I’m a sucker for a singer. On TV, there’s nothing I love more than when a character bursts into song. I don’t necessarily want a big, produced musical number with dancers and mood lighting, but I find myself routinely floored by moments of intimate, unexpected, tender, maybe even awkward vocal performance. There’s real vulnerability in a nonprofessional singer putting themselves out there, a vulnerability that melts down even to the actor themselves, and then strength in having done it—the drama of such moments transfixes me. Many of these scenes, as you might imagine, unfold in karaoke bars. There’s Kevin Garvey crooning “Homeward Bound” in the afterlife hotel on The Leftovers; Connor Roy intoning Leonard Cohen in the cheap glitz of a Manhattan bar on Succession; Tina overcoming her anxiety and triumphantly belting “Before the Last Teardrop Falls” on The Bear. But it’s not just karaoke. People sing in cars alone or together, they serenade each other, they sing in their empty houses, lonely or finally free. I’ll never forget “Zou Bisou Bisou” (Mad Men). I’ll never unhear “You can be my white Kate Moss tonight” (Girls).
Pamela Adlon’s dearly departed masterpiece Better Things pulled this off all the time, weaving it into the structure of the series, like an indie dramedy meets variety show. Adlon’s Sam Fox opens one episode alone in her living room, struggling her way through tendinitis to plunk and rasp out a solo piano performance of Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”; we watch Sam and a roomful of wedding guests bawl their eyes out as a newlywed sings the entirety of Tom Waits’s “Martha” to his new husband; we watch Sam and a roomful of old friends watch Norm Lewis sing “On the Street Where You Live” after hours at a piano bar; we watch Sam watch her daughters and their friends jump around in their underwear shout-singing the Phineas and Ferb theme song. Better Things was the pinnacle of a style of vignette-based comedy that’s mostly disappeared from TV in recent years, and so these performances could fold in alongside long scenes of cooking or driving around L.A. or having chance run-ins with old friends and strangers. Amid the minutiae of everyday life, the performance of parenting, of professionalism, of being OK, these songs gave us a look inside. They said something that couldn’t otherwise be said.
No show has learned more from the example of Better Things than Somebody Somewhere, which began its third and final season on HBO this month. Like Adlon’s series, Somebody Somewhere—created by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen—is a quiet, observational comedy about a middle-aged woman burdened by family, buoyed by friends, and negotiating the way the world sees her with the way she sees herself. It’s also got lots—lots—of singing. Starring beloved comedian and cabaret performer Bridget Everett, the show understands the power and expressive possibility of a good song sung at the right moment. Characters sing in cars, they sing in church, they sing in living rooms and recital halls, at weddings and in bars. I cry nearly every time.
It’s possible I’m just an easy mark for this kind of sentiment; that the kind of karaoke confessions that Somebody Somewhere leans on are a cheat-code for character development or, worse, that they’ve become easy prestige signifiers. But Somebody Somewhere foregrounds these scenes of vulnerable performance because it is a show about vulnerability and performance, about the struggle to tell other people who you really are and the profound relief of actually doing it. For three years, Somebody Somewhere has been a very sad, very funny, utterly perfect little show, a miniature epic about grief and acceptance. As it ends this winter, it feels less like a show going off the air than a minor ritual being performed for the last time, the simple closing hymn of a transcendent service.
Somebody Somewhere begins after heartbreak. Sam (Everett) has returned home to the small college town of Manhattan, Kansas, to help care for her dying sister. By the time we meet Sam, her sister has already passed, and she’s living in her house, trying to decide what comes next. Her verbally abusive, alcoholic mother isn’t a big draw for her to remain in Manhattan, nor is her domineering, dismissive remaining sister, Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), but Sam’s so unmoored by loss that she can’t bring herself to do anything but stay. That’s when she meets Joel (Jeff Hiller), an old high school acquaintance who essentially insists on becoming her friend. He takes her to an underground event called “Choir Practice,” a semi-secret queer-friendly cabaret and performance group that meets after hours in a Presbyterian church and is emceed by an enigmatic local impresario named Fred Rococo (legendary drag king performer Murray Hill). Choir Practice doesn’t cure Sam of her grief, but it gives her access to an alternate-universe version of Manhattan, a place where renewal and repair and community are possible.
At the end of the show’s pilot, Joel brings Sam to her first Choir Practice and cajoles her into taking the stage. She’s resistant but, more than resistant, she looks despairing—as if this gesture of kindness and fellowship were only an invitation to more humiliation and loss. “I’ll sing the Kate Bush part,” is all Joel says when she joins him onstage, and then it begins. Like a lot of the show’s scenes of performance, the camera sticks close to the performer’s face, framing her a little too close, a little too familiar, able to observe things she probably wouldn’t want you to see. As she begins to sing Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up,” her voice is strong but tight, though it loosens and gains confidence with every phrase. Her eyes are closed to start, but they open, less afraid, still sad, but less despairing. “No one wants you when you lose,” she sings ruefully. But then Joel—the Kate Bush part—replies, off-screen, “Don’t give up, cause you have friends. Don’t give up, you’re not beaten yet.”
It’s a bit on the nose, maybe. But it’s hard to think that when you see Sam’s face, when you watch her watch Joel sing—off-key—these words of love to her. Her eyes well but don’t overflow, she fidgets with her necklace—a necklace that belonged to her sister—with her face. She’s lost something, but it’s something she needed to lose. It’s an extraordinary scene, setting the bar for a show that will outdo itself in this way over and over for three seasons.
But Somebody Somewhere never makes a spectacle of its characters. It doesn’t cheaply trade on their sentiments or their tears, nor does it take any joy from their misery. The show follows them through their disappointments and transformations, so the stakes of this third and final season are small, yet deep. Over three seasons, Choir Practice dissolves, as does Joel’s refuge in the church; Sam rediscovers her voice by taking singing lessons from her childhood music teacher, only to be dealt another loss; Fred finds love; Joel finds love; Tricia gets divorced and loses her best friend and her business; Sam and Tricia find each other again as sisters and friends; they lose their mom; they lose their dad; everybody shares an order of French toast for the table.
This season, Sam feels the community she’s worked so hard to build slipping away again. Fred spends less time with her because his new wife, Susan, thinks she’s a bad influence. Tricia spends all her time social climbing and lustily making her way through the local dating apps. And Joel is moving in with Brad (Tim Bagley), leaving Sam without her de facto roommate, and, worse, facing down the prospect that all that love and support she found in Manhattan might be cut off from her forever, redirected to other people, relative strangers apparently more worthy of it than she.
Lest all of that sound too maudlin, it’s important to note that Somebody Somewhere has maintained its interest, even its passion, in toilet humor. Everett, an unbelievably charismatic actor, delivers one of the most riveting scenes of television I’ve seen all year by herself in her truck, doing battle with a barrage of burps. And characters are constantly rushing to make it to the bathroom before they have an accident—it’s a running gag throughout the whole series, and part of the meet-cute between Joel and Brad—and they always keep talking when they’re in there. Not unlike singing in public, there’s an extreme vulnerability to talking with a friend across the transom of the bathroom door in the midst of a different kind of soul-baring performance. These are the poles of Sam and Joel’s friendship: burping and farting that’s a little bit like singing.
Among this show’s many small marvels is the attention it pays to overlooked, underestimated characters and to the the actors who play them. Jeff Hiller, Murray Hill, Mary Catherine Garrison, the late Mike Hagerty—all of these players are acting in the roles of their lifetimes. Actors from the margins embodying big, juicy, hilarious, heartbreaking characters from the margins. Some of these performances are truly astounding. This winter, you’ll be able to watch Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline on Apple TV+, Nicole Kidman on Netflix, and Jude Law on Disney+, but the best single performance you’re likely to see will be delivered by Tim Bagley—an actor whose name you won’t recognize but whose face you certainly will from the dozens of supporting roles he’s taken over the past decades.
Bagley plays Brad, the emotionally constipated, stiffly kind, older boyfriend of Joel. In season two, we first meet him onstage, performing as the only adult student of Sam’s childhood music teacher. He sings an intense Italian classical vocal piece with such preposterous seriousness that Sam and Joel start laughing uncontrollably in the audience. It’s a uniquely mean, small-minded moment for the two of them; perhaps because of that, it soon seems inevitable that their lives will eventually entwine with his. Joel flirts with Brad at the reception over a plate of “St. Louis Sushi” (ham wrapped around cream cheese and a pickle), and, once that delicacy dramatically works its way through Joel’s stomach, they’re on their way to romance.
Brad’s big moment arrives early in the new season. He reaches out to Sam to help him write a song to perform to Joel as a surprise at their housewarming party, but when the moment comes, he hesitates. “I’ve never been comfortable, um, sharing my emotions in public,” he tells the crowd, while Sam sits at the piano. “And, but I’ve found someone who makes me want to go beyond my comfort zone.” As Sam begins to play, tears rise in Brad’s eyes, and he holds Sam’s gaze. “I’ve got you,” she says, and begins to sing. The lyrics are, as usual, a little corny, a little embarrassing, but sincere. And, even though Joel is standing right in front of him, Brad doesn’t look away from Sam. His eyes ask for help, telegraph gratitude, offer up a prayer. By the end of the first verse, he’s looking back at Joel, laying claim to the words Sam’s singing. And then, after the chorus, Brad sings. His voice is broken, blubbered with tears, but it gains confidence as he sings, as he looks to his lover, as he wends his way to the word “love.” It’s a performance that feels like someone’s waited their whole life to give it—and that’s true for both the character and his actor.
This is a small show, but it’s filled with big moments like these. This scene in particular is a mirror image of Sam’s first performance at Choir Practice, when Joel first held her up (“I’ll sing the Kate Bush part”). The hesitance, the rising confidence, the power of a friend’s presence. Few shows have defiantly tried to make such glorious, visionary television from such common tools. What would it be like if people loved you? How would that feel? What is it like to not be alone anymore? Somebody, sing us that song.
