Coming off a hard year, The Four Seasons friend group carries on their tradition of vacationing together — now with a baby in tow in Season 2.
Season 1 of The Four Seasons, based on Alan Alda’s 1981 film, introduces six longtime friends — Kate (Tina Fey), Jack (Will Forte), Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), Nick (Steve Carell), Claude (Marco Calvani), and Danny (Colman Domingo) — who take four annual vacations together. The group is upended when Anne and Nick split up, and the rest of the season charts the gang’s reckoning with the ups and downs of this change. The finale comes to a tragic end when Nick dies in a car accident while on vacation with his new girlfriend, Ginny (Erika Henningsen).
Season 2 opens months after Nick’s funeral, when the remaining friends meet for a hike to spread his ashes. Soon, intergroup tensions and blind spots emerge, and it becomes clear that the sixsome is struggling to process Nick’s death as a collective. “They have to learn to re-form as a group in a different configuration,” says Tina Fey, who co-created the series with Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield. Wigfield adds, “It was fun to find ways in which these dynamics wouldn’t have shifted if not for Nick’s dying. There’s a midlife crisis feeling, but it’s amplified.”
The already familiar cast, many of whom had worked together before The Four Seasons, couldn’t wait to be reunited for a second chapter. “We all know each other better in real life, going into Season 2,” says Fey. “It’s been the goal from the jump: Let’s get a group of people that are nice, gentle, and talented, have a lovely time, and hopefully convey that onscreen.” Their closeness also allowed each actor to dive deeper into their roles: “Everyone has been working for so long and is so invested in their characters,” Fisher adds.
Keep reading to check in with your favorite friend group — and to learn who joins the roster for Season 2 of The Four Seasons, now streaming.
Kate struggles to show up for Jack when she, too, is lost in her grief over losing Nick. After all, Nick, Kate, and Jack had all been friends since college. “Kate spends the first half of the season trying to be Nick for Jack,” says Fey. “In the act of trying to make Jack feel better, she’s making things worse.”
Date Night, 30 Rock
Jack, who teaches history when he’s not on vacation with his friends, is working overtime to fill the void left by Nick. His tight grip on their traditions masks an underlying anger that bubbles to the surface throughout Season 2.
For Forte, the camaraderie built in Season 1 bolstered him to explore his character’s range. “In the second season, you’re just so comfortable with everybody. It’s just all the good stuff of seeing your old friends and getting to have fun and do work that you’re proud of.”
MacGruber, Nebraska, The Last Man on Earth
Danny has been living like he’s 35 for a while; his career as an architect and his “hotter friend group” whisk him around the globe on many a glamorous adventure. But Nick’s death sends him into an existential swirl, abruptly prompting him to grow up. “After reeling from last season’s events and their friend dying, Danny and Claude are trying to think what the next chapter of their lives is,” says Domingo. The stakes are ratcheted up, spurring Danny to impulsively reopen the question of whether he and Claude should have a kid.
Lincoln, Selma, Euphoria
Claude, a self-described stay-at-home husband, balances Danny’s commandeering personality with his own needs in Season 2. “In Season 2, I came back with a lot of more confidence — with myself, but also with the character,” says Calvani. “95% of the crew members came back. That says a lot and sets the tone that we are in this together again. Let’s go deeper. Let’s go even wilder. You feel even more free.”
High Tide, A Better Half
In Season 2, free-spirited Anne explores her new phase as a single woman — what she refers to as “Anne 2.0.” “There is no option but [for Anne] to make a change,” says Kenney-Silver. Meanwhile, Anne and Ginny navigate their unlikely dynamic in the wake of Nick’s death, which the actors were grateful for the chance to explore. “[Erika and I] were chomping at the bit to be connected on camera as much as we became off camera, for the characters and for us as people,” Kenney-Silver adds.
Reno 911!, The State
Pregnancy has not dulled Ginny’s avid love of fitness and yoga, which she turns to to cope with heartbreak over losing Nick, and the daunting challenge of being a single mom. “I lost the person that I love and the father of my child. Ginny gets thrown into adulthood and motherhood really quickly with no assistance or training wheels,” says Henningsen. “She stops listening to her gut and starts to question, ‘Can I do anything on my own anymore?’”
Hazbin Hotel, Harlem
Mark Brett meets the group at the Jersey Shore, just when Jack is missing Nick most. Wigfield found inspiration for the character close to home: “We were in Hawaii, and my eight-year-old daughter kept wanting to play and go on the water slide with me. I watched her make friends with an eight-year-old boy, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m free,’” says Wigfield.
In Mark, Jack finds someone with whom to play beach games and talk about the darker parts of being a middle-aged man.
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, Rescue Me, Six Feet Under
