‘Somebody Somewhere’ Review: Season 3 Offers a Ray of Light Among TV’s Dark Days
Singing is an act of faith. Whether you’re alone in the shower or mic’d up on stage, every time you turn your voice into an instrument, you’re asking for trust — trust that others will want to hear it, trust that you’ll remember all the words, notes, and rhythms, and, perhaps most importantly, trust that you’ll be happy with whatever comes out.
Faith isn’t easy to come by for Sam (Bridget Everett). When we first met the Kansas native in the first season of HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere,” she’s working a dismal office job. She’s just lost her sister, Holly, after a year of caring for her in their Manhattan, KS hometown. Sam’s parents are on the decline, and the rest of her family isn’t exactly a fount of inspiration. Even friends are hard to come by. To say Sam’s morale is in the toilet would be generous.
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But she can sing. She’s always been able to sing, and even when it seems like she can’t do anything right, remembering the power of her single saving grace may be just enough to save her life. After all, in the pilot, when her new friend Joel (Jeff Hiller) called an unsuspecting Sam out from the audience to perform with him, she could’ve said no. She could’ve politely turned him down or simply walked out. Instead, she stood up. She got behind the mic, and she sang (Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up,” fittingly enough). In that beautiful, simple moment, it was clear Sam had something extra in her; that she wasn’t what her sister, Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), had accused her of being — a go-nowhere nobody. Sam wanted friends. She wanted family. Even when it felt like death was omnipresent and life was moving on without her, Sam wanted to be happy.
Now at the start of Season 3, Sam knows where to find her joy. She’s got a better job that keeps her connected to people. (Remember in Season 1 when she said she wished she was a bartender? Well, now she is! Progress!) She’s forged a real kinship with Tricia, and she’s grown her friend group to include a half-dozen close confidants. Her parents have moved to Texas and seem happier for it, leaving their house to their kids, who are renting it to a husky-voiced yet soft-spoken Icelandic man named Viglundur (ólafur Darri ólafsson). On her way home from work to see her best friend Joel, Sam sings to herself, unprompted.
Things are looking up, and “Somebody Somewhere” remains a joyous jolt of heartland humanity in its third and final season. Life-affirming and emotionally intelligent, sweet and tender, truly funny and not just “funny for a drama.” The HBO series remains all of these things from start to finish, though it’s notably brighter now, both in tone and palette, than it was in Season 1. Each half-hour episode offers a weekly dose of soul-soothing nourishment. But co-creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen don’t ignore the difficulties that come with opting into life.
Sam is still mourning Holly. She’s still driving her sister’s old, oft-broken truck. She’s still living in her old, barely altered house. She’s still all-too-aware that the older the attachments, the more painful the detachments, specifically that great love can lead to great loss. So when people start pulling away, retreating into their own romantic relationships, or investing in other personal pursuits, Sam’s temptation to protect herself through isolation creeps back up.
Bos and Thureen (along with Everett, who writes and executive produces) are smart about asking why Sam thinks this way, and their exploration of it is detailed yet relatable. Even though love and support can make life easier, the kind of loss Sam has experienced and what it takes from you, never really goes away. Part of her is still afraid to step to the mic again. Part of her is still searching for a little faith.
“Somebody Somewhere” has always been about the delicate process of grieving without succumbing to grief. Sam is on the wrong side of that line when the series starts, and she’s made steady, often-inspiring progress over two beautiful seasons. Where prior arcs focused on her reaching out to others and them reaching back, pulling her away from the abyss together, Season 3 puts the onus on Sam. Her support system is still in place, but the seven new (and final) episodes sagely position our self-conscious heroine to consider the choices she has to make for herself and what they’ll mean for her future.
To be frank, I’ve often struggled with each new season of “Somebody Somewhere.” The top of my notes are peppered with concerns over forced intimacy and excessive sentimentality. But just as consistently, and even sooner in Season 3, I find myself giving in. Quickly, I come to see those aspects as a positive, not a negative, while recognizing it’s not only the characters who are being asked to accept big, openhearted moments of vulnerability in their peers. We, the audience, are being asked to do the same. Just as singing with your eyes closed leaves you even more exposed to mockery, bearing witness to raw, unfiltered emotions requires it’s own act of faith. You don’t want to open your eyes to see snickering faces, just like you don’t want to feel silly for investing in something that doesn’t warrant your whole heart.
“Somebody Somewhere” does. Sam, from the beginning and then over and over again, chooses hope over cynicism, pleasure over pain. The series follows her courageous lead, becoming an antidote to the doom-and-gloom dramas that dominate our culture (not to mention a ray of light in a world that can seem irrepressibly dark). What very well could’ve been another glimpse into small-town, middle-American life filled with ignorance and callousness, where anyone different is pushed away and piety is coded as idiocy, instead stands proudly as the opposite: Warmth and compassion are as abundant as the elbow room at Sunday brunch. Fears are personal and specific to each character, rather than shaped around coastal perceptions of Midwest living, and religion is a complex endeavor, ebbing and flowing along with life’s other evolving relationships.
Nothing is too simple, but it all hits on a fundamental level. Sam, Joel, Tricia, Fred (Murray Hill), Viglundur and the rest of the group have created a home here, and the series does more than respect them for it. It honors their way of life in such a way that makes it all the easier to see why Sam & Co. are so often overcome with emotion just from being there. Living there. Finding the happiness that’s right in front of them.
Though it feels too early to say goodbye, the final season ends in spectacular fashion — the only way it can, the only way it should, and yet without a trace of the disappointment. “Somebody Somewhere’s” biggest risks have already been taken. Now, it’s time for all of us to close our eyes, and sing.
Grade: A-
“Somebody Somewhere” Season 3 premieres Sunday, October 27 at 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO. New episodes will be released weekly.
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