When “Catastrophe” began in 2015, its title seemed to refer to a discrete event. Rob (Rob Delaney), an American businessman visiting London, had a whirlwind fling of marathon sex with Sharon (Sharon Horgan), who got pregnant. He stayed, they married, they bumpily transitioned from unplanned pregnancy to an unplanned life.
By the raunchy, glorious end of its fourth and final season, arriving on Amazon on Friday, Rob and Sharon have been through health scares, family losses, infidelity, alcoholism and the sundry exhaustions of life with two small children. “Catastrophe,” it is clear, refers not to a single occurrence but to a state of being — the chaos of life, which this comedy depicts with deadly honest charm.
One thing that sets the series apart from other rom-coms is its maturity, which is to say, age. Rob and Sharon, both in their 40s, already know themselves. They’re conscious enough of each other’s flaws to adapt, experienced enough not to expect the other to change.
Sharp-witted and outspoken, Sharon can be a bulldozer; she’s the more cynical of the two, but therefore often the more perceptive of the two. Rob’s more laid-back, but his swallowed-down stress can turn into passive-aggression. It’s also expressed itself in a drinking problem, which he had under control until the end of Season 3.
The final season picks up after Rob’s car crash under the influence has cost him his driver’s license, put him in a neck brace and left Sharon wary of trusting him. She’s known about his alcoholism since she met him, but it’s different, she says, now that his drinking is more than “folklore.”
It’s not a spoiler to say that they get through this; getting through is in a way the subject of “Catastrophe.” Rob and Sharon’s relationship is a love story, a war story and an alliance. They spar terrifically, with an absurd edge — “Do you know how hard I’d laugh if you killed me?” Rob says during one quarrel — they get it out of their systems, they move on to the next calamity.
Their marriage isn’t storybook, but it works; emphasis on work. It’s a grown-up romance, and the final season leans into the themes of middle age and maturity (or lack thereof). Rob and Sharon’s friends are dealing with midlife variously, be it splitting up their marriages or getting really into disaster prep.
The season also introduces Rob’s sister, Sydney (Michaela Watkins), who’s become a Quaker, a peaceable practice that baffles her brother and sister-in-law, who can’t believe you can just train yourself never to be angry. (Spoiler alert: You can’t.)
As for Rob and Sharon, parenthood itself concentrates one’s focus like the prospect of an execution. “Having kids,” Rob tells a starry-eyed new-dad friend, “is like strapping yourself to a Formula One race car, you know? Boom! Your life is over. But not in a bad way!”
“Yeah,” Sharon says. “You just have to take everything you ever wanted and put it in a box because you never ... but yeah! It’s great!”
The idea that falling in love and having kids isn’t the start of a limitless adventure but a narrowing of life paths isn’t a typical rom-com conclusion. But where is the lie? “Catastrophe” is smart and aware about the costs of commitment, especially for women. It’s also the rare feminist TV comedy whose perspective is split evenly between male and female protagonists.
The perspective pays off especially well in the fifth episode. which I would call #MeToo-inspired, except that it hits themes the show’s had since it began. Sharon has an uncomfortable encounter with a superior at her job and Rob may be the beneficiary of a sexist boss (Chris Noth) at his, two parallel stories that swing between the need to speak up and the difficulty of sacrificing one’s self on principle.
Like the previous seasons, the final installment of “Catastrophe” is six short, neatly contained episodes. It’s the rare series in this era of streaming binge marathons whose seasons actually feel too short. With less than three hours to play out, the emotional turns can feel abrupt and the resolutions sudden.
But it also finds the greatest emotional depths of the series in a story line that acknowledges the real-life death of Carrie Fisher, who played Rob’s mother, Mia, and co-writers Delaney and Horgan maintain a tone of mordant optimism. Falling in love, this series suggests, is a sort of self-imposed extremity, like marooning yourselves on an island. It’s never easy, but you survive by pulling together.
“When is it all going to stop being such a slog?” Sharon asks Rob at one point. There’s no answer, except the one that this show has acerbically given for four seasons. It doesn’t stop until everything does. The slog, the catastrophe, is life.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.