Whether it is an election year or not, the South and the Midwest are usually the first places people denigrate when it comes to providing any political analysis of the U.S. To most who are unfamiliar with what it is actually like to live in these regions, they are “backwards,” “hostile,” and generally unwelcoming to new people, new ideas, and progressive movement towards the building of diverse communities that take care of one another. The reality is obviously much more nuanced than that and not easily summarized in a short series of tweets or a two-minute TikTok or Instagram Reel. The reality is the majority of the most radical political ideas and the most radical steps towards coalition and community building come from organizers in the South and the Midwest, even if many in other regions can’t or won’t admit that.

You might be wondering why I’m starting a review of the third and final season of Somebody Somewhere with this reflection. But I think it is important to understanding the quiet and instructional power of Somebody Somewhere and why its existence is a small and significant triumph against the backdrop of the current state of our culture.

If you haven’t been watching the show, its story revolves around the life of Sam (Bridget Everett), the somewhat disconnected nomadic middle-aged sister of an older lesbian, who moves back to her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas to take care of that sister as she is dying from cancer. Before moving back, Sam vowed never to return to Manhattan permanently but Sam’s lack of money, the death of her sister and its impact on Sam’s family, especially her younger sister Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), and her late sister’s community in Manhattan pulls Sam to stay in a way she couldn’t anticipate. In the first two seasons of the show, Sam is trying to figure out exactly what she’s doing in Manhattan and what she’s doing in her life. She meets and eventually becomes good friends with Joel (Jeff Hiller), a gay Christian man who’s heavily involved with both the queer and non-queer communities of Manhattan. Joel sees something in Sam she can’t quite see yet herself — the fact that she’s a smart, interesting person who deserves love and kindness — and doesn’t leave her alone until she agrees to hang out with him. Through Joel, she’s introduced to an equally jovial, loving gang of characters who make up Joel’s friend group: Fred (Murray Hill), a trans scientist, professor, and MC at the local queer community’s weekly gathering Choir Practice; Tiffani (Mercedes White) and Irma (Meighan Gerachis), two lesbians who live and work in Manhattan; and eventually, Susan (Jennifer Mudge), the woman who becomes Fred’s wife, and Brad (Tim Bagley), Joel’s new love interest who becomes Joel’s boyfriend.

Although the first two seasons don’t exactly provide many answers for Sam about who she is and what she’s really doing (or supposed to be doing) in Manhattan, they do serve as the foundation for what comes in the third season. That foundation is built, to put it simply, on the promise of community and what it means to be in the presence of people who love and care about you. Throughout those first two seasons, we watch Sam’s connections to Joel, Tricia, and all of the people around them deepen and expand in ways that are expected and ways that aren’t. Their commitments to one another are tested through familial dramas, disagreements, new romantic relationships (or the lack thereof and the dissolution of long-term relationships they had), job losses and gains, transitions from and to other religious communities, and just the general shifting dynamics in the world of Manhattan. They are forced in a variety of ways to figure out how to be with and take care of each other by working on themselves, healing old wounds, and maturing more than they’ve been able to prior to entering each other’s lives.

Season three finds them all at an interesting intersection. Sam has finally landed a gig she actually enjoys, serving as a bartender at a local dive bar called the Cock N’ Bull. Joel is preparing to sell his house to move in with Brad and is forced to contend with some unfortunate sacrifices he has to make for love. Tricia is newly divorced from her cheating husband and her daughter has recently moved out of her house to attend college. On the heels of some scary medical news, Fred is trying to change his lifestyle and habits with the help of Susan. Tiffani and Irma are dating, but trying to keep it as lowkey as possible. In between, Sam and Tricia are taking care of their parents’ farm after they’ve checked their alcoholic mother (Jane Brody) into an assisted-living facility and their father (the late Mike Hagerty) has retired to Michigan. They’re renting the farm to Iceland (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), a man who seems eerily similar to Sam in terms of his past and his uncertainty about what his future should look like. As it has been, Sam and Joel’s relationship comprises the heart of the show, and in season three, it is shifting again while not exactly being tested in the same way it was in the previous season.

Instead, this season expands on the strengths of the bonds of these characters, pushing them into personal and interpersonal growth that reverberates into everything they do and everything they believe about themselves. During a trip to the Great Plains Expo in Wichita in the fourth episode, Sam and Tricia’s relationship turns a corner that both of them are surprised by. After spending so much time thinking they don’t understand one another and have nothing in common, Tricia’s admissions about her post-divorce life are a breakthrough for Sam as she realizes Tricia isn’t the stuck-up bitch she always prescribed her to be. In the latter half of the season, Joel has a slight breakdown when he realizes he’ll never be a father and he misses the community of the church he attended before getting serious with Brad. As Sam witnesses how shook up Joel is by the changes in his life, she’s forced to step into a supportive and encouraging role. She’s never had to do this for Joel and their friendship is deepened by her ability to rise to the occasion. And I don’t want to spoil anything, but for much of the season, we see Sam struggle with her self-worth and her desire for romantic love. She begins to overcome some of the trauma of her past in response to the potential of finally getting what she wants. The third season is about the risks these characters are able to take knowing they have the safety net of their relationships to each other.

It would be a disservice not to mention the profound chemistry these performers have and have had throughout the three utterly flawless seasons of this show. Of course, Everett’s and Hiller’s scenes together are an absolute joy to watch, but the other performances are equally powerful. The third season provides some moments between Everett and Garrison that are both side-splitting and exceedingly tender. Similarly, as the relationship between Joel and Brad blossoms in its new state, the scenes shared by Hiller and Bagley feel so heavy with real emotionality it is sometimes mind-boggling that this show is purely fiction. And Hill is always there with perfectly compassionate comedic timing that helps propel the rest of the performers he shares scenes with into equally compelling earnestness. You don’t just believe in the performances of these actors, you feel them deeply in every part of your body.

But the real magic of the show relates directly to my initial reflection. Somebody Somewhere is a show about building strong relationships — building an actual, healthy community — in a place where many might think it’s an impossible task to accomplish. We don’t know much about the other people who live in Manhattan or their particular politics but we get the sense that it’s a place where everyone knows everyone else and where people are often working in tandem with the others around them to create a culture where people are safe, welcome, and accepted. The ever-tumultuous politics of the world outside of Somebody Somewhere are not written into the show, and I think that’s for good reason. When you come from or live in a place like Manhattan (or any other smaller town in the South and Midwest), the happenings of your daily life are far more dependent on the relationships you have with the people who live with you and around you than the people who are in your state’s capital or in the White House. Sam, Joel, and the rest of their crew not only recognize this fact but they use it to their advantage: If they’re all they have to survive, then they’d better learn what it means to keep each other alive. They heed this call to action with the kind of genuine passion and patience that is rarely reflected to us in mainstream media.

In Somebody Somewhere, we witness in each and every episode a community of people breaking through the isolation and loneliness of our treacherous and predatory racial capitalist society. They create spaces for themselves and build coalitions of people who will fight for and with them. And most importantly, this is all happening in the kind of place, a small town, people don’t know about but are happy to write off any chance they get. Even if it is a little fantastical or a little too optimistic in its worldview, the stories presented to us in Somebody Somewhere are more necessary than ever because the show dares to challenge what we understand about these places and about the people who live there. This third and final season makes this especially clear.

Sure, Somebody Somewhere might not change the world, but if there’s a piece of media I wish people had the critical literacy to truly understand and learn from, it’s this one.

Somebody Somewhere airs on Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on HBO and streams on Max.

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