‘Red Oaks’: Divorce, Insider Trading, and Young Romance On Tap for Season 2

If the first season of Red Oaks was a pitch-perfect homage to 1980s coming-of-age comedies, Season 2 won’t be so much a sequel as an expansion of the retro country club world created by executive producers Joe Gangemi and Gregory Jacobs.

“The sort of movies we were referencing usually end at happily ever after,” says Gangemi. “The guy gets the girl. We thought it would be fun [to explore] what happens after you get the girl.”

Paul Reiser as Getty, the president of Red Oaks Country Club.

For assistant tennis pro David (Craig Roberts), happily ever after hasn’t lasted long. He’s now dealing with the dissolution of his parents’ (Jennifer Grey and Richard Kind) marriage, as well as his continuing ambivalence about his future. “I think a big arc for David throughout the whole season is that he was in this life that he wanted to get out of,” says Roberts. “He wanted to make films and move to the city, and once he gets to the city, there are a few times when maybe he wants to go back.”

There’s also the ambiguous state of his blossoming romance with poor-little-rich-girl Skye (Alexandra Socha), who was off to Paris for a year to further her artistic endeavors at the end of Season 1. “That obviously changes a person,” says Socha. “She comes back from Paris with more of a vision of what she wants her life to be.”

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But as Skye and David get closer, tensions rise, compounded by her disapproving country-club president father (Paul Reiser) and his ongoing legal troubles. “This is a guy who has always been a very big fish in a very limited pond,” Reiser says of the fallout from Getty’s arrest on suspicion of insider trading. “The country club is his domain. What’s hanging over him the whole season is that it could all go away—everything from his comfortable place in life to his family and certainly his position of power.”

The creators agree that Red Oaks is as much a coming-of-age story for Reiser’s, Grey’s and Kind’s characters as it is for the young ones. “We try to make sure that every single character is going through this big upheaval,” says Gangemi. “Part of the fun is watching how they react to that.”

Red Oaks, Season premiere, Friday, Nov. 11, Amazon