The HBO Sunday night series remains a weekly date watch, even in this era of Too-Much TV. Subrogation And barry may dominate the headlines with their latest seasons, but viewers shouldn’t sleep in the featured seasons Someone’s Somewhere. On paper, these three titles don’t necessarily have much in common, but the second series certainly deserves the attention Roys and Barry Berkman have received.
Family is a unifying bond, as is the fact that all three find humor in the darkest places. Set in Manhattan, Kansas, Someone’s Somewhere A story set in a rural town that captures universal emotions such as grief, self-discovery, and the need to connect with others. Of course, there are no globally influential mergers or shooter-to-player transitions, but the experiences portrayed by creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen remind you of the power of finding your place and your voice.
It also provides a last published service in this triple bill.
“We are like the calming show before bed” Someone’s Somewhere Mary Catherine Garrison tells the Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “This is a very small scale story; It’s easy to relate to him and be where these characters are because he’s a baby step away from where most of us are.”
(Warning: We have some spoilers ahead for the latest episode. Someone’s Somewhere.)
I mentioned the drama as a warm hug and soothing to my soul, but the episode I want to talk to Garrison about ends with a deep break. Sam (Bridget Everett) feels betrayed by the different things his sister Tricia (Garrison) and best friend Joel (Jeff Hiller) are keeping from him. “That’s why you’re always alone,” Tricia shouted before her sister stepped out of her house.
“Oh, this Really fun,” Garrison says about hitting siblings who rise from drunken festivity to shout at each other. “The fact that someone who knows you better than anyone—someone who has known you your whole life—is calling out to you also makes a different impression than someone who doesn’t know you.” It’s a tipping point based on years of perfecting their defenses due to their mother’s alcoholism. “When you have alcoholic parents, you don’t leave yourself unprotected for long because it’s not safe,” says Garrison.
That wound is deep; a fresher one is due to Sam moving home to take care of his older sister Holly while she’s undergoing cancer treatment. The show’s first season begins six months after Holly’s death. The anger that emanated from this softened over time, until Sam discovered that Holly had kept her initial diagnosis a secret because she wanted to try natural remedies first. (Sam freezes over not telling Joel about the guy he’s dating.)
Here, Garrison talks about his decades-long friendship with Everett, his character from a celebrity, the real-life business blow. Someone’s Somewhere losses and reactions to the series.
Art Imitates Life
It’s Tricia’s first birthday as a single woman, her daughter is in college, and the house feels more empty than ever. What ends in a discussion in the final chapter, “NMB NMP,” highlights how. Someone’s Somewhere he deftly mixes the mundane with laughter and an emotional instinctive punch.
Tricia gifted herself a high-tech refrigerator, just one of several moments in the real-life-inspired series. Everett lived with co-stars Murray Hill and Hiller in the first season, and a refrigerator like this one was a source of confusion and joy for anyone who came across it. “Nobody could figure it out. Music would play, then someone’s text would sync with it and it would make a mess. It was a perfect fit for Season 2,” laughs Garrison (“Watch what you say, Emma, because it could be Season 3,” Garrison warns). Sam grinds his new kitchen gadget as he plays the seductive “So Into You” song by the Atlanta Rhythm Section, perfectly demonstrating how easy it is for him to piss off Tricia.
There’s a lot of laughter before the mood breaks. Sam bakes his sister a birthday cake similar to the one she had as a kid. More precisely, he tries Cooking is a challenge as it is room temperature butter. “It didn’t taste that bad, but it was hard to swallow, it was sticky. If you look closely, you’ll see that we took small bites,” says Garrison. Despite the aesthetically unappealing cow pastry-like cake, To succeed! Auditions, which is Sam’s time and effort, is something Tricia appreciates.
“I love this scene because for the first time you see them need each other and there is something out there where they like each other. Until then, you won’t be able to see any of that,” says Garrison. “They’re all that’s left now, so they need each other more than they probably thought.”
The sisters take cautious steps towards a closer dynamic, but Garrison and Everett, who have been roommates in New York for eight years, are already there. “It was domestic bliss. We had everything. I recently told someone that if I hadn’t met my husband, I’d probably be his roommate because we figured it out,” says Garrison. “We would watch Trade Areasall those HGTV shows and Westminster Cabin [Club Dog] Garrison knows Everett “inside and out” and is excited about his success: “I don’t know anyone who deserves this more.”
big cunt energy
There’s another secret that needs to be revealed to Sam: The reason why his phone keeps ringing. Tricia’s marriage fell apart as her best friend and boutique business partner, Charity, slept with Tricia’s husband, Rick. Their work had a great “Live, Laugh, Love” energy, but now a “Lying Pussy” pillow is popping up, thanks to Amy Sedaris. Yes, on the show, the Amy Sedaris reposted an angry photo of this pillow on her Instagram, and Sedaris reblogs it on her social media. (Everett appeared in two episodes of the series. At Home with Amy Sedaris and Sedaris also recently moderated a panel for the series)
Bridget Everett and Jeff Hiller.
Sandy Morris/HBO
Tricia isn’t a woman who uses that word freely, and neither is Garrison: “I don’t have a lot of bathroom humor in my past, so a lot of this is challenging for me—even still. I just can’t get that word out of my mouth.” Again, personal experience and IRL friendships come into play with stories. “Every time I hear the word OC, part of me still gets scandalous. I mean, it’s too much for me,” she says. “Live together [Everett]He made me feel comfortable in many things that I was never comfortable with.
Tricia wants to expand on their pillow motto where her sister comes into play. Sam is enjoying this cunt wordplay opportunity and pops a song about her “big and juicy cunt”. While living with Garrison Everett, “semi-prepared” for such moments, he struggles occasionally. “This was impromptu. Try doing the opposite and see how long you can last,” he jokes. (I tell him I can’t last a day without ruining it. Each one shot.)
Pussy pillow brainstorming continues this week, with Tricia asking Sam to write her suggestions down, and she finds some new goodies like Big Cunt Energy. (Yes, I’d love for HBO to make this product.) Sam also has a great idea for what he should name the business: Help Cases – yes, he’s naming them after the woman who started it all.
Real Life Loss and Someone’s Somewhere Coup
One of the main characters, whose absence is felt throughout the seven episodes, is Sam and Tricia’s father, Ed. Veteran character actor Mike Hagerty passed away two weeks before production began. Although he is not physically there, it is impossible not to feel him in writing and performance. “It’s great to talk about him,” Garrison says when I ask about working with Hagerty. “When people pass by, you sometimes talk about these exaggerations about how great and wonderful they are. But he Actually There is and has been.”
Since the first season focused on grief, the creative decision was made to write that Ed was visiting his brother. Coleman Spilde of The Obsessed reflects on the profound impact of this choice, and says it’s impossible to picture Garrison without tears as he reads his letters to Tricia and Sam. “Well, Tricia didn’t seem to shed a tear when I read a letter from her father. I don’t think we care because everybody already knows. Somehow I feel it’s there. I don’t know how, but it was there.”
One of Ed’s closest friends is Fred, as they bond with each other on the farm that will host Fred’s upcoming wedding. This wedding celebration is quietly radical action at a time when anti-trans laws and discrimination are a reality, and this portrayal of transmasculine representation in a rural setting is influential.
Garrison spends most of the year in Lynchburg, Virginia (“This is where my husband comes from”) and talks about a match at his local Kroger after the first season came out. “This woman I’ve known for a few years came up to me and said, ‘Mary Catherine, we love your show,’” she says.
He then went on to say that he would watch the episodes with his sister and two best girlfriends. Someone’s Somewhere It’s a kind of TV club, drinking wine and talking for hours about the episode: “They’ve lived here most, if not all, of their lives, and he said, ‘There’s a whole world out there that we don’t know,’ we wouldn’t have access to it. But now we feel like there’s so much going on. We realize that we couldn’t get it before.’”
This meant the experiences and representation of LGBTQ+ characters like Fred and Joel in this rural setting. “They see that someone who doesn’t identify like you is just one aspect of who they are,” she says. “The nicest compliment I’ve ever received.”
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