Music as salvation and a way to forge human connection in Somebody Somewhere
Music as salvation and a way to forge human connection in Somebody Somewhere
Does passion give way to purpose or does it act to provide enough happiness to rally you through the less inspiring times?
HBO’s new dramedy, Somebody Somewhere has released 3 episodes so far, all of which can be streamed on HBO Max.
The show is an exploration of Sam Miller, a 40-something-year-old Kansan, who returns home to care for her ailing sister and a year later after her now deceased sister is gone, finds herself still in her hometown and not quite sure what to do with her life.
Warning: Spoilers for the first 3 episodes ahead.
Sam, as it turns out, has an incredible hidden superpower in that she can sing beautifully. We’re talking Janis Joplin style chops which are only further accentuated by her cover of “Piece of my Heart” in episode 3 at choir practice, which her new best friend, Joel, invites her to in the first episode.
Joel remembers Sam from high school where they were in choir together and they now work together at a nondescript office locale where they grade tests. Joel admires Sam and recalls the way she expressed such joy through singing during high school choir. It was inspiring for him to watch this as a teenager and it has imprinted on his soul. He’s decided for better or for worse, he’s Sam’s ride-or-die and he acts as a good foil for Sam’s down-on-herself and the world in a very real way and for good reason, mindset.
Joel is all heart, positivity and wisdom but he’s not afraid to level with Sam either when she tramples on his vision/goals board during episode 2 after she gets dumped on by her sister, Tricia and takes it out on Joel, who did nothing wrong but love and support her. This is just another shining example of how this show gets it right every time! How rarely are we able to direct our frustration at the source of it even though it’s the healthier path? The Sam-Tricia dynamic isn’t a pretty one with Tricia dumping on Sam or roping her into things - belittling her - and Sam feeling guilt or low confidence to stand up to Tricia’s bullying but the show doesn’t allow us to fall fully into the good-evil trope. There’s layers here and we start to understand that complexity a bit more as their parents’ storyline unfolds and I’m guessing the Rick storyline as well.
As for Sam, her biggest flaw is a little bit of the superiority she feels towards everyone in the town which is really a cover for the shame she experienced even in high school for being different - looking different and daring to be confident in her singing despite that. This then translates to cynicism and her sarcasm armor as she dissociates herself from the town’s fabric, including her living sister, Tricia, who while a grating presence, admittedly, has been the one left to do the adulting - dealing with their parents and trying to be a stable force for the family. See note above about the show not reducing itself to the good-evil sibling dynamic.
Tricia’s anger and her mother’s anger, while displaced, is also another callout of the show. Sam is not an island. She’s a member of a family that’s in mourning, that’s struggling to keep up economically, and that’s feeling on shaky ground from a mental health perspective. The show doesn’t shy away from addressing Sam and Tricia’s mother’s alcoholism as a coping mechanism which while heavy, is balanced out by lighter moments such as the wild ride, childlike antics of Sam and Joel’s episode 3 coffee-fueled stalker adventure into Rick’s (Tricia’s husband’s) backstory, which, I’m definitely there for. To boot, Sam’s niece and Tricia’s daughter, would rather spend time with Sam than her own mother, which adds more tension to already tense sibling relationship, but it’s nice to see Sam and Shannon bond and Sam be a cool aunt.
Sam used to be a bartender and we learn through the course of the first few episodes that her dead sister Holly, was her anchor and the one who believed in her music talent and at one point gave her money to create an album. Sam, in essence, equates her value to the weight of never having become a version of what success looks like to her. There’s also a sense that she’s resigned herself to a mediocre small-town obscure Midwest plains existence, tail tucked between her legs, and she has a chip on her shoulder about it. She judges herself for it.
But much like some other great shows of late, Ted Lasso and Station Eleven coming to mind, it’s the fun you have, getting to do what you love or maybe suffer through (in the case of Joel and Sam at the testing center), with the people who get you that really acts as the transformative agent in your life. Even if Joel doesn’t travel to all the places he wants to or if he does, he’s biding his time on earth doing “stuff.” Because if he stops doing the stuff, he might just face a greater terror - that of just how lonely a place the world really is. Another show, Pivoting, which “meh” I don’t recommend but it is at times a humorous show about 40-somethings dealing with the death of a close friend, has a funny scene where one of the character’s husband’s tells her, “I want to die alone. I won’t want to be with you.” and then they start to argue about who should die first. It’s funny because we all feel that way. #ifeelseen
Describing her Saturday plan of hanging out and watching TV by herself, Joel tells Sam that it sounds lonely. Later Sam opts to go to her family BBQ instead and hang with her family - her withdrawn but kind dad, her aggressively angry and drunk mother, and her there-but-not-really-there brother-in-law Rick, among others. When Tricia leaves with her daughter Shannon after a family fight brought on by their mother’s careless drinking, she tells Sam she can stay and deal with it. She’s tired of it. Seeing this play out helps bring clarity on why Sam probably would prefer to stay at home on a Saturday drinking wine and watching Netflix, but her pivoting (see how I did that?) to instead show up and help out indicates she’s ready to show up and lean into her family. Either that or it’s the guilt.
The show delivers themes of chosen family with Sam and Joel’s choir practice cohort of folks that don’t conform to a heteronormative code and belt out bold tunes in an abandoned mall with a sign that reads “retail space available” on the outside what may or may not be a former JC Pennys, an indicator of the way in which the economy has impacted everyday life in middle America.
Incidentally the elementary school in Rockford, Illinois where I lived just shy of a decade of my life, shuttered its door a few years back after many years on the decline and it filled me with sadness, even after all these years. The town itself has suffered with economic decline pretty much since we left and even, I’m being truthful, a little before but it still holds a place in my heart. To boot, while the exterior of the mall where they have choir practice isn’t a 1:1 with Cherry Vale, the Rockford mall that was a formative cultural beacon of my youth, there are definite similarities. (Midwest cornfields, Department Stores, Malls that look like they haven’t been updated since the 80’s)
The scenes with the choir practice, while taking place in the here and now, are reminiscent of the the Traveling Symphony in the post-apocalyptic Station Eleven-verse in that both feature a ragtag cohort of artists who band together and cling to music and theater as a way of expressing their beauty and pain in a way that is authentic to themselves. They experience community. Similarly, Fred, who identifies, as non-binary; Joel, his friend, Michael, and Sam, are bonded together through music and non-comforming presentation. For Sam, one could argue, its her physical presence as expressed through her weight though to-date it hasn’t been explicitly stated. Nor has her sexuality been something that is surfaced, apart from quasi fleeting flirting with her seemingly nice and cool neighbor, who then was arrested for dealing Fentanyl at the top of episode 3.
In one of her Friday, “For the Good of the Order” 10-minute digestible audio podcasts, Kelly Corrigan, talks about the importance of fun, abandoning the fettered to-do lists that constrain our existence and reduce our value to whether or not we got those 5 things done today, and instead embracing fun that has no purpose. She’s not advocating for irresponsible behavior, but things like playing games, knitting, taking up an instrument. For Sam and Joel, it’s no doubt that music is their higher calling but it’s their friendship that ultimately fuels their purpose. Similarly, in Station Eleven, the graphic novel acts as totem for its readers, but ultimately it’s their connection with one another that saves them. The book or the music are catalysts. One could say the same thing about soccer in Ted Lasso. It’s not soccer, wholly, that compels us to watch Ted and Roy argue each week, but their ways of seeing the world and connecting even so, making sense of the mess, that puts it right.
For folks who want to experience Sam’s singing, I highly urge you watch both Episodes 1 and 3. Episode 1 has her singing Peter Gabriel’s part of “Don’t Give Up” with Joel contributing the Kate Bush part. Also, Spotify already has a playlist of songs that are featured on the show. So there’s that.
If you’re interested in reading more about the music/passion as purpose theme: