For someone from a small town who left, “what if I never miss” can be a question that slows down the mind. This is the story that fuels the Somewhere Someone who stars in the New York cabaret legend Bridget Everett for Sam, who goes back to Manhattan, Kansas, to nurse his sister who is dying of cancer and ends up staying, so to speak, in the town where she was born and raised. There’s always been a feeling that this show is fighting against fighters. It’s a subtle and gentle play in a TV landscape that rewards big bangs, and it’s one of those beautiful and sad comedies that sometimes elicit belly laughs, but usually leave you with a low level of melancholy. This summer, HBO announced that this would be the third season.
Someone Elsewhere leans in, exploring the push and pull between loneliness and human connection. Sam is finally getting along with his surviving sister, Tricia (the legendary Mary Catherine Garrison), now that she’s divorced from Rick. Tricia’s control of the trade, in the gilded word rough in the soft furniture and homeware, was installed, it comes out big guns and gave its stability and a big car. For Tricia, as a single woman, her life, whose daughter has left home, brings its own challenges. The intimate scene between Sam and Tricia, in a hotel bathroom in Kansas City, is one of the show’s rare and well-deserved belly laugh moments.
For Sam, it seems as if everyone is moving or changing their lives while remaining in a sort of limbo of self. She is thinking about adopting a dog, but her lack of appetite puts her on the path for the time being. He is stuck and has to work out how to win without doubting himself. Tricia is already busy with regular dinner nights with her sister. Fred (Murray Hill) has had a health scare, and is exercising and trying to avoid French toast. In a sweet and fitting tribute, Sam’s father, Ed, is living his best life and fishing in Texas; the actor who played him, Mike Hagerty, died in 2022. Joel (Jeff Hiller) moves in with his friend Brad (Tim Bagley), and works where his little one will meet the kitchen blender. Their narrator is troubled by personal histories and expressions of faith. One of the big questions is what makes Joel feel most comfortable in the church, which isn’t the stuff of many comedies, but there are few comedies with quite the same easy depth as this one. That said, one of the other things in the relationship is about the attitude of the toilet, which is very Someone Somewhere.
It’s amazing how much this show can dig into your heart. Joel reminds Sam of the time he first moved to Manhattan when he warned him that he wasn’t good friendship material. If it sometimes seems as if the changes of the characteristics have been experienced incrementally in this last period, these reminders have increased in quantity. Miles of wild life continue to interrupt Sam’s day-to-day. Money is trouble; health problems; That persistent and nagging question is whether the “new Sam” will ever come out, and what he’ll look like if he does. But these plots are created and released as mere snapshots of life, but the point is in friendship and what people should do and do with each other.
If this series makes a serious sound, it has a brilliant lightness of touch, and, as Joel’s bathroom issues testify, it always sets the mood for excess. However, he finally dares to dip his toe into romance. In some places it happens in this way. For Joel and Brad, this takes the form of a sweet song, while there are no parades, red roses or grand gestures for Sam, the man from Iceland, the substantial beard, the steak-loving dog. After being so focused on family and found family, and on platonic love, he earned the right to tentatively make his way to something else. The show ends fittingly with a song before fading into the night. It will be omitted.