Somebody Somewhere Leaves Us Soon
As We Bid A Fond Farewell To Bridget Everett And Possibly The Most Un-HBO Comedy HBO’s Ever Aired
It’s clear to me as it airs its third and (why?) last season that Somebody Somewhere has two very different but distinct places in television history. The first, as anyone who has seen the show knows, is that is one of the full-blown comic masterpieces of the 2020s, along with Reservation Dogs, Hacks and Abbott Elementary. (It remains to be seen if Only Murders in the Building can maintain its momentum and people have expressed doubts about the overall quality of the most recent season of The Bear.)
The second is far more exceptional: it is arguably the most un-HBO comedy series that has ever aired on HBO since it began its run of leading the revolution. And as anyone who loves those comedies (and I’ve been a fan of my share) the overall tone of almost all of them could be summed up as: cruel. It was assuredly true of the (finally) departed Curb Your Enthusiasm; definitely so of Emmy winners Entourage, Veep and Silicon Valley and while it was far closer to being darker than unpleasant, it’s hard to argue that Barry was gentle in how it treated anybody in the cast. There’s little sympathy in any of the comedies in even the best HBO comedies I’ve seen for any of its characters, major or minor and its been the de facto trend for even the ones that didn’t work Avenue 5 is the most recent and I’ve avoided watching The Franchise because I have, frankly, gotten tired of this unpleasantness over the last few years — and in truth, I was getting sick of it long before Donald Trump entered the political scene.
I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised: the de facto trend for comedy over the first twenty years of this century has been constantly heading towards meanness and contempt in almost every comedy show on cable I’ve seen. It was essentially what you got from every single comedy on Showtime, from Weeds to Black Monday, with the sole exception of Kidding and until relatively recently FX has been most treating its comedies with a similar tone. (The one brilliant exception was Better Things.) It’s mostly been true for streaming overall, particularly in the work of Ricky Gervais on Netflix the overall unpleasantness of so much of Transparent on Amazon, and I found The Great unwatchable. The tone’s gradually been lifting on the streaming services overall and Apple has been setting the pace, not just with the exceptional Ted Lasso but also such masterpieces as Shrinking and the very satiric Palm Royale in which every character is cruel but Maxine who is in dead sincerity.
Because the arc of the comedy universe now seems to be bending towards kindness on TV, not just streaming but also network and cable TV, I can mourn the departure of Somebody Somewhere not as the end of an era but rather as the end of a comedy that was part of a trend. Comedies across all platforms are becoming nicer and we laugh with the characters when they suffer rather than at them. What’s made Somebody Somewhere different as well as wonderful is not just the majesty of all of the talent of the characters led by Bridget Everett but by the fact this show takes place in the heartland — small town Kansas — goes out of its way to focus on members of the LGBTQ+ community, who have found their outlets from society with each other and shows that their acceptance and battles are just as identifiable as the ones we see at Abbott Elementary and the Arconia.
In the third season Sam, once again played by the wonderful Everett, is facing the fact that the people she cares for the most are moving on with their lives and frankly becoming happier. Her younger sister Tricia (played by the wonderful Mary Catherine Garrison) has recovered from her divorce and now a single woman for the first time. Tricia is dealing with many changes, including that she is now a successful businesswoman (she sells gag pillows with a term so unprintable I’m not going to even hint at what it is), dealing with her son going to college and trying to move onward and upward. Joel (the always sublime Jeff Hiller) has found love with Brad (the always wonderful Tim Bagley) the singer he met in church and is now moving in with. Fred is now happily married. Sam knows she should be happy. But it’s clearly getting harder for her to find happiness when so many of her friends are moving forward and as we’ve learned constantly over the past two seasons, she hates changes.
It’s clear that in the interim between Season 2 and 3 Ed has passed away (a necessity when Mike Haggerty died during 2022) and the house where Sam and Tricia grew up in has been sold to a new tenant who Tricia doesn’t like interacting with and Sam is awkward around. (We’re not even a hundred percent sure of his name yet). This is another big loss for Sam and she’s clearly been trying to find a way to fill the gap in her life. We saw her spend much of the season premiere trying to find a way to adopt a rescue dog and after filling out the paperwork she went to the shelter, only to find another family had adopted it. Sam, who is stoic in public, broke down slightly in the car in the last minute.
And because Sam has clearly been working on other parts of her life, its very clear she’s having issues holding her tongues when it comes to the happiness in her friends. Fred told them at their annual brunch that he was going to stop coming, out of loyalty to his new bride who wants him to be on a health food kick. Sam and Joel were clearly hurt by this but it became even clearer how personal it was in last night’s episode when Fred’s wife came to see the gang and made it clear she was unhappy Sam had brought French Toast because she didn’t want her husband to be tempted by that. More to the point she said that Sam ‘brought Fred down’ which is remarkably cruel considering that Sam sang at their wedding. Sam was still dealing with this when the time came to pack up Joel’s house and she learned what Joel was giving up to move in with the man he loved.
Frankly I’m beginning to have doubts myself. There is no question that Brad loves Joel unconditionally. In that episode Sam went to give lessons to teach Brad to sing a love song to Joel that he had written but was terrified of performing, outside his oeuvre of opera. It’s clear that the way Joel looks at him shows how gone he is for him and the scene where he found the courage — after struggling — to sing the critical lyrics of the song were among the most moving the series have ever done. The two should be soul mates.
The problem is it’s clear that Brad has some issues that involve territory. We saw when Joel was trying to bring stuff over, he had problems letting appliances that Joel owned be part of this. And it’s one thing for Joel not to want to bring his piano over. But when we learned that Joel has given up the idea of having kids — something he’s wanted since we met him — we were as stunned as Sam was when she heard it. Perhaps it might have something to do with how the women in Brad’s church — which Joel left but Brad is still a part of — have a bizarre relationship with the two of them. Do they view the two as their token gay couple as Sam suggested? I suspect the show will deal with in the final episodes.
Sam, at the moment, has other problems, not the least of which is the state of her finances. The last scene of the episode showed her bank balance and it’s the kind of thing that really makes you realize how close to the poverty she is. The viewer has other concerns for Sam in the final season. Will she find love herself? Will she find happiness? Will the people around her find those things? These may seem to be minor concerns compared with the struggles we’ve seen at the Arconia or whether Deb gets the job in Late Night but Somebody Somewhere has always been the kind of show where the stakes have always been very low. That’s part of the reason fans like me have loved it the way we have for the past three years: we’re not worried about some ridiculous power struggle or the success of Pied Piper but the smaller, more realistic struggles that most of us have to deal with in our lives. For people like Sam and Joel, the small stuff is what they have to sweat and we laugh with them as they find their ways around it.
Somebody Somewhere has always had a tone that been closer to wistful than anything else with the kind of gentleness that are considered the hallmark of middle-America but which the far left looks down on and the far right tends to exploit for political gain. Everett and her cast have shown that, despite what some people say, there’s nothing really the matter with Kansas.
I will be sad to say goodbye to this show but I have one last hope. When Reservation Dogs ended its run last year the Emmys rewarded it by nominating it for Best Comedy and four other nominations after two years of ignoring it, despite the fact that they had been nominated for multiple awards, including the Peabody. Similarly the Emmys have basically ignored Somebody Somewhere for the past two years, while other awards show have shown in love — including the Peabody. Both of these shows, coincidentally, were set in Middle America. Perhaps the Emmys could bestow some laurels on Sam and her crew in Kansas. That would be…nice.
My score: 5 stars.