I lived in New York for four years while studying for my Ph.D. One thing that bothered me was the parochialism, like that New Yorker cover come to life ("View of the World from 9th Avenue," by Saul Steinberg). Literally everywhere else in the world was a cultural wasteland.
Everyone always asked "Where are you from?", assuming that the answer would be "Scarsdale" or "Astoria." I said Illinois: "Oh, Chicago! Now that's a second rate city! Did you eat hot dogs at (snicker, snicker).baseball games?"
"No, my town was on the other side of the state, on the Iowa border."
"Iowa! Ma and Pa Kettle chawing tobaccy! How old were you (snicker, snicker) when you first saw one of those newfangled auto-mobiles?"
So I started saying "Los Angeles": "How dreadfully superficial! All about mindless movies and puerile television! Do you watch (snicker, snicker) the A Team?"
The Four Seasons, on Netflix, gave me a similar vibe: parochial, elitist, condescending, so I never made it through an episode. But from what I can gather, it features three couples who leave the City (there's only one city) for a weekend getaway Upstate (there's only one state) four times a year. There they talk in Woody Allen witicisms and discuss romantic love.
The main question is stated in the first episode: Does each of us get a soulmate, someone chosen by the Universe to make our lives infinitely happy forever, or do we fall in love based on physical attraction and social compatibility, and then work to maintain the relationship? Each couple will face a crisis that illustrates some aspect of the question.
As the clickbait links say, the answer will surprise you. Or not. It's the theme of every romantic movie ever made.
But you may be surprised to find that one of the couples is gay.
Couple #1, Nick and Anne (Steve Carrell of The Office, left, Kerri Kenney): What if you no longer love your soulmate?
Nick shocks everyone when he announces that he no longer loves his wife. "Impossible! You're soulmates! You're destined to be together!"
When he dumps her anyway and starts dating the much younger Ginny ("The penis wants what the penis wants), his friends are all devastated. If a married couple can break up, how does anything have meaning?
His daughter, who attends an Ivy League College Upstate, maybe Vassar, writes a play in which her callous, unfeeling monster of a father announces: "I hate my daughter so much. What could I do to cause her the most pain? I know -- I'll leave my wife, thus destroying the family and making my daughter's life meaningless forever!"
The universe also disapproves of leaving your soulmate, and retaliates by killing Nick. This leads to the discomfort of having the ex-wife and the horrible trollope he destroyed her life for showing up at the funeral. Such a negative attitude toward divorce seems extremely retro.
Couple #2, Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo from Fear the Walking Dead, famous playwright Marco Calvani, left): What if your soulmate dies?
When Danny is diagnosed with heart disease, he leaves Claude to spare him the agony of seeing his decline and death, but Claude insists on getting back together: they're soulmates, in sickness and health. Someday one of them will die and leave the other alone, but the bereaved spouse will still find infinite happiness in the memory of their time together.
By the way, they have an open relationship, and have their "I'm leaving you so you won't feel pain" argument in the midst of a threesome with the Lumberjack (Jacob Buckenmyer).
Jacob Buckenmyer, seen here in Chippendales, is straight in real life.
More after the break.
Couple #3, Jack and Kate (Will Forte, right, Tina Fey): What if you no longer find infinite joy in all of your soulmate's interests?
You're supposed to be gazing into each other's eyes every moment of every day, right? So what happens when you find your soulmate's interests dull, or too risky? If you don't even like hanging out together?
I'm not sure. Couple #3 were mostly sounding-boards for their friends, with some bickering but no real crisis until the last episode, where Kate falls through the ice on the lake, and Jack rescues her. I guess she then decides that she likes spending time with him?
I just discovered that the tv series is based on a 1981 movie starring Alan Alda (California Suite, Same Time Next Year) and Carol Burnette as "growing apart" Jack and Kate. That explains the Woody Allen feel.
The "til death do us part" gay couple, Danny and Claude, were a heterosexual couple, Danny and Claudia (Jack Weston, Rita Moreno). That explains the Italian guy named Claude.
They previously appeared together in The Ritz (1975), with Jack as a gangster forced to spend the night in a gay bathhouse full of predatory chubby chasers like Treat Williams (above). Rita Moreno plays bathhouse singer Googie.
Nick (stage actor Len Cariou) still horrifies the group by "falling out of love" and leaving his soulmate Anne (Sandy Dennis) for a trollope, but he doesn't die. The big crisis instead is the trollope getting pregnant.
Left: I think this is a fake, to please the many fans clamoring for n*de pics of Len Cariou.
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And the cliche Vivaldi "Four Seasons" remains the score. Here's winter. You can fill in the other seasons for yourself.
Gavin Munn's Polar Plunge. Because, you know, it's winter.
The original movie had a great cast which made the material work have not seen this yet
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