The decades-long friendship between three married couples is tested when one divorces, complicating their tradition of quarterly weekend getaways.
This one caught me off guard.
Sometimes my buds will turn something on when I’m about to get up and wander off to my own home (da basement), usually something they know I’m not gonna be into, and then I got caught up in the show real fast.
So.
It’s a dramady! An unsatisfied middle-aged Nick divorces Anne when he finds he feels like his life has stagnated, and it throws everyone else into disarray. Danny and Claude struggle to communicate their needs out of fear that the other would react poorly. Kate and Jack, already in a stagnant but mildly satisfied rut in their relationship, look on in veiled superiority over the others while not noticing the signs of their own deep-seated issues.
Also, it’s funny, and I love Danny and Claude. Claude mama-birds over Danny, smothering him, but I feel like he tries his hardest to make his husband comfortable and happy. Everyone feels odd about him at first, and it feels awkward over time, but he eventually slips in naturally with everyone else. The real struggle is with Danny’s inability to communicate his feelings about being cared for to the extent that Claude does. Meanwhile, I’m like, oh my god, can I get a Claude? He’s so caring and fun. Silly. He feels a lot louder than everyone else and I think that’s why everyone else is uncomfortable around him: he simply does, he does things passionately, openly, and he makes his feelings known.
Kate and Jack always looks on at others without expressing their feelings about each other. All they do is complain and criticize, bumbling in their treatment of one another, existing in a sort of haze where Kate’s underlying dissatisfaction with their marriage comes out in sharp taunts while Jack feels like he is nothing but a bother, living in the shadow of his superior and capable wife. She feels like she needs to handle everything and Jack can’t be trusted to handle anything because he’s too soft and emotional, leaving her to bad guy her way into getting the ideal outcome. It’s clear that their dynamic is on the rocks from episode one, but they don’t really properly come to terms with that fact until the end of the Fall arc, and even when Winter comes, the pair are struggling until a literal life or death situation hits them.
Then we get to Nick, Anne, and Ginny. Nick leaves Anne because he feels stagnant, as I mentioned: she lives in satisfaction with her life, happy in the world that they built together. Nick wants excitement, movement, freshness… and he feels like the effort he puts in to bring excitement to his wife just ends with dropping back into the rut. So… he leaves her.
He ends up with a woman about 20 years his junior, Ginny, and this poor girl tries so hard to fit in with his friends. She tries so hard and everyone is so put off by the generation and value gap that they won’t stop treating her like shit. Nick desperately tries to bridge the gap between her and his friends, but it simply… doesn’t really work. It starts driving a wedge between the old and new, one that doesn’t close until the final episode.
Anne, meanwhile, is forced to live without the anchor she had. The comfort of her life is disrupted by Nick’s decision, so she has no choice but to try to live the way that he wanted her to. She slowly begins to live more vibrantly while mourning her old life, trying to find ways to express the anger and bitterness of it all. Her softness becomes sharp and yet she finds herself being a mediator still, still living in orbit of Nick. Until the final episode.
Anyway, it’s funny, eliciting laughs from me and my roomies enough and then the proper emotional reactions. Shockingly, no tears?
