HBO someone somewhere may be a show about small town life, but watching it often feels colossal. Amid Main Street’s modest shops and quiet parks where people still greet each other as they pass (instead of pretending they don’t exist), there’s a tapestry of complex feelings draped over the depiction of Manhattan, Kansas. (which is actually the humble suburb of Chicago).
someone somewhere is masterful in depicting how the languorous rhythm of provincial life opens people up to the reality of their emotions. The only noise there is to drown out thoughts is that of a few crickets and bluebirds – and they’re not very loud at all.
Seems a bit dramatic for a show that’s primarily a comedy. But in someone somewhereThe terrific pilot episode alone is irrefutable: this series understands how much living and especially returning to a small town can weigh heavily on the heart.
Although each episode of the series is its own compact rollercoaster of emotions, neatly nested within half an hour, someone somewhere not afraid to sit and simmer in those feelings. The show has been particularly successful in its study of grief and how its difficulties follow us through life, whether we like it or not, often being dragged on at particular times. How the show investigates those moments and the ways we try to deal with hitting those walls at unexpected times is more than just relatable. It is healing.
No TV show deserves to be a hit more than “Somebody Somewhere”
Sunday night’s Season 2 premiere proved that someone somewhereThe ability to capture it was no accident.
In the show’s first season, Sam (Bridget Everett) returns to Kansas to care for his sick sister, Holly. She finds herself contemplating a lifetime of regrets, which only catch up with her once Holly has passed. The reason Sam was in his hometown was gone. In its place are fond memories, trinkets of sentimental value, and an internal stalemate that leaves Sam struggling to salvage the shattered pieces of his career and relationships.
Over the course of seven episodes, Sam figures out how to start moving forward, thanks to the support of his new friend, Joel (Jeff Hiller), and his stoic father, Ed (Mike Hagerty), who seems to be the only other member . of Sam’s family who allowed their grief over Holly’s death to be clearly visible.
A few weeks before filming for Season 2 began, news broke that Hagerty had died of an epileptic seizure. “I loved Mike from the moment I met him,” Everett wrote in a tribute on Instagram. “He was so special. Warm, funny, never met a stranger. We are devastated that he passed away. Mike was adored by the entire cast and crew of someone somewhere.”
The show’s writers wrote Hagerty out of the second season, but his presence is still felt. someone somewhere explains Ed’s absence by asking the character to leave Kansas to visit his brother, following an increasingly strained relationship with his beloved wife, Mary Jo, whose alcoholism escalated. is aggravated in Season 1. When Mary Jo has a stroke, Ed is unable to care for her, and she is placed in an assisted living facility.
Instead of approaching the loss of Hagerty as an obstacle, someone somewhere approaches it as death itself, honoring the actor’s memory by letting the angst felt by the show’s cast and crew envelop the season. It’s a nice nod to Hagerty’s impact on the show, without pouring more pain on a show that has so deftly managed to avoid becoming melodramatic.
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In the Season 2 premiere, this is brilliantly depicted in a scene where Sam is suddenly emotional about her father’s absence. Now that she and her sister, Tricia, are going to rent their family’s farmland, Sam must clean out the barn to make it presentable to potential tenants. Over the years, the barn had become less of a convenient place for storage and more of a scrap shed. Organizing all of his content would be daunting, but the task is made more difficult by what it means for Sam and his family.
Sam starts by trying to take out an old plastic trash can, until she realizes she doesn’t really have a home. “I have nowhere to put him,” she said, sighing and kicking him in the side, before resigning herself to spending a whole day in the barn. She throws old weathervanes, maneuvers 80-foot-long pipes, and drags old, rusty tractor chairs to the bed of her truck. Sam laughs here and nods there, realizing his dad had his own system for keeping track of everything. The barn and the farm on which it rests are all marked by its presence.
After a good while of work, Sam sits down to pull herself together and dials Joel, who immediately senses the heartache in his voice. “It’s just really weird being here with all your stuff, you know?” Sam said. “I wanted him to leave, and I pushed him to leave, and I’m glad he left. Because I know he couldn’t have cleaned that barn, it would have broken him heart. Everett follows that line with a beautifully executed punch: “I didn’t know that would break mine.”
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