Netflix trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onO_Vakcf1Q

I didn't trust the "Los Angeles Times" review, which was mostly thumbs-up, but Felice wanted to watch this. Do I regret it? No, not like the eight hours I invested in "Paradise" which not only petered out, but left us hanging for a second season. We'd just finished the final "Bosch"... Titus Welliver is so good he carries the whole show. And we'd seen an episode of "The Pitt," which I dug and Felice was so-so about, so I agreed to watch this Netflix series helmed by Tina Fey and her buddies that's a remake of a film from 1981 and...

They used to make movies like this. But then adults stopped going to the theatre. Last I checked box office was off by 33% from 2019, and today it's only event pictures that draw people to the theatre, and...if this were a movie, it would have stiffed. But as a TV series?

There's a hunger for adult content. But because it doesn't gross well at the multiplex belief is the audience aged out and is uninterested. This could not be more wrong.

But this is not the best TV series you've ever seen. It varies from sincere and realistic to cheesy but...it kept me watching. Maybe because of the scenery, maybe because Erika Henningsen played her role as Steve Carell's love interest so well. But one thing is for sure, I luxuriated in the portrayal of adult issues, a lot of which I didn't understand when I saw the original film but that I have insight into now.

Tina Fey is not only a great writer, she's a natural actress. She holds the film together. She's realistic, playing a fiftysomething who accepts her age, which is almost unheard of in Hollywood portrayals. She wants to look sharp, but she's under no illusion that she's a young 'un. Actually, that's one thing that struck me when the crew goes to a yurt-based eco-hotel. Other than Henningsen's 32 year old dental hygienist Ginny, everybody feels that not only are they too old to rough it, they've earned luxury. Those are the passages of life. You backpack through Europe in your twenties, a couple of decades later you want a comfortable bed with room service.

Now Fey as Kate does devolve into SNL quip-style now and again. You can see the writers in the room, throwing in these zingers, but she's three-dimensional and not always lovable. She feels burdened by doing all the heavy lifting as her husband Jack, played by Will Forte, floats through life. And when she ultimately becomes insecure and jealous... That's how relationships turn...one day you're up, next day you're down, that's love, as Jim Capaldi sang.

But Mr. Forte... Bad casting. Or maybe just bad acting. He never settles into the role and seems real. He's the opposite of three-dimensional. You can't stop seeing him in SNL or "MacGruber." He just never seems genuine.

Colman Domingo as Danny rings more true, especially when he angsts about surgery and isn't scared straight health-wise thereafter, but his husband Claude, played by Marco Calvani, is portrayed so broadly as to be a cartoon, he sets back the cause of gay marriage decades. This is the broad portrayal we saw in the "Boys In the Band" in the seventies, but even that was more realistic.

As for Steve Carell...

I don't buy him in the role one bit. As a hedge-funder? And we can never quite see what drew him to his wife Anne, played by Kerri Kenney-Silver, nor completely why he wants to divorce her. We know people like this, and they don't look or act like Steve Carell. They're Wall Street big swinging dicks who think their sh*t doesn't stink. They exude false gravitas, whereas Carell is the forty year old virgin.

As for Kerri Kenney-Silver... Sometimes you buy her in the role, sometimes you don't. She's hapless as the divorcée, that rings true, but the rest of the time...I might think about divorcing her too.

So as you can see I'm not enamored of most of the portrayals.

But the situations? Marital discord? That's familiar.

It's amazing that two people can live together at all, never mind for decades. What does it take? Do you just stew in your anger or stand up for yourself or...how do you get through?

And the premise... That these three couples whose relationships germinate from college constantly go on vacation together... I mean once a year isn't enough?

However, compared to the rest of what's purveyed...

"White Lotus" fantasy. Light crap overhyped by the system that you forget about as soon as it's over.

"Adolescence" so heavy that some people won't watch it on principle.

And now even Netflix has dating shows.

But Netflix has a whole hell of a lot else. Such that they can release this mediocre series and it doesn't hurt their bottom line, quite the contrary, it satiates paying customers.

And Netflix respects its customers. It's not worth tuning in week by week unless something is truly great, which "Four Seasons" is not. You want to revel in the mood for four hours and then move on to something else.

Would I like more original content based on adult themes?

Actually, I prefer this stuff, I watch it all the time, but it's made overseas. It's like too much stuff made in the U.S. is paint by numbers. Let's get famous people and remake a successful movie and...

Once again, the media is out of touch with the public and movie studios buy it. To take the pulse of the public you must go deeply online. And stay there. That's the only place you can feel it. A story in the Style section of the "New York Times"? Essentially worthless, placed there by a high-priced publicist and forgotten shortly thereafter.

Now if you shoot high, you can fail.

But if you roll the dice continuously, something succeeds, and that's what you hang your hat on.

That's the record label model of yore.

But today's record labels and movie studios are so busy massaging the product for success that it loses its essence. You've got to set the artists free, give them creative control, and that's anathema to the bean counters, who have somehow convinced themselves that they are the talent.

Sure there are duds on Netflix, but next week there's always new product. Furthermore, the crappy made for Netflix movies that would stiff in general theatrical release do astoundingly well on the streaming service. Many more people see your production streaming than they do in the theatre.

It's a different paradigm. You don't debate deeply what you're going to stream. You see a reference online, a friend mentions a show, and then you check it out. And if you don't like it, you abandon ship.

Or else you just go to Netflix's homepage and see what's shaking.

Right now "The Four Seasons" is number one. Do I expect it to remain there? No way. Essentially nothing does, just like the movies in theatres. They come for a few weekends at best, then they go.

And I will never stop beating the drum for the complete drop. Purveyors don't get it, they think conversation and viewership will increase. Yeah, maybe for a few shows, but the rest will just be ignored.

As Ted Sarandos said:

"''We’re in a period of transition. Folks grew up thinking, "I want to make movies on a gigantic screen and have strangers watch them (and to have them) play in the theater for two months and people cry and sold-out shows" … It’s an outdated concept.'"

"Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos Says Movie Theater Model Is 'Outdated': Most of the Country Cannot 'Walk to a Multiplex.'"

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/netflix-ceo-ted-sarandos-movie-theaters-outdated-1236376565/

And now I'll get a ton of e-mail arguing with me, defending movie theatres and the week by week series.

They're entitled to their opinion, but they're missing the point. The point is the trend, the point is disruption.

For nearly thirty years we've seen the past disrupted. The unthinkable happened, film was replace by digital, physical music was eclipsed by streaming music, yet there are still people stuck in the past invested in what they once did and still do. Fine, but can we get these people out of the seats of power? They've drunk their own kool-aid, they're in a clusterf*ck of group agreement. Notice how tech disruption never comes from a group, almost always an individual is the driver. Try for consensus and you miss the mark.

Today's movie business would never have delivered "The Four Seasons." They believe it's not what the people want.

But they're wrong! It's exactly what the public wants. Something that speaks to their minds that they can marinate in, that's double the length of a movie, that raises topics with no easy answers.

"The Four Seasons" is light entertainment.

But underneath the gloss is life. And we're all living it. And it's very complicated. And sure, we like escape. But even more we want insight. We want to recognize the people and situations on screen.

"The Four Seasons" is a start.

More like this please.


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