HBOs Someone’s Somewhere It may be a show about small town life, but it often feels tremendous to watch. Amidst the humble shops and quiet parks of Main Street where people greet each other as they pass (rather than pretending they don’t exist), there is a tapestry of complex emotions draped over the series’ depiction of Manhattan, Kansas. actually the humble suburbs of Chicago).
Someone’s Somewhere He is adept at describing how the languid pace of country life opens people up to the reality of their feelings. The only sounds there is to stifle thoughts are the voices of a few grasshoppers and bluebirds, and they are not loud at all.
That sounds a bit dramatic for a show that’s mostly comedy. But in Someone’s SomewhereThe awesome pilot episode of ‘s alone cannot be denied: This series understands how living in a small town – and especially returning there – can weigh heavily on the heart.
While each episode of the show is its own compact roller coaster of emotion carefully squeezed into half an hour, Someone’s Somewhere He’s not afraid to sit down and mingle with these feelings. The show has been particularly successful in working out how grief and hardship has followed us through life, often screened at awkward moments whether we like it or not. The way the show examines these intersections and the ways we try to process hitting these walls at unexpected times is more than simply relatable. He’s recovering.
Sunday night’s Season 2 premiere proved it Someone’s Somewhere‘s ability to capture this was no accident.
In the show’s first season, Sam (Bridget Everett) returns to Kansas to care for his ailing sister, Holly. He is left with a lifetime of regret that only catches up with Holly after she passes. The reason Sam was in his hometown was gone. Instead, there are pleasant memories, sentimental trivia, and an inner predicament that forces Sam to fight to recover the broken 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. It’s Sam’s family who let their grief over Holly’s death be clearly visible.
A few weeks before filming for Season 2 was scheduled to begin, news broke that Hagerty had died following complications from a seizure. “I fell in love with Mike the moment I met him,” Everett wrote in a letter of praise on Instagram. “He was very special. I’ve never met a warm, funny, stranger. He passed and we were devastated. Mike was greatly appreciated by the entire cast and crew. Someone’s Somewhere”
The show’s writers removed Hagerty from season two, but her presence is still felt. Someone’s Somewhere He explains Ed’s absence by having him visit his brother from Kansas after the character’s increasingly strained relationship with his beloved wife, Mary Jo, whose alcoholism worsened in Season 1. When Mary Jo suffers a stroke, Ed is unable to care for her. and placed in an assisted living home.
Instead of approaching Hagerty’s loss as a hindrance, Someone’s Somewhere it treats it like a death itself and honors the actor’s memory by allowing the agony felt by the show’s cast and crew to wrap the season. A nice nod to Hagerty’s influence on the series, without spilling any more bitterness into a show that has managed to deftly avoid being melodramatic.
This is brilliantly depicted in a scene in the Season 2 premiere where Sam is suddenly struck by his father’s absence. Now that he and his sister Tricia are going to lease their family’s farmland, Sam needs to clean up the barn to make it suitable for potential tenants. Over the years the barn has become more of a junkyard than a practical place for storage. Organizing all of its content can be daunting as it stands, but the task is compounded by what it means for Sam and his family.
Sam begins by trying to pull out an old piece of plastic trash until he realizes he doesn’t really have a home. “I have nowhere to put it,” he says, sighing and kicking it aside before spending a whole day in the barn. He tosses old weather vases, maneuvers 25-foot hoses, and drags old, rusty tractor seats into the truck bed of his truck. Sam laughs here and nods there, realizing that his father has his own system to keep track of everything. The barn and the farm on which it stands are marked by its presence.
After some work, Sam sits down to collect himself and calls Joel, who immediately senses the heartache in his voice. “It feels really weird to be here with all your stuff, you know?” Sam says. “I wanted him to go and I forced him to go and I’m glad he did. Because I know you couldn’t clean this barn, it would break his heart.” Everett follows that line with a brilliantly executed instinctive punch: “I didn’t know you’d break mine.”
The fourth wall will almost collapse as tears begin to form in Everett’s eyes. It no longer feels like a character or fiction – surprisingly real. “It just sits here, Joel, and he’s… he’s everywhere,” Sam says. Everett’s way of saying “everywhere” is extremely effective, as if each syllable is meant to land in a different corner of the barn, next to Ed’s lasting memories. “She’s every inch of this place, you know? She loved it here. And now I feel like I’m packing up her whole life.
Joel offers to come to the barn to help, but Sam asks him to stay on the phone with him for a minute instead. Together, they sit quietly with nothing but a cellular connection between them. Before Joel came into his life, Sam didn’t have the capacity to process grief, and certainly not so effectively. While cleaning the barn has proven to be more emotionally difficult than he anticipated, Joel is the reason why Sam is able to let those emotions run through instead of burying them in humor or, worse, suppressing them altogether.
Anyone who has had to sort through a loved one’s belongings after they’ve left understands that it’s a uniquely beautiful experience. We admire the lives unfolding before us, each item has its own unique story. This is what makes it incredibly difficult. The presence of those most precious to us is not felt more acutely than the moment we step into their history. This is sensitive. Everything, even trivial things, feels valuable.
This scene is the perfect distillation of what makes it Someone’s Somewhere flourish The show turns these solid feelings into compact, 30-minute reflections on life; moments that seem insignificant here are approached with the care and understanding not always available in other scripted series. Everett has quietly become one of television’s most captivating stars, and her gripping work on this series is not only award-winning but significant.
The grief associated with loss is so layered and often so difficult to talk about that it is crucial to have as many honest depictions of its myriad forms as possible. In these representations, we find the opportunity to capture a reflection of our own experiences. The pain of grief is lonely and isolating. And thanks to this scene, those who don’t have a Joel in their Sam, still Someone’s Somewhere.
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