Is The Four Seasons Based on a True Story?

Created by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield, Netflix’s ‘The Four Seasons’ tells the story of three married couples whose lives are thrown out of orbit when one of them breaks up after two decades of being together. Subsequently, the group must navigate a host of relationship issues, friendship, marriage, and parenthood amidst a catalog of adventures together on their quarterly weekend getaways. Over the four seasons of a year, the romantic comedy series explores each character’s inner and outer lives as they try their best to understand life’s vagaries while also enjoying one another’s company. To that end, it blends the light-heartedness of a family drama with moments of sobriety that pose challenging questions about real-life subjects.

The Four Seasons Reimagines a Classic Romantic Comedy Movie

Although ‘The Four Seasons’ is a work of fiction, it is adapted from Alan Alda’s eponymous 1981 romantic comedy movie. The series is written by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, Tracey Wigfield, Lisa Muse Bryant, Vali Chandrasekaran, Dylan Morgan, John Riggi, Josh Siegel, and Matt Whitaker, centering on the exploits of three married couples across spring, summer, fall, and winter, similar to its source material. However, the show reinvents the original as a heartfelt comedy about the merits of friendship and love through a group of tight-knit friends who face the daily struggles of adulthood and romance. As the characters enter their mid-life phase, they must come to terms with their desire for a more meaningful relationship with their respective partners, sparking a journey of self-reflection and confronting personal shortcomings.

In an interview with Netflix Tudum, Wigfield said, “We kept saying we wanted it (‘The Four Seasons’) to be something that felt grounded, and a story about friends, and about marriage.” An emphasis is placed on rehashing old romantic cliches in a new light, such as the inclusion of a younger girlfriend in Nick’s life, Ginny, after his breakup with Anne. While there is an expectation that their bond blows up, the show highlights the complexities of Ginny and how she is just as multi-faceted as the other characters. Erika Henningsen, who plays Ginny, chimed in on the matter by stating that her character does not “feel like a rebound or something that is going to quickly fade into the ether of both of their lives.” She found this notion refreshing and wanted to explore the generational difference in her relationship with Nick.

The creative team went even further by rejigging the material from the original movie for their remake. One of the big changes in that respect was Danny and Claude, a same-sex couple who are based on a male-female couple from the 1981 film. Their presence brings a modern and updated feel to the cozy world created in Alda’s directorial and reimagined in the show. These small touches add more meaningful layers to the drama while also setting up a familiar premise. Therefore, the narrative mainly concentrates on the peculiarities and eccentricities of each individual and how being in a relationship takes work from both sides. As such, every element of the story is designed to feel relatable, such as character vulnerabilities, problems with miscommunication, misunderstanding, keeping secrets from a partner, and making mistakes on a constant basis.

The Four Seasons Shines a Light on Complex Relationship Problems

While a large chunk of the series is devoted to laughs and the group’s misadventures, ‘The Four Seasons’ also tackles some difficult topics surrounding romantic love and friendship, such as aging, infidelity, divorce, and maintaining long-term relationships. A heavy focus of the series is on dealing with the struggles of life and trying to make sense of everything amidst a messy and unedifying time. Although one side may be overly eager to be intimate and spend time with their counterpart, their partner might be seeking space and their need for individuality. It creates this push-and-pull dynamic throughout, exemplified constantly in the issues engulfing the three couples. Each person wanting something different leads to a clash of ideals, even though they both may be going through the same thing.

“It’s so easy, when you have known someone for so long — whether that’s your spouse or your best friend — to take that relationship for granted and say, Well, it’s there. It’s always there, and there’s nothing new and exciting about it,” Tracey Wigfield said in the same interview. The show illustrates the difference between romantic love and platonic bonds and how they are both vital in the functioning of an individual’s life. They both serve a purpose and cover an emotional need, even though an individual spends most of their time with their romantic partner. However, the group dynamic depicted in the series is a reminder of having a family outside one’s immediate surroundings, allowing a person to detach and decompress when needed.

Wigfield stated that the main intention of the series is to “drive home this little perspective shift — that if you just looked at your husband or your best friend in a certain light, it’s like, oh, this is the most precious thing in my life, and something that you should be grasping on to with both hands.” Our main characters go through a boatload of changes and development as the narrative progresses, showcasing how the ability to evolve is never lost, even at a later stage in one’s life. To that end, the work needed to keep improving is never-ending and worth diving into because of the benefits it brings to the people around us. Although the couples in the show may be fictional, they embody the real-life values of relationships and the difficulties that arise when trying to preserve romantic love amidst life’s complex challenges.