![]() Late in the season, a character’s death is awkwardly shoved into the last five minutes of an episode, mostly so Joel and Sam can tearily bond at the funeral. At one point, Tricia mentions that Sam has a job, but it’s never clear what it is. There’s vague conversation about the farm being in trouble, but that’s apparently resolved by the end of the season, when the sisters host a major event there. Unable to replace these concepts and characters with anything substantive, the episodes flit from one unfinished idea to another. Tricia’s teenage daughter (Annie Munch) is only given a single scene before she goes to college, while Sam and Tricia’s mother (Jane Drake Brody) is shunted off to a psychiatric ward in Episode 3 and never discussed again. Similarly, Tricia’s ex-husband Rick and her former business partner Charity don’t appear in this go-round, despite the fact that their affair blew up Tricia’s life. He occasionally references his struggle to find a new church, but otherwise, that aspect of his character has been excised. Now Choir Practice is just gone, reduced to a single passing mention. ![]() That not only unlocked something in Sam, but also cleared a path for the future Joel’s religious devotion. In the finale, after Joel left the church where he’d been secretly hosting Choir Practice gatherings, his friends helped him through his crisis of faith by suggesting the cabaret could live on in Ed’s barn. ![]() Last season, for instance, was built around Sam and Joel’s participation in Choir Practice, a cabaret that welcomed the town’s outcasts to sing, drink, and experience fellowship. It’s less clear why Bos and Thureen choose to give themselves so many other roadblocks. Hagerty’s death is an unavoidable fact, of course. As written, she might not be able to handle the loss of her father, and at any rate, that story could swallow the entire season. It’s a good choice, since Sam’s whole arc is accepting the death of her sister Holly. Rather than address his death on camera, the show sends Ed on a long trip to see his brother, while Sam and her sister Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison) look after his land. The biggest is the death of actor Mike Hagerty, who played Sam’s father Ed, a lifelong farmer in their small Kansas town and one of the few people who could make his daughter feel safe. Narratively, series creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen contend with several enormous challenges. ![]() This duo could jazz up a trip to the morgue, and they certainly make it easy to watch seven half-hours of half-baked television. The characters have one of the funniest, most generous friendships on TV, while Everett and Hiller’s chemistry makes them seem like actual soulmates. But as shapeless as they are, the new episodes are also a joy to watch, because they’re mostly about Sam’s relationship with her best friend Joel (Jeff Hiller). ![]() That’s frustrating because the first season was so well-constructed, guiding an aimless woman named Sam Miller (Bridget Everett) toward an emotional breakthrough that was both beautiful and earned. On a basic storytelling level, the HBO comedy has stopped making sense, with an almost aggressive disregard for internal consistency. The second season of Somebody Somewhere is both an absolute delight and an absolute mess. ![]()
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