Season 2 of Netflix’s “Four Seasons” Proves That Some Things Get Better with Age

Netflix is ​​back with the second iteration of “The Four Seasons,” the Tina Fey production that modernizes Alan Alda’s 1981 film of the same name. And these eight episodes make for a much more enjoyable experience than the first, mostly because the show has found a way to manage its bittersweet tone.

In the episodes of 2025, “The Four Seasons” gave us the worst picture of life in your fifties – long-term characters, including three lovers who go on vacation together, all seem stuck. Unhappy marriages, bad communication, empty nests, and unsatisfying work/life were everywhere.

This season is still sad, but the show has given its characters some things to be sad about, rather than just broad middle-aged feelings. Now, they mourn a friend, Steve Carell’s Nick, who died at the end of the first season. They are still traumatized by COVID and what it was like to live in this pandemic. And they make difficult decisions about how they want to spend their remaining years, realizing that life and energy are limited by time.

Part of what they see is the role of friendship in their lives. Fey’s Kate and Colman Domingo’s Dannt get a great arc up front, exploring and confirming their connection. It turns out that old friends are not really alike. And their chemistry—as friends, as actors, and as comedians—gives everything a lot of weight and laughs (see Fey’s comedy sequence in the first episode with Domingo playing the straight man).

Domingo’s partner, Claude (Marco Calvani), finally gets justice this season, freed from his baffling acting in the first season. We come to some people in his native Italy, confident and strong in a way that Claude, speaking another language, just doesn’t know. He is right in many of his conflicts with Danny. And what he brings to their relationship is never clear. The evolution is lovely but not enough as Calvani hits his funny and dramatic beats with equal ease.

Unfortunately, Fey’s fictitious husband Jack (Will Forte) doesn’t fare so well for her, stuck in a lowly role. Forte is doing his best with this sad sack, but the show keeps throwing more fuel for his depression at him. It’s hard to watch, but as the couple try various strategies to get out, it’s hard to figure out what to make of Jack’s arc. Sometimes people go through dark times, I guess, and you can’t help but stick with it.

Of them all, however, Anne (a ferocious Kerri Kenney-Silver) has the best story. The widow and ex of Carell’s Nick, she begins the season needing to sort out her feelings about Ginny (Erika Henningsen), the woman Nick left for her, and the child she’s carrying. In response, Anne tries on different identities, creating her own coming-of-age story (middle). She’s free to be whoever she wants to be now, and her experimental efforts are amazing, matching the fierce young woman she once was and the sophisticated widow and mother she is now, even if she’s frustrated by her lack of “principal performance.”

In this iteration of “The Four Seasons,” the characters grow in compelling, funny ways. Anne gets to share the important truths of early motherhood in one episode, while making a sexting mistake in another. Danny must face his own limitations as he argues that somehow, the little Italian car he’s trying to drive doesn’t understand that he’s “good at everything.” And the list goes on.

These juxtapositions make your fifties seem, if not something to desire, not something to dread. We can make fun of aging without implying that they are the only thing there is. And doing that with Kenney-Silver, Fey, and Domingo is a real joy, fulfilling the promise of this series in its second outing. Some things get better with age.

The entire season was screened for review. It is currently streaming on Netflix.