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.
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