Bridget Everett's Somebody Somewhere features an easy, spontaneous chemistry between characters who feel like they’ve always existed

The Hollywood Reporter

"The very title of Somebody Somewhere suggests self-effacement, and in some ways the series seems to live up to that impression," says Angie Han of the HBO dramedy. "Though it wades into painful topics like grief and addiction, it does not wallow in the depths of despair. Though it’s billed as a half-hour comedy, it inspires more smiles and chuckles than belly laughs. But it would be a mistake to assume such gentleness translates into a show that feels subdued or shallow. Blessed with an eagle eye for detail, a laid-back sense of humor and a disarming sense of compassion, Somebody Somewhere is a mostly low-key delight that occasionally spills over into sheer exuberance. Created by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, and inspired by autobiographical details from star and executive producer Bridget Everett’s own life, the series follows 40something Sam, who’s still reeling from the death of her big sister Holly some months prior. She spends her weekdays toiling at a tedious test-grading job, and her weekends drinking wine alone in her underwear. We get the sense she’s been drifting along this wave of loneliness so long, she can hardly bring herself to mind anymore. Then a nascent friendship with coworker Joel (Jeff Hiller) slowly brings her out of her shell and into the embrace of outsiders — some older, some younger, some queer, some not — who find community and cathartic self-expression singing, drinking and dancing at not-officially-sanctioned “choir practice” parties hosted in a local church." Han adds: "The heart of Somebody Somewhere lies in the easy, spontaneous chemistry between characters who feel not like they were created but like they’ve always existed. I don’t know how much of the dialogue is improvised, but it’s a compliment to both the performers and the screenwriters that it feels like much of it was. Everett may well be more comfortable in Sam’s skin than Sam herself, who softly admits to Joel that she’s not sure she’s 'friend material,' seems to be — she laces her scenes with a sly sense of humor, particularly when she’s opposite Hiller’s dorky but surprisingly self-assured Joel."

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• Somebody Somewhere is about belonging and how often the places we end up are forced to feel like home by default: "While Dorothy Gale might not have been itching to leave Kansas after The Wizard of Oz, Sam can’t do anything but rail against it," says Kristen Lopez. "Even as she does, a question grows more pressing: Is it really the location that’s a trap, or Sam’s own feelings? In Everett’s hands, Sam is someone you either know or are. She forgets to put on pants before she screams at her neighbors; she stresses out when she’s invited to brunch because it turns out to be a group activity. Holly’s death gives Sam a reason to be alone, but it’s not the reason she’s alone. If you’ve followed the comedy world, or seen her underrated performance in 2017’s Patti Cakes, then you know the power Everett brings as a performer. It’d be easy for the audience to see Sam as someone who’s just lazy, and that’s far from the case. She’s unmotivated. She’s unhappy. And the series skillfully shows Sam’s growth in a way that always feels organic. Everett is why Sam is so wonderful to be around."
• Somebody Somewhere is a true masterclass in not just crafting authentic, nuanced characters and building a fully engrossing world, but also naturalistic dialogue: "The series makes it seem effortless in the way something expertly made so often does, yet closer inspection reveals the extent of the craftsmanship," says Ciara Wardlow. "Buoyed by stellar performances from the whole cast, the show demonstrates a rare understanding for the value of negative space and how to use it—when something is more effectively communicated through silence than with shoehorned dialogue, and how to shape those silences such that the unsaid is still conveyed with a wonderful degree of specificity. Everett is remarkable as a woman who hides behind a mask of apathy and witty barbs. She’s hardly the sort to talk about her feelings by choice, but Everett’s performance manages to consistently convey to the audience things that Sam refuses to say or acknowledge with crystal clarity. It’s a subtle and compelling portrait of depression, a sadness that creates an intriguing counterbalance to the bold and bawdy sense of humor for which Everett is known, which also gets plenty of opportunity to shine."
• Very little happens over the course of the seven-episode season, but this is the point: "The smallness of the stories helps capture the aimlessness Sam feels — noting that she and Joel are already in their forties, she suggests of their dreams, 'It’s not going to happen, and it’s definitely not going to happen here' — while making the little victories and minor defeats ring out much more loudly than if Sam’s life were a nonstop thrill ride," says Alan Sepinwall, adding: "Somebody Somewhere is a modest TV series, and one likely to find a modest audience. But that audience will come away feeling like they very much understand these characters, and this place, because the details and performances are so well drawn. Sam may be down on herself, but the show about her turns out to be good at a lot of things."
• The achievement of Somebody Somewhere is how it puts Sam’s cynicism to the test: "It suggests that she is also taking the easy way out by indulging a belief that improvement is impossible," says Daniel D'Addario. "Co-created by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen and executive produced by Jay and Mark Duplass, Somebody Somewhere resembles recent TV character studies such as One Mississippi and Baskets. Both of those shows also found poignancy in contrasting their protagonists’ artistic ambitions with the humble surroundings to which they return. But Sam’s spikiness, and her struggle to cope with the reality of being herself, makes Somebody Somewhere feel fresh."
• Everett is fantastic: "Even with strong performances from (Jeff) Hiller as Joel and Mike Hagerty as Sam’s dad, Ed, Somebody Somewhere lives and dies with Everett’s remarkable tenderness toward this other, imagined version of herself," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "She hits her comic beats just hard enough and projects uncertainty with lovely subtlety. In the all-important karaoke scenes, Everett — who knows how to dominate a stage — allows her voice to wobble, a performance of ambivalence. She walks through the scenes with an instantly legible posture: You can see that Sam knows this place, and she knows these people. She loves them, and she knows they love her. And, even so, everyone knows she doesn’t quite fit. Sometimes she slinks. Sometimes she walks defiantly. Sometimes her stance dares people to criticize her body (often clad in T-shirts with the hems cut off, unlike her surviving sister’s prim floral-embroidered tops), while in other scenes she tries to disappear."
• Everett's performance is restrained and real, as rich and layered as a well-tended soil bed: "The show is generous in spirit, too, even to characters who first seem to be antagonists; Tricia, for instance, begins on a note of church-lady superiority but grows more nuanced and sympathetic," says James Poniewozik. "In fact, Somebody Somewhere can be generous to a fault, in that Sam’s struggle gets lost at times as other stories in the ensemble are foregrounded. But I see this broad focus mostly as a strength, giving the season a depth (over a quick seven episodes) that feels as if it could sustain the series for a long run. This is a show made in the spirit of choir, after all. You need to let the voices blend. And Everett can still be stunning when she solos. There’s not a ton of plot in the season — a small-bore mystery surrounding Tricia’s video game playing doofus husband (Danny McCarthy) provides some scaffolding — but Everett invests the viewer fully as Sam confronts her past. Sometimes looking through your high-school yearbook can be as harrowing as facing a dragon."
• What a relief Somebody Somewhere isn’t a 90-minute Sundance film: "In another era of entertainment, HBO’s Somebody Somewhere would’ve been a Sundance movie, another muted indie named after a bygone song starring a comedian in a dramatic turn. Here, that comedian is Bridget Everett, the New York-based alt-cabaret vocalist, who brings a slice of her Manhattan to the show’s Manhattan, the real-life Kansas college town where Everett’s father served as mayor, as did her brother years later," says Inkoo Kang. "What a relief Somebody Somewhere isn’t a 90-minute film, though. The draw of a warm and moving drama like this is experiencing the texture of Sam’s environs and the meaningful moments between the characters, and the seven half-hour episodes give the story room to breathe and unfurl at its own leisurely pace." Kang adds: "As a protagonist, Sam is mostly an existential corpse awaiting resurrection, but Everett brings out the spiky sarcasm that probably made her character a young misfit in her small town, as well as the resigned hopelessness that’s convinced her that happiness can only be found elsewhere."
• Somebody Somewhere knows that rediscovering your purpose, especially after a long period spent struggling with grief, doesn't happen in a lightning flash: "It's a piecemeal process that requires you to examine why you forgot yourself in the first place," says Glen Weldon. "And that's what the series is truly about — Sam untangling the various factors that have acted upon her (her sister's judgement, her mother's alcoholism, her own need to keep others at a distance) to rob her of her access to joy. Over the season's seven episodes, there are other nights at Choir Practice, other opportunities for her to embrace her love of performance. At the end of the seventh and final episode, Sam isn't light-years from where she was when it began — but she's not stuck where she was."
• In contrast to her cabaret persona, Everett is doing stirring, soft character work in Somebody Somewhere:  "Even if you were among those who stanned hard for her breakthrough performance as a domineering, absent mother in the Sundance cult favorite Patti Cake$, you’d be surprised by how much she’s capable of as an actress," says Kevin Fallon. "This is a series that takes its time to establish a sense of place, who these people are, and what they want from the world. But once you’re there and invested, you won’t want to leave. Everett’s Sam is a character who, like so many of us, has work to do on herself. That often amounts to an impossible task; for some, there’s no summoning the required energy to overcome the inertia. Yet Sam does it. By the end of episode 3 when, with the light of an electric crucifix glowing behind her like a sacrilegious halo, she belts the final notes of 'Piece of My Heart' and rips her V-neck T-shirt to reveal her bra and cleavage, you can see a person whose spirit has been transformed. So, too, has yours."
• Somebody Somewhere is a welcome addition to a genre that includes Better Things, Togetherness and One Mississippi: "In the past decade on streaming and cable TV, we’ve seen a wave of low-concept character portraits," says Matthew Gilbert. "It’s a small, dull wave, unless you look at it closely, at the right angle, so you can see its great, sparkling luminescence. These series, simultaneously comic and dramatic, slight and profound, sit at the opposite end of the programming spectrum from the uncountably many superhero tales, where nothing less than all of humankind is at stake. On the likes of Tig Notaro’s One Mississippi, the Duplass brothers’ Togetherness, and the jewel in the crown, Pamela Adlon’s Better Things, romantic disappointments, existential queries, and renewed hopes are as 'big' as things get."
• Bridget Everett hopes her fans will accept a softer version of her in Somebody Somewhere: "For those who have experienced Everett onstage — in plunging, nipple-freeing dresses and with an approach to crowd work that violates most decency clauses — her presence as Sam will come as a surprise," says Alexis Soloski in a New York Times profile of Everett. "She sings in only some of the episodes. Her wardrobe leans toward flannel. She sits on no one’s face." “If you’re used to seeing the wildebeest onstage, you’re going to be like, ‘Where is she?’” Everett says of her work on the show. “But I hope that people can settle into the sort of softer side of Bridget.” Everett added: “I also think they’re going to be shocked to see me in a bra. That’s really going to rattle some people.”
• How Everett ended up starring in her own HBO series: "I got a deal with HBO and then I called the smartest person I know, Carolyn Strauss, and I was like, 'Can you help me figure this out?' And so she suggested Paul (Thureen) and Hannah (Bos), who are the creators, and they pitched the idea to us and I was really blown away. I was like, this is such a cool idea, to go home, basically," says Everett. "They added in the dead sister, and I have a dead sister, and there's a music element, so it all felt like a great fit." How much of the show is taken from her life? "I think the themes are," she says. "The loss of a sister, the feeling lost and rudderless and purposeless in life, and alone. Those were themes in my 30s and into my early 40s that I can definitely relate to. But the family looks a little different. The other part that's similar to my life is the community that Sam ends up finding, and the friends. There are differences and similarities. We both have the same body type, both have blond hair, both have nice trim ankles, but also just a total sh*tshow on the inside. (Laughs)."