Catastrophe Season 4

[RuggerHug]

Starts tonight, anyone else ridiculously excited about it? Just finishing up rewatching to the end of season 3 now and can't wait.

That end was too ambiguous for me. I would have preferred a plain old raucously funny final scene rather than being left wondering if they're going to drown and the kids are going to bake in the car.

It does show them swimming back to shore so I'll pretend they made it.

But yes, she is most annoying but her dress was gorgeous.

I've such mixed feelings about this series. Was clever, good lines but I felt it lost a lot of the warmth of previous series, always there beneath the crisis and relationship issues.

Yeah, Sharon was painful a lot in this series but Rob seemed a bit gormless too

(I panicked watching the final minutes but decided they were ok in the end and made it back to shore ok. Hated seeing them leave the kids like that tho 😰)

Yeah, I don't think for a second that Rob & Sharon (as the writers) really intended us to think they'd drowned, its all too horrible. But I suspect the ending came off as slightly more ambiguous than they were going for.

I felt so disappointed last night. I hated the episode from start to finish and I’ve loved this programme from the start. I hated Robs rant to Sharon, it was awful. If my DH spoke to me like that even in grief I’m not sure I could move past that.
The yellow dad? The weird way in which they happened to turn up in America and the mum died that day?
Then the ending. It just made me seriously anxious. Who leaves their kids in a hot car, then the ‘rip current’ sign and the end shot - they were so far out and the kids were alone in the car. Awful. Like a pp has said, I wonder if they realised how dark the ending has been interpreted by some.
I’m chooosing to believe they made it back to shore but I feel a bit cheated out of a proper ending.

I think series 4 as a whole was very weak but last night’s final episode was really lame. I think seasons 1 & 2 were hilarious, slightly less so with season 3 but then with season 4, I didn’t find it funny at all.

But still worth watching For Sharon Horgan’s clothes

And where is the beach supposed to be? I thought they were supposed to be in Boston?

I think they'd been planning to spend time at the beach somewhere else after visiting Rob's mother in Boston.

The way Rob spoke to Sharon was appalling. I don't think my marriage would survive that.

Yes I know what you mean

Let's all agree they both died and forget about this awful last series, they should have just left it when Sharon got off with that student in the last series, much better ending.

Leaving the kids in the hot car & fucking off into the not safe for swimming sea, who does that?!!

I liked it! I thought the ending with them both swimming against the tide together was a great metaphor for the whole programme and found it positive rather than negative.

I think if they just hadn't shown the 'Dangerous riptides, no swimming' sign, it would have worked a lot better. We could have had Rob watching Sharon swim away and hesitating, then stripping off and following her into the water, telling her that it was just because he didn't like the idea of her swimming alone. But the sign was just too 'Opening scenes of Casualty circa 1988' for my comfort, it was laden with doom and really changed the tone of the scene from bittersweet to nihilistic.

I'm choosing to believe a) the car windows are open so the kids won't get too hot and b) they get out of the water safely. Though right at the end they seem to be swimming but not getting any closer to shore. But wouldn't the sign have been clearer/more in focus/more signposted if they were supposed to drown?

I watched it and liked it. The letter was great and very Carrie Fisher, thought it was a lovely tribute.
I though they were grand out in the water, he just went out to make sure she was safe. He was totally horrible to her in that rant but she was being incredibly selfish too. They’re imperfect people,
Struggling through life. I thought that was the point of the show.

I think the ending was good. He went out to bring her back to shore. We saw them swimming back. He said something like, “I didn’t want to see you floundering out here alone”. He went to save her and pull her back both figuratively and literally.

The Boston street scene was filmed in Tunbridge Wells!
The ‘Lobster Shack’ was actually in Whitstable and the beach front house is just up the road at the beginning of Tankerton slopes (used to have a beach hut roughly half way between the two!). Not sure where that last beach is though, not far presumably.

The way Rob spoke to Sharon was appalling.

^This

I hated that. Especially when he said that 'nobody liked her'. Too close to home for me, in terms of the kind of emotional abuse I used to get.
(Possibly I am over-invested in Sharon & Rob )

I thought it was a good ending!

I don't think we are meant to worry at all about the children possibly broiling in the car. They have always just been an add-on to show rather than main characters - it's really not about them. They are always shown either being silent/ no bother in the background or completely squashed into the Phil and Ted double pushchair.

I did find the conversation Rob and Sharon had about having a third baby very moving, about pushing a little baby out and kissing it and smelling it. It can't have been an easy scene for Rob Delaney to do, after losing his own child then having another baby. It felt like genuine emotion in that scene to me from the both of them.

2018's blazing hot summer must have made it much easier for them to convince us the UK locations used were in fact massachusetts.

finished me off this episode

I don't think series 4 was as good as the rest of the series but I do love the both of them

will miss it! nothing as funny on telly

I don't think we are meant to worry at all about the children possibly broiling in the car.

This. It's classic Mumsnet to focus on that aspect of the ending. Will nobody think of the children

@Notso, it's funny you should say that. I was thinking that before I had a child of my own (and found MN) I wouldn't have noticed at all. But now all I could think about was them either broiling or waking up and not knowing where mummy and daddy were! Even typing that brings a lump to my throat. I'm a right soppy bugger these days.

That was a strange ending, I agree.

They seemed a very long way from the shore .

Is that it then? No more seasons to come?