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Fey has depicted teenhood (\u201cMean Girls\u201d), budding adulthood (\u201cUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt\u201d), established-and-working adulthood (\u201c30 Rock\u201d) and now the empty-nest era. Some of Fey\u2019s signatures, like social neurosis and a respect for sandwiches, are present here, though deployed less for jokes than for realism. Another common theme in her work is the confinement of her lead characters, how much they bristle against the constraints of their station and yearn for more agency. There\u2019s a through line of that in \u201cSeasons,\u201d too, but with less meaning.<\/p>\n
High school is high school, and if you want the perks of being one of the Plastics, you have to play their game. Kimmy endures years in a literal bunker. Liz Lemon has to work with Jack and Tracy because that\u2019s the only way she can make her show. Women have to follow all kinds of terrible rules at work, at home, at school, at large.<\/p>\n
While Kate feels boxed in, too \u2014 \u201cYou are the one who wishes you could blow up your life and start over,\u201d Jack says during a fight \u2014 it\u2019s less clear why. She has money, looks, a good sex life, a child at Vassar, a gigantic S.U.V. and enough free time to take four vacations in nine months. The worst thing she says about herself is that she has dry skin. If there\u2019s more to Kate \u2014 more tension, more anguish, more self-loathing, more fear, more ambition, more curiosity, more anything \u2014 we don\u2019t see it. Her dissatisfaction, however legitimate and probably common, is diffuse and nonspecific.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how most of the show is: legible but vague, relatable to many people but maybe not as many as it thinks. It\u2019s a show about spouses and best friends, the closest bonds and deepest relationships, but the show itself doesn\u2019t have any of that intimacy or intensity. It\u2019s a casual acquaintance \u2014 perfectly fine for an afternoon, but shallower and more disposable than the real deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n