even more thoughts on "The Four Seasons" from an off-duty therapist
Part Three: Fall
This is a segment, dialoguing on dialogue, where I briskly explore a piece of media–TV, movies or music—with first thoughts. Inspired by Emma Specter’s column for Vogue where she narrates her thoughts as she watches a movie, movie trailer, or gets a first look of an upcoming movie. This is my take on that, weaving my personal reflections together with any therapeutic concepts I stumble upon along the way. I am not teasing out every single concept—I’m off the clock. This is a creative, not clinical, endeavor.
One thing before we jump in, I show up very much as myself here. Myself first, and all my other labels are secondary. If a therapist speaking candidly feels like too much to your system, that is absolutely is OK and this may not be the best particular newsletter for you.
Welcome to The Four Seasons. No, not the hotel. The other one. The TV show topping the charts of Netflix. We’ve made it to Fall. You can find the newsletter on the Spring episode here and Summer here.
CAST
Kate played by Tina Fey
Jack played by Will Forte
Anne played by Kerri Kenney
Nick played by Steve Carell
Danny played by Colman Domingo
Claude played by Marco Calvani
Ginny played by Erika Henningsen
Lila played by Julia Lester
Beth played by Ashlyn Maddox
Episode 5: Family Weekend
The most basic thing about me may be how much I love fall. All I need is a one second shot of autumnal leaves and I’m a golden retriever, wagging my tail and drooling.
Oiiii. Kate and Jack are tense AF with each other.
Danny’s styling continues to deliver. The turtleneck, trench, and ball cap is so good.
photo credit: Netflix, Inc. Watching Beth say to her parents—Jack and Kate—she’s too busy to hang, it strikes me how different each phase of parenting is. I know this day will come for me—sooner than I realize—but at this point, this scenario is inconceivable.
I can feel the contempt for Jack emanating out of Kate’s pores. The exact source of it is less clear, but I see it…and I think Jack does, too.
The blueness of Ginny’s eyes is next level.
photo credit: Netflix, Inc. Jotting down Kate and Jack not having been apart for more than a long weekend. I would bet the house this will come back around.
Claude revealing his coolness with Danny before was just a front. He was desperately lonely while Danny was in Austin, but feels he has to pretend like he wasn’t. An evolution of the distancer-pursuer dynamic we talked about in the summer episodes. What is interesting to me here is the giving space he doesn’t feel like he can freely give is adjacent to the advice he’d likely be given by a couples therapist in this situation. “Stop pursuing so much. Hang back.”
I wouldn’t say this is “bad” advice. Maybe more like incomplete advice. Like any true therapist that has bought their own bullshit, I love advice in the form of a question. Rather than pretending to hang back, I would ask “If you could trust that space wouldn’t lead to abandonment, where could it feel nice to do less?”1 In Claude’s case, it could be hard to find an answer to this question. Space for him would mean scaling back his monitoring of Danny’s health and habits. I can imagine the catastrophizing part of him would argue he can’t pull back because that could lead to the ultimate abandonment: his partner’s death.
Jack’s idea that we should feel safe enough in relationships to be our worst selves made me laugh. It’s not WRONG, but it’s also not exactly right either. If you were to take Jack’s sentiment to the extreme, this is where we’d find abusive and entitled behavior. If I could take the liberty to edit that statement a bit, I’d land on something like, “We feel safe enough to share the parts of ourselves we’ve been told to hide.”
For Claude that could be, instead of following every instinct he has to smother Danny with care and protection—in an effort minimize the chances of abandonment through death—he names to Danny, “I have a part of me that is scared to lose you. It wants me to do whatever I can to keep you safe and healthy. It feels that this is their job. It doesn’t trust you will do it if I don’t nudge, nag and remind you.”
I love this reframing (super high on my own supply today) because this seems to be what Claude feels underneath it all: #1 scared —and—#2 he believes if he pulls back, Danny won’t pick up where he left off.
I can imagine a world in which many of you reading this may relate to this part of Claude—I know I do. A part that has a hard time trusting people will do what they need to do. In turn it becomes our job to fix, probe and prod. This can be a part born out of some level of parentification.2
Saying it that way also returns the responsibility to Danny. I can respect Danny’s agency to smoke a few cigarettes3 if he so pleases, even though he has a cardiac issue —and—at the same time, he has a responsibility to recognize this kind of behavior is going to understandably pull on Claude’s caretaker parts.
Claude isn’t just getting whipped up into a tizzy because he can—although he can and Danny knows this, he later jokes that Claude lives in his own opera. Is it possible Danny may be inviting the very smothering he detests? Now, this doesn’t mean he should do whatever Claude says, it’s his body and his health after all, but I would say he could afford to extend a little bit of understanding toward Claude’s worry when he engages in behaviors that put him at more risk.
Oeeeeoo. The tension between Kate and Jack is growing. In less than a few minutes she lobs a jab under her breath about him managing his own food intake and he whispers to himself, “Do you really see me?” I want to scream, SAY THESE THINGS TO EACH OTHER!!
Omg. Lila’s play. hahahahahah.
Anne’s face when it’s revealed she’s a wicked witch of the west type of character. She’s like, “Ummm?!! What is the subtext here?”
Nick! Nick! NICKKKKK. How you play this moment is crucial. This is a test.
and he failed… “trying real hard not to take the bait here.” It’s not bait, bro. It’s a bid for connection, for understanding. Granted it’s dripping in young adult type attempts at vulnerability and expression, it’s a bid nonetheless.
I love this moment between Nick and Anne after the play. Anne is feeling more freedom to let Nick know he’s blowing it with Lila. More space than when they were together to say what she feels. The line between coddling fragility and extending compassion to our partners can be blurry. I understand what she means,
butand, at the same time, it puzzles me that we do this. It’s like Kate and Jack’s non-conversation in the hotel room. On paper, it would be ideal if we could be more transparent, and yet, sometimes the longer we know someone, the more we muzzle ourselves. Our fear of rocking the boat taking precedence over all other needs. Forgetting that sometimes the boat just rocks, not because of what we do, but because there are waves in life. There are waves here. The boat is already rocking. Let it rock. “Say the thing.”She finishes this scene with a GREAT line. “Stop correcting how she said it and try to hear what she’s saying.”
Parenting in a nutshell right there.
Even though it feels like a band-aid on a bullet wound, I smiled when Kate ran outside to Jack after finding the records he picked out for her.
Ginny has more emotional intelligence in her finger tip than Nick has in his whole body. She understandably feels hurt by the play—fair—and she also gets how hard this must be for Lila. “Listen more than you talk.” What a novel idea for dear Nick.
I find this conversation between Kate and Jack—who are hanging on by a thread, btw—about their daughter’s generation giving up on marriage to be so condescending. Dude, look in the mirror. Why might that be?
I love Claude so much. “Why do you want to die?” he says between sobs. He kind of got to the heart of what I was talking about in #9.
The lumberjack: I’m here for the open part, not the marriage part. hahahahahaha.
Episode 6: Ultimate Frisbee
Gawwwwwd. The awkwardness between Kate and Jack. I had to cover my face. It’s one thing to be this uncomfortable with a stranger, but with someone you know well, there is nothing else like it. I mean, I’d just hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete and start over. Not really, but it’d be tempting.
Anne having to litigate this fight between Lila and Nick enrages me. Seems like it pisses her off, too. “Ginny is not a symbol. She’s a person. So thanks a lot to both of you for making me be the one to have to say that out loud. Motherhood.” And I don’t think she’s referring only to Lila here.
photo credit: NETFLIX Claude to Danny, “Everything I care about you tell me to calm down.” Tell ‘em!
This fight between Kate and Jack is rough, but in all the ways I’d want it to be. They’re finally saying it all. Kate’s resentful of all the caretaking she does for Jack while, as she says, “Everybody else gets the top-shelf-version of [his] personality.” Kate’s insisting Jack is jealous of Nick’s younger girlfriend. Jack shouts,” That is projection! […] You’re the one who is jealous! You want to hang out with anyone but me […] You are the one who wishes you could blow up your life and start over.”
Damn. I think he may have her number on that one.
Nick finally makes a good move and decides to have solo time with Lila. I can appreciate her desire to ask questions like, “Did you ever love mom?” She wants to understand how much of what she saw was real. A part of her needs to fill in the blanks—How did we get here?
I guffawed at Nick telling Lila he’s more complex than she’s making him out to be. Well, you’re not acting complex, Nick. You’re acting about as one-note as humanly possible. The only layered thing about you is your girlfriend’s depth.
The “I thought if I waited until you were in college to divorce, it’d be easier on you” trope. Can we retire this one? It’s not true. I have seen first-hand, both personally and professionally, how painful this can be to children who are just out there trying to start their own lives only to be blindsided by the dissolution of their parent’s marriage.
I can appreciate this is Nick’s version of trying—concluding with “You can be mad and I love you.” However if I were Lila, I’d be walking away from this conversation with an eye roll. He talked way more than he listened. He didn’t really take accountability for how much this hurt her. He told a story about how he saw his parents fighting as a kid, tried to intervene, then his dad hit him, which he immediately downplayed and landed the plane with “parents are just people.” ????!!!! Nick, go to therapy. The amount of emotional labor you expect from all the women around you—Anne, Lila, Ginny, sometimes Kate—is diabolical and likely related to your upbringing.
I hope we get more of Anne in the Winter episodes.
The Claude/Kate/Danny tension continues. Can’t say I didn’t call it in episode 1. Kate asserting Danny comes to her for emotional closeness and Claude for physical closeness is a million steps too far. Good for Danny on putting a stop to this. She’s on a tear tonight. I’m wondering if her relationship to drinking will be less a side story and more substantive in the finale.
This cutaway makes it seems like Jack and Anne kiss….
And, they did. Wow.
hahahaha Kate’s reaction is about what I’d expect.
As Danny runs to look into the scooter accident, he may be starting to get a sense of Claude’s panic about losing him. Claude bails him out of this quicker than my petty parts would allow me to. He holds Danny, choking on these words, “One day, we won’t be here anymore, and that is so fucking scary. Life is scary. It’s also beautiful. That’s why we have each other. So we can go through it together.” I feel like this is all Claude needed. Can you meet me here—in this place where we admit we are scared? God, I love him.
Now Anne is saying Nick has cheated throughout their marriage. The layers are coming out.
I agree, if you deal with enough bullshit in a day, 8:40 PM is indeed 4 AM.
Nick saying to Anne that she’s a good mom makes me nauseous. On the surface it’s a nice statement, but it feels like this is all he sees her as—maybe all he ever did. And frankly, after seeing what he thinks constitutes being a good father, I would take this “compliment” with a grain of salt. I could be projecting, but I think Anne knows she is a good mom—and I’d venture a guess she would have liked to been seen as more than that to her husband.
The screaming after Jack and Kate realize they need to go to therapy was pretty funny. This is the risk of getting up on the ol’ high horse. It just makes the fall all that much more humbling.
Next up our finale: Winter.
Coming up: Winter, of course :) As well as a newsletter reflecting on my two year soberversary from alcohol and my new addiction: my phone. Also, a personal essay that came pouring out of me the other day. Loosely, I’d say it’s about what people bring out in us.
Disclaiming. Therapy can be great. This ain’t therapy. You can find more info and my full disclaimer on my about page here. Abridged version: I’m a therapist, but not your therapist—even if you are a client of mine ~hi, dear one!~ this isn’t a session. I don’t think you could possibly confuse this newsletter with mental health treatment. Alas if that were to happen, let me say definitively, dialoguing is an entertainment and informational newsletter only, not a substitute for mental health treatment.
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Previous dialouging on dialogue segments:
31 thoughts while watching 'The Family Stone' from an off-duty therapist
96 Thoughts This Therapist Had While Listening to THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT for the First Time
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I’m not a couples therapist so listen to nothing I’m saying.
From Psychology Today, “Parentification is a role reversal in families in which the child acts as the parent in the family system. For instance, emotional parentification can take the form of a child mediating between family members, acting as a parent’s therapist, or being privy to their parents’ adult problems, such as a single parent's dating struggles or financial woes.”
This comes up later.
I’m enjoying your take on these episodes, Kaitlyn. I finished the show a couple of weeks ago, so I have a little distance from it. It’s fun to revisit it this way.
More great thoughts about the show! Love how you talk about what they could and should be saying to each other! And of course anything about their parts reacting to each other. I will be curious to hear your reaction to the technique Kate and Jack learn in couples therapy and deploy in the next episode, to me it's completely laughable but maybe not??