Alan Alda turns up in Netflix’s The Four Seasons season 2, appearing as Anne’s father Don in episode 6, “Little Thanksgiving,” a brief but unmistakable on‑screen nod to the 1981 film.
Viewers searching “four seasons cast” this week are finding that Alda — long associated with the original movie and credited as a producer on the new series — does indeed appear on camera in the new episodes, which has driven renewed interest in who else from the original is visible in the reimagining.
“Little Thanksgiving” stages a COVID‑era flashback to the last Thanksgiving the friend group spent together before Nick’s death. The centerpiece is a living‑room talent show broadcast to family and friends on Zoom; Alda appears among the faces watching the performance and is seen laughing as Anne performs with her daughter Lila and Kate and Jack’s daughter, Beth.
Kerri Kenney‑Silver, who plays one of the friends, said the moment had a private glow for the cast. "When his name comes up, I always like to watch the credits because I love to see 'Produced by Alan Alda.' It just makes me feel proud," she said.
Cast members framed the cameo as a conscious passing of a torch. Will Forte put it simply: "We are standing on the shoulder of a giant there." He added, "We're like a nesting doll of standing on the shoulders of giants because you got Alan Alda, and then [creator and star] Tina [Fey] is standing on his shoulders, and we're all standing on hers."
Fey herself has described Alda as formative to her television fandom. She said she was a "huge, huge M*A*S*H fan" growing up, that "I collected every TV Guide that they were on," and that watching the show taught her "This is what grownup life is going to be." Those remarks help explain why the production placed Alda's face, even briefly, into a scene about family and continuity.
The cameo reads as deliberate: the Netflix series is a modernization of Alan Alda’s 1981 comedy The Four Seasons, in which Alda directed and starred as Jack Burroughs. He was introduced in season 1 of the streaming series as Don, Anne’s father, and returns here not as a new regular but as a single, visible connection to the original work. Alda, now 90, is also listed as a producer on the show.
That visibility is intentional but limited. Alda appears on a Zoom call rather than in a sustained dramatic thread; he watches and laughs, then the episode moves on. The show gives him a clear place in its family portrait without making him a consistent member of the ensemble — a practical choice, given the scale of the cast and Alda’s reduced screen presence in recent years.
No further Alan Alda appearances have been announced beyond the season 2 cameo, and the production has not signaled a plan to fold him into a recurring role. For now, his brief return works as a legacy gesture: a visible link between the 1981 film and the contemporary four seasons cast, meaningful to the show’s creators and to viewers who remember the original, but not evidence that Alda will rejoin the series as a regular presence.
