The World Needs More Shows Like Somebody Somewhere

 

 

I mentioned in my review of Single Drunk Female that it was the first of two brilliant comedies I was looking forward to coming back for a second season this month. The other was HBO’s superb Somebody, Somewhere a series which it bares similarities to in some of its relationships and far more importantly is yet another representative of the kind of comedy series that this decade is producing that serve as a tonic to so many of the ones we’ve watched during the second Golden Age.

I was never able to appreciate Seinfeld the way the rest of the world was because it represented a kind of cruel comedy that seems to take pleasure in the humiliation of others. This brand of humor has essentially been supercharged in the 21^st Century. Curb Your Enthusiasm is the most direct example but the trend more or less began in earnest with Showtime’s Weeds which essentially became an example of comedy taking place involving the horrid behavior of unpleasant people taken to extremes. Showtime more or less became the key producer of it, and even the best examples  such as Nurse Jackie and Shameless eventually became relentlessly unpleasant.

Other comedians have more or less mastered that format – Ricky Gervais and Danny McBride are by far the most prominent – and far too many of the best comedies of the 2010s were centered on bad people behaving badly, from Silicon Valley and Veep being the most ‘successful’ versions. Some of these series could be hysterical -  I loved  Arrested Development and I still love Barry – but you got the feeling over time that we were laughing at people we didn’t want to spend time with.

With the debut of Ted Lasso in the fall of 2020,  there has been a slow but welcome shift towards comedy that celebrates kindness and trying to find a common ground. Abbott Elementary has become celebrated by many because everyone is working towards a common goal more than anything else, Only Murders in the Building argues in a way that the divides between generations can be overcome and I’ve come to love Hacks because of the wonderful, complicated relationship between Ava and Deb, two people who through all their bickering want to help each other no matter how much. It’s not that there isn’t bad or undignified  behavior in all of these comedies, but we laugh with the characters as much as we laugh at them.

Somebody Somewhere basically took this same model. You might argue that in  a sense it is a show about nothing the same way Seinfeld is but only in the sense there isn’t a major struggle or conflict in the way that there is in most shows. Bridget Everett plays Sam, a fortyish lesbian who moved back to her small Kansas town to take care of her mother much to the dismay of her sister, who she had a problematic relationship with. Sam eventually became reacquainted with an old classmate named Joel (the incredible Jeff Hiller) and the first season essentially became about the two of them rebuilding their friendship and Sam becoming who she is a community of outsiders. The major part of this was formed in what amounted to a cabaret where everybody sang and performed and most of the members were part of the LGBTQ+ community – Joel is gay, and one of their closest friends is transgender. (We learn in the second episode of Season 2 that he is about to marry a former classmate who he has loved since before they transitioned.)

There were a fair amount of conflicts in Season 1 – Bridget and her family’s mother, who had been in and out of rehab went off the wagon and had to be checked back in,  Tricia’s marriage imploded when she learned her husband was cheating with her business partner and now their business has dissolved, and one of the last episodes of the season involved a tornado striking the city. But the series wasn’t about that so much as it was about the fundamental friendship rebuilding between Sam and Joel. The most significant event in Season 1 really was about Sam becoming a singer again – not as a career, just among her friends. The series has been more about realizing who you are rather than what happens to you.

Season 2 has not fundamentally changed in that regard, even though are larger events that have intervened. But Somebody Somewhere does not take the usual approach. During the interval between Season 1 and 2, Mike Haggerty who memorably played Sam and Tricia’s father, passed away suddenly. The normal recourse of any other series where a major dies would be to have some kind of funeral or acknowledge. The show has taken a different approach, at least so far. Sam’s father is on the first vacation in decades and he has left a series of chores for the two of them do. At one point in the season premiere Sam is in the process of cleaning out the barn when she pauses, gets emotional and calls Joel. She barely holds it together when she says: “He’s really gone.” Joel offers to come over with a drink, and Sam just asks him to be there with her for a while. Later in that episode Frank, who has been on a teaching trip, drops in on Sam and Joel and tells them that her father asked them to check in. I have little doubt the series will eventually deal with Haggerty’s passing (this series does not operate in the world of fantasy) but there’s something quintessential about Somebody Somewhere that the absence is being acknowledged before the death of the character is revealed and not after.

Sam and Joel are in the process of trying to live a normal life: they jog together every morning, they are renting their houses out as B and B’s, they’re playing poker with friends, they’re attending concerts. That’s really all that’s been going on the first two episodes. More tends to happen in the opening minutes of even Abbott Elementary, but the viewer is never bored nor unentertained because the show humor is wistful kidding rather than about action. It’s clear that Sam and Joel are true soul mates even if they are not sleeping together because they have the sweetness of two people who are pals for life. Joel has no problem commenting about how much his friend needs a wax, they constantly kid each other about every aspect of their everyday lives, and Joel’s kindness towards humanity is perfectly suited to the occasional acerbic attitude of Sam. (“You take all the fun out of my being a c---?” she says at one point.) The two of them are the kind of people so comfortable with each other that they say good night to each other before going to bed – and then call it each other when they are simultaneously suffering from the worst digestive trouble imaginable, eventually not even bothering to hide it. There’s a sweetness to this humor that you really don’t see on many series these days and I welcome it.

At this point, the most action it really seems that Season 2 is moving towards is Frank’s wedding in which Joel has been asked to officiate and Sam has been asked to sing. Joel has conflicts with the church (the original location of the cabaret was the church on late nights and he left because he felt guilty about it) and Sam is still shy about performing. Sam has decided to take voice lessons with her old chorus teacher, still going strong after thirty years.

I have little doubt that, given the war on LGBTQ+ rights in the country and in states like Kansas in particular, some viewers might not be happy to see these characters not talking about issues that should be relevant to them. That’s not the point of a series like Somebody Somewhere in which characters like Joel and Sam will mock the town they live in but never the people or the values in it. Yes, the cabaret is primarily for the outsiders but it’s just as much about community. This is perhaps represented best in what is a recital night which Sam and Joel attend and a small group of people watching children and adult perform classical music. Joel and Sam quietly mock some of what they see, but Sam also admits that part of is jealousy – she hears one person perform a piece and she tells Joel “that’s the part I could never get.’ And honestly considering how little any part of America appreciates classical music, I will celebrate any community where a grown man is willing to sing opera in front of an audience.

Somebody Somewhere has yet to receive the huge number of nominations and awards that so many of the other series that celebrate kindness have, but it has gotten some – it was nominated for four awards by the HCA in the Best Cable Comedy category and it was among the Peabody nominees just a few weeks ago. It’s also the perfect tonic to those of you who spend your Sundays watching HBO the next few weeks. After dealing with the toxic world of the Roys and the increasingly dark world of Barry Berkman, it’s nice to finish up with a place that is in what might as well be another universe from the final seasons of Succession and Barry. Don’t get me wrong both series are extraordinary works of television, but by the time you get through them, you do feel like you need a cleanse. Somebody Somewhere is a perfect note to end your Sunday nights on HBO, and it’s a good model for HBO -  and the comedy world in general – to take for the future.

My score: 4.75 stars.