friend group to vacation next.
“If you talk to Marco, he’d be like, ‘We have to visit Claude’s family in Italy!’ Right, Marco, go tell that to (production company) Universal Television,” Fey jokes. “I don’t know. I think Lang and Tracey and I are going to start thinking and talking in a week or two. By then we’ll know whether the world is like, ‘No! Pass!’”
Henningsen offers Poland and Iceland as possibilities, given that Nick was always resistant to go see the Northern Lights (as he called them, “God’s screensaver”). Or, Fey suggests, “maybe they just take an 11-minute journey to space.”
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