Bridget everett somebody somewhere8/12/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() She mocks Joel for a vision board he keeps with his hopes and dreams for the future, pointing out that none of the things he wants will ever happen “here.” Sam came back to nurse her ailing sister until she died and lives in limbo now, haunting her sister’s house but sleeping on a sagging couch since she can’t occupy her bed. The only real value she’s absorbed from the outside world is that home is hopeless. She dresses like her alcoholic mom and shoots like her depressed and shut-down dad. She didn’t blossom into a sophisticate or become a success, nor does she really seem to have rejected her background. Yes, Sam has been away for 10–15 years, but she was living barely two hours away in Lawrence (a college town but hardly a cosmopolitan hub), where she worked as a bartender. But Notaro’s character is alienated from her family and the South-and confident in her new place in the world-in ways Everett’s isn’t. That’s roughly the frame of Tig Notaro’s terrific One Mississippi, for example, in which a comedian also returns to her hometown to mourn a relative’s death and come to grips with where they came from. She tells Joel, who she thinks is a stranger, that she lost her sister six months ago and is still recovering. Sam corrects him: The essay was pretty mediocre. Sam explains: The essay was about a girl “teaching her little sister how to take the training wheels off her bike.” A puzzled but game Joel observes that some of the essays are indeed very good. Moved by the essay portion of a standardized test? If you’re like me, you might find yourself thinking wait, what’s happening as you grope for the expected irony. She exits to compose herself and when a gentle co-worker named Joel (played by the magnificent Jeff Hiller) goes out to check on her, Sam says-to his surprise, ours, and hers also-that she was deeply moved by an essay she’d been grading. Her fellow graders try to ignore it, then start to stare. Shortly after we’ve met Sam and her workplace in the pilot, she starts weeping, openly, at her seat. In season two, premiering Sunday, each character expands their horizons a little more with new relationships and opportunities.Home, even if it’s in a tiny town in the Midwest, can be a place where you find hope, and community, and genuine, meaningful connection. Their circle also includes Sam's sister (Mary Catherine Garrison) and Fred, a trans scientist played by Murray Hill. Joel invites Sam to sing with his gay choir and she finds the acceptance and community she was looking for. It's like someone turns the lights on in her world when she befriends Joel (Jeff Hiller), a religious, gay man with a big heart who laughs at all of Sam's jokes and loves her for who she is. In the comedy-drama, Everett plays Sam, a single middle-aged woman living in Manhattan, Kansas, who when we first meet her, is grieving the death of her sister and distant from those around her. But the Bridget Everett-starring series is unique in its own right for its themes of representation, acceptance and also normalcy in middle America. There are no flying dragons, zombies or media moguls in the HBO series “ Somebody Somewhere, " making it different in tone and scope from the network's larger, flashier shows.
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