The first HALF of the season is a will-they-or-won't-they over Retsuko and Haida, after Season 3 spent so long bringing that to a head. Pretty much everything other aspect of the season gets *set up* while that's going on, but is firmly in the background. At that point in the middle, I found that I just could not care anymore about whether or not they became a couple, because so much of the problem between them this season is simply that they don't communicate like adults. Now, part of that is Haida's lack of confidence, which is a major factor of the season, but I feel like it wasn't too much to ask for them to resolve that in, say, three episodes? Maybe? Not 5. Not, really, the entire season. We only see them on happy dates a handful of times, even.
Anyway, overall season story is about a new and unscrupulous (and younger) CEO coming in to the company where Retsuko and the gang work. And, yes, the fact that he's younger is important because he's set up in contrast to the lackadaisical old guard bosses... who care about people's jobs. Cripes. Yes. In this season of the workplace comedy about how work sucks, the management gets humanized because they're people, too. And they're actually protecting you. Give me a fucking break. I recognize that this aspect of the season is even more steeped in Japanese business culture than usual, but it's an odious reversal. Ton is not a fucking good guy. He can be nice to his family, but he is not the only thing standing between the accounting department and the door. You don't get to go "well, he was young once, too," in Season 4. Especially since, yes, he should be stepping down soon. He's retirement age. Young leadership is good, and the only reason we don't acknowledge that is because of old guard mythmaking. Bah.
You may notice that not a lot of this has to do with Retsuko. Well. The season doesn't have much to do with Retsuko. That's not necessarily a bad thing. However, in this case, I thought it was unsatisfying because it comes down to her doing stuff online mostly offscreen and one climactic confrontation with Haida. And that's it. No matter how good it was to have some direct conflict between Haida and Retsuko, it couldn't carry things for me.
I'll say this, though: finally, the curse of the soft reset has been broken. Slightly. Almost everything is still the same for no reason, as of the last two minutes. But the Season 4 soft reset DOES allows one thing to change, and it's a good change. So here's to Season 5 and maybe having more luck next time.
