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    ‘The Four Seasons’ Review: Tepid Trouble in Middle-Aged Paradise

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    In this Netflix series created by Tina Fey, among others, old friends contend with the fallout from a surprising breakup.“The Four Seasons” follows three couples on four vacations, two episodes per trip. Everyone is thinking about his or her middle-aged ennui and the routines — ruts? — of marriage, what companionship and friendship and sex look like in this chapter and the next.The show is based on a 1981 movie with the same premise, written and directed by Alan Alda, who also starred. (He has a brief cameo here.) This Netflix version was created by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield, with Fey and Will Forte as Kate and Jack, the roles played originally by Carol Burnett and Alda. Their friend group is filled out by Steve Carell, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani, and the series’s plot is similar but not identical to that of the movie. The biggest change is that the prickly, talky humor and depth have been sanded down into mild, featherweight Netflix chow.“The Four Seasons,” which arrived on Thursday, is pleasant enough, but it never shakes the fact that most people would rather listen to the cast than the characters. Such talent; such humor; such icons! Anyway, here’s a show where all of those lights are under a bushel basket.In the first outing, everyone is at a lake house for the 25th wedding anniversary of Anne and Nick (Kenney-Silver and Carell). After a night of toasting one another and congratulating themselves on finding their soul mates, Nick shocks the guys by telling them that he plans to leave Anne. He isn’t happy, and she’s too stagnant.Every marriage goes through phases when the spouses feel more like roommates than romantic partners, Jack says.“I wish we were roommates,” Nick says. “Roommates hang out together. There’s porn about roommates. We’re like co-workers at a nuclear facility: We sit in the same room all night monitoring different screens.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Bodkin’ Review: Crime in a Small Town? Send in the Podcasters

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      This Netflix series is about a true-crime podcast but plays more like a mopey murder show.There are worse shows to imitate than “Only Murders in the Building,” and perhaps “Bodkin,” premiering Thursday on Netflix, would be better if it had tried. It too is about the creation of a true-crime podcast, set in an enclave where quirky conflicts simmer for decades. It too pokes fun at the inanity of some podcasts, and it tries to weave a comedic pep into its pathos.But “Bodkin,” created by Jez Scharf and executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, among others, takes more inspiration from mopey foreign murder shows. It has that common pervasive dampness along with plenty of clannish townspeople who resent these nosy Nellies poking around where they have no business. None! [Cue the jangling of the bells hung above the doorway in a quaint shop.]Yes, there is a spooky local festival, and yes, the town’s top pastime is keeping dark secrets. No one asks direct questions, nor can anyone speak for long without drifting into a dreamy parable. The show is set in the present day, but the surroundings feel ancient.Our town here is Bodkin, a (fictional) Irish village where years ago, during the annual celebration of Samhain (a Gaelic proto-Halloween), three people disappeared. Now our podcasters are on the case: Gilbert (Will Forte), a mostly cheery American with some successful podcasts under his belt; Dove (Siobhan Cullen), a Dublin-raised, London-based reporter who perceives this assignment as a banishment; and Emmy (Robyn Cara), the eager research assistant who tolerates their shabby treatment. Gilbert is vaguely dopey but ingratiating. Dove is so sour she could pickle a sociopath. To the show’s credit, at least they do not hook up with each other.Dove says that true-crime stories aren’t real journalism, and while we’re led to believe she is an ace reporter, she seems unfamiliar with one of the core aspects of news gathering: earning the trust of potential sources. She is surly and rude to nearly everyone she meets. She breaks into a library after hours just because she’s impatient. Back in London, she had promised to protect a whistle-blower’s identity, but his name leaked somehow, and he later killed himself. This arc never fully meshes with the rest of the show, and it plays out mostly in terse phone calls. But everything with Dove is so one-note, it’s hard to see the specifics of her disrespect. Similarly, Gilbert’s money trouble and failing marriage — more phone calls — feel like tacked-on inventions rather than enriching character depth.Will there ever be a show in which a female journalist doesn’t sleep with a source or subject? The search continues. Emmy falls for the local tech wunderkind and Dove for the sharp funeral director. Gilbert too becomes awfully enmeshed, befriending Seamus (David Wilmot), a local fisherman with a, yes, fishy past. Forte and Wilmot have the most interesting chemistry in the show: Gilbert is eager for good sound bites and Seamus loves to pontificate, but their deeper purposes are at odds. Neither can fully mask his prickly distrust, but both are desperate for the connection anyway. It’s a dangerous, fruitful combo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On ‘S.N.L.,’ Donald Trump Tries His Hand at Wordle

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      Colin Jost and Pete Davidson provided an update on their purchase of a retired Staten Island Ferry boat, in this episode hosted by Will Forte.It’s the viral phenomenon that gets picked apart on social media, where you throw out random words and see what gets a response — but first, the “Saturday Night Live” opening sketch.This weekend’s broadcast, hosted by the “S.N.L.” alumnus Will Forte and featuring the musical guest Måneskin, began with a parody of the Fox News program “The Ingraham Angle,” with Kate McKinnon as its host, Laura Ingraham.She lamented the first year of the Biden administration, which she said had been a disaster, citing rising inflation, high gas prices and the green M&M’s getting canceled. She added that the nation “is still mourning from the sudden loss of America’s dad, Robert Durst.”McKinnon introduced her first guest, Senator Ted Cruz, played by Aidy Bryant. Bryant explained that her beard was “like Jan. 6: shocking at first, but sadly it’s been normalized.”Bryant’s Cruz went on to deliver a warning to her constituents in Texas: “February’s going to be a cold one, so you might want to book your vacay to Cancún now,” she said. “Live más, everybody.”After offering shout-outs to her remaining sponsors (including Covid Negs, “the Covid test that’s guaranteed to be negative, even if you have it”), McKinnon brought out Pete Davidson as Novak Djokovic, the unvaccinated tennis star who was recently deported from Australia.“People love to tear you off your pedestal, just because you’re really rich or you’re the best at tennis or you go to a charity event with 200 kids even though you’re dripping with Covid,” Davidson said.Ego Nwodim appeared as the conservative commentator Candace Owens (“It’s my greatest honor to continue to fight for African Americans,” she said, “no matter how many times they ask me to stop”), followed by James Austin Johnson in his recurring role as former president Donald J. Trump.“I’m back just like ‘Tiger King 2,’” Johnson said. “You had fun the first time, but now you’re like, how are more people from this not in jail yet?”This time, his Trump-style free associations were accompanied by a round of Wordle, the popular online word game (as well as a boast that he would beat Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida if he opposed him for the presidential nomination). After rambling about the booster shot, John Mayer, Hilary Duff and Jason Momoa, Johnson landed at the correct Wordle answer which turned out to be — what else? — Trump.Opening monologue of the weekForte, who was a “Saturday Night Live” cast member from 2002 to 2010, made his first appearance as a host this weekend. And to hear him tell it, he was not at all bitter that he finally got to do it after hosting duties had previously been handled by his fellow alums Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and Fred Armisen. (Then Wiig again, then Hader again, as well as Jason Sudeikis, Seth Meyers and John Mulaney four times.)But Forte didn’t exactly welcome an onstage appearance from Wiig. (“I flew in for this,” she explained as he shooed her away. “Oh, great, so you know where the airport is,” he replied.) Nor was he pleased to see next week’s host, Willem Dafoe, in the house when the “S.N.L.” boss Lorne Michaels claimed that Forte’s booking had been a mistake: “I texted Willem and, you know, autocorrect,” Michaels said.MacGruber of the weekC’mon, you didn’t think you would get a Forte-hosted episode without a return appearance (or three) from MacGruber, the hapless MacGyver wannabe he originated on “S.N.L.”?It’s been more than a decade since Forte last played MacGruber in an “S.N.L.” sketch (though the character went on to have his own movie and a streaming TV series). But rest assured that MacGruber is still an overconfident blowhard who finds himself trapped in rooms with ticking time bombs that spell his imminent demise.Oh, and now he’s an unrepentant conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer. Did we mention he was joined by Wiig and Ryan Phillippe, and he also believes in QAnon?Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on President Biden’s recent news conference and the Senate’s defeat of a voting-rights bill.Jost began:President Biden marked the end of his first year in office with a two-hour press conference. Because that’s how long it took to list everything that’s gone wrong. It was actually the longest presidential press conference in history. But as I’ve been told many times before, just because you went for a long time doesn’t mean you did a good job.Che continued:Senate Republicans lined up to shake Kyrsten Sinema’s hand after she voted against changing the filibuster to pass voting rights. Ah, the U.S. Senate. Keeping Black folks down with a quiet handshake since 1787. Senator Bernie Sanders suggested that he supports replacing fellow Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Damn, Bernie, stab your own co-workers in the back? That’s unforgivable. I would never suggest Colin should be fired, no matter how much better I think Bowen would be. [The screen shows an image of Che anchoring Weekend Update with his “S.N.L.” co-star Bowen Yang]Most important news development of the weekWhat started as a not-so-innocent visit to the Weekend Update desk by Alex Moffat as his recurring character Guy Who Just Bought a Boat turned into a timely opportunity to roast Jost about this week’s news that he and Davidson were among the investors who won an auction for a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry boat.Joining Jost and Moffat at the desk, Davidson declared in a deeply chagrined tone, “We bought a ferry — the windowless van of the sea.”Jost replied: “Yes, it’s very exciting. We thought the whole thing through.”To which Davidson added, in disbelief: “Even the mayor tweeted about it. Which is how I found out we have a new mayor? What happened to Bloomberg?” More