Fans of The Four Seasons got a major surprise in Episode 6 of the show’s second season. After Nick dies in a car crash in Season 1’s finale, it seemed audiences had seen the last of Steve Carell alongside the series’ stellar ensemble — Tina Fey, Will Forte, Colman Domingo, Marco Calvani, and Kerri Kenney-Silver, who plays Nick’s longtime wife Anne.
But in a clever bit of narrative backtracking, the series travels to the COVID era for an entire flashback episode set while Nick is still alive — giving viewers the joy of seeing Carell reunite with the group while also revealing new layers of the relationships, tensions, and emotional fractures that have shaped the characters all along.
As viewers will remember from Season 1, Nick ends his marriage to Anne before diving into a new relationship with Ginny, played by Erika Henningsen. Season 2’s Thanksgiving-set sixth episode reveals that Nick strayed from his marriage long before he and Anne officially divorced. This shocking reveal casts his eventual split from Anne in an even sadder, more complicated light.
So what exactly do we learn from this special #TBT episode of Season 2? Read on to find out all the juicy details.
Yep — Steve Carell reprises his role as Nick, Anne’s lovable if deeply frustrating husband in the throes of a midlife crisis. But because Nick died at the end of Season 1, his return is limited to the season’s special flashback-focused sixth episode, which travels back to the COVID era while Nick is still alive.
Throughout the episode, Nick grows increasingly distracted by the constant buzz of notifications lighting up his phone — something the others in the house, especially Anne, can’t help but notice. But it’s not until Nick’s coworker Maureen (Blair Busbee) unexpectedly arrives at the house with a homemade pie — after an awkward run-in with Danny (Domingo) — that the truth behind his strange behavior begins to surface.
The episode reveals that, just before the COVID lockdown, Nick shared a flirtation — and eventually a kiss — with Maureen. In the weeks since, she continued to text him in hopes of rekindling the connection, messages Anne ultimately discovers after going through Nick’s phone. But amid the betrayal, there’s also a bittersweet revelation: Nick told Maureen to stop contacting him because, despite everything, he loved his wife.
Yes. After Nick confesses the flirtation and kiss with Maureen to Anne — hoping to reassure her by insisting that things never went further — Anne counters with the memory of another woman from a golf tournament, a brunette with “the nails,” as she pointedly recalls. When Nick sheepishly admits to that encounter, too, the conversation detonates into a full-blown confrontation, sending Anne storming out of the house after she delivers one of the show’s most heartbreaking lines, “God, you’re a douchebag. You don’t think I’m going to leave you, because you think I don’t know how to live without you. And that is why this is so fucking mean.”
Anne ultimately walks back into the house, which makes her Season 2 arc all the more complex. “What seemed interesting was revealing that there was a time when Anne could have left. Something a lot of people find themselves thinking is, ‘If I had only done this at this age …’” says showrunner Tracey Wigfield. “Anne is stuck on the idea that if only she’d left him earlier, things would be different, instead of embracing feeling alone and thinking, ‘What if I did something right now?’”
The COVID lockdown provides a fascinating backdrop for the episode’s dramatic twists and turns — not to mention the parade of terrible DIY haircuts. But the pandemic setting is more than just flavorful period detail; it’s deeply woven into the plot itself. It’s while Anne is using Nick’s phone as a timer for her COVID test that she stumbles upon the fateful texts between him and Maureen.
More importantly, though, the lockdown pod becomes the perfect pressure cooker for this group of friends. Forced into close quarters with nowhere to escape, the characters reveal new sides of themselves — exposing long-simmering resentments, vulnerabilities, and desires that might otherwise have stayed buried, including a bubbling anger that explodes into a fight between Jack and Nick. These dynamics are amplified in the wake of Nick’s death, and they come to a head in the previous episode, Episode 5. The chapter before the flashback finds the ensemble gathered for Thanksgiving, though they’re more fractured than ever.
Old resentments simmer beneath forced pleasantries, grief hangs over every interaction, and the group struggles to bridge the emotional distance that’s grown between them since losing Nick. By the end of the night, long-buried tensions finally erupt, setting the stage for the emotionally revealing flashback that follows. “We thought it would be nice to go back to when they were at their closest, to see who was Nick to the group,” says Fey, who also serves as co-creator and showrunner. “Right as they’re all missing his presence the most, we wanted to go back and see what that was.”
Simple: they missed him. “When you lose someone, how the group as a whole changes is a big part of the storytelling,” says showrunner Lang Fisher. “We missed Steve very much because we love him. So we did a flashback episode, because we wanted to see him again.”
Carell was happy to be back with the whole crew. “It’s so much fun, it’s been great. I’m so thankful that they invited me back for another stint,” he says. “They’re the nicest group. Funny, talented — I’m very, very happy.”
Truth be told, Fey always had it in mind that Carell might be making a comeback. “It was so nice to find a way to have Steve back because he is an infinite delight and wonderful presence on set and onscreen,” she says. “Last year, I was like, ‘Why am I killing him?’ We always try to plant the seed that you can come back because Steve was also sad to leave. We went into writing Season 2 knowing we wanted to try to do it for at least one episode. God bless him, he was willing to do it as well.”
Alan Alda — the television legend who directed and starred in the 1981 film that The Four Seasons is based on — returns for a delightfully pandemic-era cameo in Episode 6. Reprising his role from Season 1 as Don, Anne’s father, Alda briefly appears via Zoom during the friend group’s chaotic DIY talent show, a fittingly of-the-moment entrance for the lockdown-set episode. Behind the scenes, Alda also continues to serve as a producer on the show’s second season. “We’ve worked hard not to stray from the tone that Alan set with the original movie that we all responded to,” says Fey. “Alan’s always been so supportive of us doing this. We thank him infinitely for continuing to show up.”
Purchased in a fit of lockdown loneliness, Claude and Danny determine they aren’t the best dog parents, and Patrizia is eventually adopted by neighbors of Nick and Anne. But their conflict over the slender pup foreshadows the question they wrestle with in Season 2: whether or not they want to have a baby.
The Four Seasons Season 2 is now streaming.
