Netflix’s ‘The Four Seasons’| An Ode To Friendships That Weather Every Season of Life

It has been 21 years since Friends (1994-2004) went off air. The curtains dropped on the ten-season long series with the core six splitting up, each headed toward new chapters of life. Ross and Rachel stayed in New York City. Chandler and Monica moved to the suburbs to raise their twins. Joey chased stardom in Los Angeles. Phoebe found a home in Mike. And just like that, a generation of millennials were told that growing up meant growing apart—that no matter how tightly bonded, adult life would eventually pry even the closest friendships loose.

But it’s 2025, and the Friends generation is now firmly planted in proper adulthood, heading towards middle age at sky high speed. And turns out we want and can keep our friends around forever (take that, cynical boomers!).

Contrary to the long-sold narrative, many of us have discovered that our friendships haven’t fallen apart; they’ve simply evolved. Our time zones may vary, conversations may be more sporadic, but like weeds that insist on growing through cracks in the concrete, our chosen families have continued to grow with us. And nowhere is that more beautifully portrayed than in Netflix’s new miniseries The Four Seasons (2025).

Created by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield, The Four Seasons is a sharp yet tender exploration of friendships in the age of grey hairs, dreaded divorces, blended families, and long-earned self-awareness. Adapted from the 1981 film by Alan Alda—who appears in a guest role—the series follows three couples who vacation together through four seasons on four different occasions. But unlike the original, these characters don’t feel old or jaded. They feel like us—provided we all acquire generational levels of wealth within the next two decades of our lives through some miracle.

Anne (played with raw vulnerability by Kerri Kenney-Silver) is a more prominent part of the group unlike in the original film, where she is more of a secondary blimp of a character who fades into the background quickly and silently. Watching her unravel piteously (and understandably) post-divorce, flail through an embarrassing attempt to flirt with a younger man, and then slowly stitch herself back together is one of the show’s quietest triumphs. There’s something heartbreakingly relatable in the way Anne tries to recalibrate who she is, alone, after years of being half of a “we.” When she decides her new (age appropriate) beau isn’t enough in the penultimate episode, it’s hard not to cheer.

Then there’s Colman Domingo’s Danny—navigating ageing, career fatigue, and intimacy within a long-term queer marriage with Marco Calvani’s Claude (who was Claudia in the original). Watching fears about mortality and purpose ripple through his character feels especially relatable—not least because Domingo makes mortal dread look so good but because it taps into something millennial audiences know too well. We may not look our ages as opposed to previous generations, but our health is catching up nonetheless.

Compared to the greying, beige-wearing boomers in the Reagan-era original, this ensemble is stylish, vigorous, and unapologetically vibrant even when they have to ice their inflamed joints after a friendly game of frisbee or clutch their heads in anguish after a drink too many the night before. Chalk it up to better skincare, more therapy, or the socio-economic privilege that allows these characters to vacation quarterly in idyllic locations, but this visual shift marks a broader cultural one—middle age no longer signals the end of possibility, just the start of a different kind of becoming.

In many ways, The Four Seasons joins a small but significant trend of shows centred on midlife friendships that don’t fade but deepen. In Shrinking (2023–ongoing), a widowed therapist, Jason Segel’s Jimmy, leans on his unconventional circle of friends and colleagues to crawl out of grief. In Somebody Somewhere (2022–2024), Bridget Everett’s Sam finds and saves herself through a new group of misfits in her Kansas hometown. These are not flashy narratives. There are no cliffhangers or big betrayals that propel the stories forward. The stakes here are internal, utopian even, as the show imagines our relationships in a world unburdened by scarcity or the grind for survival. In 2009, Courtney Cox had tried to capture this in Cougar Town with a brand-new set of friends, but it was too soon for the audience to understand the value of a show like that.

For most ageing millennials, the ultimate dream is no longer just marriage, kids, or a mortgage. It’s finding and keeping your tribe close by. We want what was taken from us: the promise of a community to hold us tight, lift us up, and show us the mirror when we need it the most. It’s the fantasy of growing old with people who know your ugliest cries and your most embarrassing wins. It's not about sprawling brunch tables every Sunday or endless group chats, but they help too. It is ultimately about knowing someone is still holding your history, even when life gets noisy. Some of us are lucky enough to have an odd cousin or aunt who genuinely cares for us too, but ultimately our life will lose meaning if we did not have our friends to witness this little life with us.

We were raised on television and parents who told us adulthood meant trading in friendships for nuclear families and career ladders. We watched Monica and Rachel’s apartment get emptied out, the orange couch at Central Perk made space for the next twenty-somethings and were told that was growing up. Growing up, I saw the adults around me unable to hold onto some of their most cherished friendships. The times were different. Staying in touch was never as easy perhaps. And so, here we stand, collectively trying to write a new script for our futures—one where friendships endure, not in spite of growing up, but because of it.

I think of my best friend from school. The ones I met in college. The colleagues I clung to for survival and then refused to let go. At every step of the way, we were warned that ultimately, we’d drift apart—when our busy schedules diverge, when one of us does better and envy gets in the way, when we get married, when babies arrive. But our friendships have danced a different tango. My closest friends are not a phase or dealers of seasonal comforts. They are the home I keep going back to when the light within threatens to dim, when I forget the very essence of my soul, when I need to pull away from the harshest edges. Together, we dream of tiny villages and growing old through the seasons.

 Debiparna Chakraborty is a film, TV, and culture critic dissecting media at the intersection of gender, politics, and power