[Season 1 spoilers ahead]
When Tina Fey and Tracey Wigfield, cocreators of The Four Seasons, brainstormed where to send their cast of vacationing couples next, they decided on a childhood favorite: the Jersey Shore.
Fey, the comedy legend from Upper Darby, grew up going to Wildwood while her fellow 30 Rock writer Wigfield, who was raised in Wayne, N.J., had fond memories of visiting Ocean Grove.
“One of the things we always want to remind ourselves, and the audience is, like, this show is not White Lotus — these are pretty regular people, so not every one of these trips is spectacular. Where do people really go?” said Fey. “Tracey and I both love the Jersey Shore so much that we decided to set one season in a sort of unnamed Jersey Shore town … we just thought the boardwalk and rides would be such a colorful, fantastic background.”
Adapted from Alan Alda’s 1981 film of the same name, the series follows a group of friends who travel together four times a year. The show’s second season, which premieres May 28 on Netflix, extends the initial story, picking up after one character died suddenly and his girlfriend — the woman he left his wife for — announced she was pregnant.
Now the friends are grappling with their grief as they (somewhat awkwardly) welcome the young girlfriend into their circle and face challenges in their own relationships.
Mean Girls writer Fey plays Kate alongside her previous Saturday Night Live costar Will Forte, who plays her husband, Jack. West Philly native Colman Domingo takes the role of Danny, Kate’s friend from college, who’s married to Claude (Marco Calvani). The Office boss Steve Carell played Nick in season one, the philandering husband to Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver) who was dating Ginny (Erika Henningsen) before his death.
For the two episodes at the beach, titled “Down the Shore” and “On the Boardwalk,” the cast shot in Ocean Grove and Jenkinson’s Boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach last October. Wigfield wrote and directed the latter.
Several montages spotlight the ocean and boardwalk — viewers will spot Sonny’s and Rickey’s Arcade, Martell’s Lobster House, and other familiar favorites in the background — as well as the beauty of the local Victorian architecture.
In the show, the group stays in a green home on Ocean Pathway, right down the street from Ocean Grove’s landmark venue, the Great Auditorium. (Just like a typical Shore rental, the house came with complicated checkout instructions about washing the sheets.)
Sing Sing actor and newly minted Temple honorary doctorate Domingo, who often visited Margate and Cape May with friends as a teen, said the episodes were “a bit of a love letter” to the Shore.
“The Jersey Shore location felt very personal for us, because I feel like we grew up there and it brings up [memories],” said Domingo. “There’s a scene where we’re riding bikes down the road, one of my favorite scenes … you can see how [the characters] were when they were kids, it was very freeing and open. Those things, I think, we long for now. I can’t remember the last time I had a great summer at the beach.”
One night, the whole group goes out on the boardwalk, which Anne describes as “pretty dirtbaggy after dark.” Ginny brings along the newborn, Eugene, who earns the (very Jersey) nickname Gino. She asks if people might judge her for walking around with the baby and a beer in hand.
“On the Jersey Shore boardwalk?” Danny asks rhetorically, before cackling.
Then they hit the games and rides, everything from bumper cars to the water gun clown game to the tune of Bobby Rydell’s “Wildwood Days.” Things get messy on the Tilt-a-Whirl when Danny and Claude get into a shouting argument with a very high Kate in the middle; afterwards, she has to find the trash can.
“When we shot on the boardwalk, it was a dream come true. They gave us a little, like, credit card. Because it was closed, it was nighttime, they were like, ‘You can just play everything as much as you want,’” said Fey, whose favorite boardwalk game is skee-ball. “All of us went bananas.”
Fey and Domingo made sure to enjoy classic treats while they were in town, too, including salt water taffy, frozen custard (Fey prefers vanilla), and water ice (Domingo likes cherry). But Fey added that she’s not the biggest fan of water ice after a working a gig behind the counter at the Lansdowne Swim Club as a teen.
“I used to scoop water ice when I was 14, 15, at my job, and so much stuff used to fall into it, like change, hair ties,” she said, laughing. “I can’t eat water ice anymore, because I saw too much gross stuff fall into it. We’d just pick it out and keep scooping.”
The two actors didn’t know each other before working together on The Four Seasons, but they have since bonded over their Philly-area ties, with their friendship mirroring some of the closeness that their characters Kate and Danny share.
Like Domingo, Danny is from Philadelphia, and there’s even a Wawa joke in the script.
“I feel like you can see it on screen, because it’s actually what has happened personally for us as well, as we got to know each other and each other’s families, each other’s hearts,” said Domingo. “It’s a beautiful progression when that can happen, but it feels like we have that because we really are from the same area.”
“We grew up so geographically close together. I was like on the very edge of the last street in Upper Darby, and across the street was Cobbs Creek Park,” said Fey.
Domingo lived on the other side of the park.
“Believe it or not, we’re the same age,” Fey quipped. “I like to believe that we stood in line outside of that freezing trailer to see Santa Claus on 59th Street.”
“Exactly! I think we probably met like we were both, like, nine, whether we knew it or not,” Domingo added.
As for their brief and rather chilly time on the Shore, they loved eating at Asbury Park’s French restaurant Pascal & Sabine and appreciated the local residents who eagerly snapped photos of the cast while they were filming.
“The communities were so lovely. They were really excited when we were there, and really supportive,” said Domingo. “It’s just really sweet, because no one really thinks about New Jersey at times. You know what I mean? It was just really special … it felt like there was a lot of love.”
Fey said she hopes the show makes audiences feel like they’re hanging out with friends.
“Hopefully we did the Jersey Shore proud,” she said.
‘The Four Seasons’ premieres its second season on May 28 on Netflix.
