Why Did Everett Become Famous Again

Sam (Bridget Everett) and Joel (Jeff Hiller) bail over educatee essays in Somebody Somewhere. HBO hide caption

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HBO

Sam (Bridget Everett) and Joel (Jeff Hiller) bond over student essays in Somebody Somewhere.

HBO

It's incommunicable to watch actor, comedian and singer Bridget Everett in action on a cabaret stage without surrendering to the feel and goggling like a fool. She'south hilarious, filthy so supremely comfortable with her vocalisation, her trunk and her sheer, scintillating presence that she casts a spell over the audience. At that place's also the fact that to watch her in action on the cabaret stage means watching her in activity off of information technology — she spends a good deal of her act gleefully prowling the crowd to flirt, address, challenge, embrace and rebuff audience members, one by one.

If you're familiar with Everett'southward nightclub act, you'll likely spend at least the first few minutes of her new HBO series Somebody Somewhere in a puzzled haze of cognitive dissonance. As Sam, a woman who moved back to her hometown to take care of her dying older sister and spent the last half dozen months or and so nursing her grief, the electrifying performer runs at a low voltage.

That's fully intentional, as is the fact that at that place'southward nada broadly or archly comedic nearly the semi-autobiographical series. Yes, the premise bears some passing similarity to the classic sitcom fish-out-of-water trope — we learn that Sam moved away to the big city a while back, and now feels alienated from her hometown. But the deviation is one of degrees: Her hometown is "the 8th-biggest town in Kansas!" as ane grapheme sardonically notes. The "big city" she recently moved dorsum from? Lawrence, Kansas — the state'south 6th-biggest town.

Getting unstuck, rediscovering a voice

Sam, as the serial opens, is stuck. She's living in her late sister's house, only notwithstanding sleeping on the burrow. She's found work grading standardized tests, but refuses to engage with her co-workers. She dotes on her niece (Kailey Albus), only to practice so must put upwards with the withering disdain of her sis Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), the worrisome drinking of her female parent (Jane Brody) and the beaten-down passivity of her begetter (Mike Hagerty).

Life in the Manhattan, Kansas of the series isn't idealized, but neither is it condescended to. Informed by Everett'southward life experience (she grew upwardly there), the show seems determined to grant its characters a refreshing self-sensation — 1 that, crucially, isn't tied to notions of leaving their hometown, and the customs it affords, backside.

It does so by having Sam stumble across a gathering of outsiders chosen Choir Practice which, though it meets at a church space in a dying mall, isn't officially sanctioned by whatever religious establishment. Instead, it's a space where queer and queer-adjacent residents of the town can gather to gloat and — here's where Sam's story comes in — to perform.

Emceed past the charismatic Fred Rococo (drag king Murray Hill), Choir Practice is the brainchild of Sam'south co-worker Joel (UCB regular Jeff Hiller), who remembers her — and her amazing voice — from high schoolhouse.

Hiller'south the prove's not-so-hush-hush weapon. He invests the awkward, gay, religious Joel with a bracingly clear, and defiantly queer, cocky-actualized confidence. He matter-of-factly loves where he lives, and rebuffs Sam's unthinking, reflexive condescension towards it. Information technology's he who urges her to attend Choir Do and, ultimately, to become up in front end of everyone and do what she (both Sam the character and Everett the performer) was born to exercise.

Those of u.s. who've witnessed Everett onstage might look the series to ditch its muted, low-fundamental energy here, to show united states of america a woman rediscovering her vocalism once and for all — and show us how that moment feels to her: We might look a dramatic alter of lighting, and a lush sound mix that defies the modest instrumentation visible onstage behind her. Nosotros might even expect a full-on musical-comedy fantasy number, replete with sudsy production elements like costumes and choreography.

What we become instead is a woman who'southward convinced herself she'southward never practiced enough, remembering how much she loves to sing — haltingly, at beginning, then slightly more than confidently. (The choice of song in question — the treacly Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush ballad "Don't Surrender" — might dissever viewers; some (hi!) will find it too on-the-olfactory organ is a precious manner, others volition but take information technology for what it is, a small-scale, lovely moment.)

Somebody Somewhere knows that rediscovering your purpose, particularly afterwards a long catamenia spent struggling with grief, doesn't happen in a lightning flash. It'southward a piecemeal process that requires y'all to examine why you forgot yourself in the first place. And that'south what the series is truly about — Sam untangling the diverse factors that have acted upon her (her sister'south judgement, her mother's alcoholism, her own need to continue others at a distance) to rob her of her access to joy.

Over the season'southward seven episodes, there are other nights at Choir Practice, other opportunities for her to encompass her love of performance. At the terminate of the seventh and last episode, Sam isn't light-years from where she was when it began — but she's not stuck where she was.

Not every storyline slots neatly into the series' prevailing low-fi, depression-intensity mood; a series of scenes where Sam and Joe trail her sister'south husband (Danny McCarthy) in a auto seem to vest to another, more caper show entirely.

Mostly, though, Somebody Somewhere offers a modest, refreshingly clear-eyed take on the struggle to reinsert yourself into life, and grant yourself dispensation to find joy in the shadow of loss. That's not the kind of song Everett might belt out at the top of her vocalism in her cabaret act, but it'south one she sings hither with a bracingly honest precision, clarity and earned emotion.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/14/1072472731/hbo-somebody-somewhere-review-bridget-everett