Colman’s comedy with bonus Tina Fey thoughts

Tina Fey has a relatively successful relationship with Netflix, with breakout hit Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and the more modestly received Wine Country, and now she is returning to the streamer with The Four Seasons, a miniseries remake of the 1981 film of the same name written and directed by Alan Alda. The remake comes from producers Tina Fey, Tracey Wigfield (creator of Good News), and Lang Fisher (co-creator of Never Have I Ever), and it stars Fey, Steve Carrell, Colman Domingo, Erika Henningsen, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Will Forte, and Marco Calvani. 

The trailer dropped yesterday, and while they arguably won’t top Alda’s film, which is regarded as a classic, it does look good. The gist is that three couples go on four vacations together over the course of four seasons (yes, Vivaldi is referenced), with the couples going through various life changes over the course of their vacations. One big update here is the inclusion of a gay couple, in the film it’s three straight couples. That means that Colman Domingo, best known for serious dramatic roles, gets to actually have some fun on screen. Colman Domingo is in a comedy! Yes! Finally! 

Between Colman starring in a comedy and Lily Gladstone appearing in The Wedding Banquet, the “let dramatic actors have fun” agenda is winning. (Now, if we could just get Jon Bernthal in a rom-com…) Also, I love Kerri Kenney-Silver. She is severely underappreciated as a comedic actress, and I love to see a Reno 911! alum thriving. Speaking of Colman Domingo, though, he is directing an episode of The Four Seasons. Neat! This is like when I discovered Noah Wylie wrote a couple episodes of The Pitt.

Speaking of Tina Fey, though, she made headlines this week for criticizing rich people with side hustles on Amy Poehler’s new podcast, Good Hang (you can listen to/see it here). You mean like celebrities with podcasts? Tina does qualify that by “rich” she means “like $200 million”, but it’s not clear what she means by “side hustle”. I assume she doesn’t mean doing commercials, because Tina does commercials. She also qualifies Poehler’s podcast as work. I think she’s talking about the kind of brand deals where rich people front like, perfumes and beauty/skincare/wellness products without actually doing any of the ideating or developing of those products, they just slap their name on the product and reap the benefits.

I don’t know if this really about Gen X anti-sellout culture vs younger generations’ hustle culture, though, because the argument can be made that a person worth hundreds of millions of dollars doesn’t NEED their own liquor brand. On the other hand, you can argue that person got so rich because they do have their own liquor brand (see also: George Clooney, Ryan Reynolds).

 They don’t really dig into it, but I wish they had, because I think the real issue isn’t selling out or hustling or having a branded product line or whatever, it’s when rich people occupy spaces where regular people are just trying to make a living. (And we’re back to podcasts!) If regular people are trying to make a living and rich people hijack the space to pad their eighth savings account, THEN I have a problem, because they’re making it harder for the regular person to maintain their toehold. Basically, don’t suck up resources a regular person could be using just to get by.