Bridget Everett, Jeff Hiller
“SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE” (Max):
Fans of humanistic comedy (i.e. “Ted Lasso,” “Shrinking”) should make a beeline for all three seasons of “Somebody Somewhere,” an endearing and rudely hilarious series about life’s losers.
Or are they?
Bridget Everett, famed (and infamous) for her raunchy cabaret act, stars as Samantha, a fortysomething single woman with a voracious appetite for beer and unhealthy food whose bawdy/blowsy persona masks personal hurts and deep longings.
(Is there a better title than “Somebody Somewhere” to describe romantic yearning?)
Samantha gets through life with a little bit of help from her friends…and what a collection of distinct personalities!
Her sister Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison) is the most conventional of the lot, dealing with the end of her marriage by opening a gift shop full of homey items embroidered with profane exclamations.
Best bud Joel (Jeff Hiller) is a gay man whose initial weirdness (who the hell cuts his hair?) is quickly eclipsed by his soulful decency.
Then there’s transexual Fred (Murray Hill), a university professor who seems to be an expert in just about everything.
“Somebody Somewhere” takes place in Manhattan KS, and while most of the series is shot in Illinois (aside from a few establishing shots of Kansas landmarks) there are enough references to K-State, K.U. and Kansas City to make Midwesterners feel right at home.
Laughter through tears. My favorite emotion.
Preston Mota, Taylor Kitsch
“AMERICAN PRIMEVAL” (Netflix):
The Western, once a staple of American entertainment, has been saved from extinction by the rise of streaming services.
The latest to hit the small screen is “American Primeval,” an astonishingly bloody miniseries that stomps on plenty of toes.
The essential plot is far from novel. A solitary and sulky mountain man (Taylor Kitsch) reluctantly finds himself guiding a woman from the East (Betty Gilpin) and her tweener son (Preston Mota) across the West for a rendezvous with the husband she hasn’t seen in many years.
Turns out the lady is more than she seems. Back in civilization she’s wanted for murder, and their journey is complicated by pursuing bounty hunters.
That’s just one aspect of the yarn cooked up by writer/creator Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”) and director Peter Berg.
As a background to all this there’s the 1857 Mormon War and the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre in which an LDS militia — fueled by religious hysteria and political paranoia — disguised themselves as Native Americans to wipe out an entire wagon train whose leaders made the mistake crossing Utah on their way to Oregon.
The militia officers are painted with a painfully heavy brush…basically they are conscienceless psychos. We also meet LDS prophet Brigham Young, played by Kim Coates, who has traded in his motorcycle from “Sons of Anarchy” for a horse and an eye-rolling display of duplicitous villainy.
Needless to say, 21st century Mormons will take umbrage. Historian have long wondered just how much Young had to do with the massacre, but Smith’s script actually shows the Mormon leader ordering the butchery.
There’s yet another plot, this time centering on a Mormon man (Dane DeHann) who loses both his scalp and his wife (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) to marauding Native Americans. He takes off after his missing spouse without bothering to wash his face of the blood that drips from his savaged hairline.
One of my favorites is the famous explorer and trapper Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham), who from his base in Wyoming’s Ft. Bridger interacts with most of the major characters.
And there’s a U.S. army officer (Lucas Neff) whose diary entries, read as narration, help set the scene.
“American Primeval” has its share of historic incongruities (uh…there are no mountains outside St. Joseph MO). And while it shares with “Lonesome Dove” multiple characters and plot threads, its overall feel is more bleak and cynical than inspirational. Certainly there are no characters to enchant us in the way Gus and Woodrow did on their cattle drive.
Still, this series has some kiiller scenery and the action is brutal and merciless. Squeamish viewers will spend a fair bit of time staring down at their laps.
“SQUID GAME – Season 2” (Netflix)
Sometimes you can’t go home again.
So it is with Season 2 of “Squid Game,” the smash Korean series about a secret island where life’s unfortunates play deadly games in the hope of walking away with a fortune.
Lee Jung-jae reprises his role as Song Gi-hun, who in the first season won the game (meaning he was the sole survivor). Tormented by what he experienced and determined to make the game’s organizers pay, he spends his fortune trying to find that mysterious isle.
Eventually he ends up back in the game, using his knowledge of the place to plan a takeover attempt.
This time around, though, something’s off. The characters are painfully one-dimensional, less real people than symbols (trans woman, fugitive from North Korea, religious fanatic, etc.).
In a new twist for this season, one of the players is a plant. Lee Byung-hun portrays one of the game’s organizers who befriends our hero and helps him foment rebellion — though why he does this is never explained.
It all ends with a cliffhanger and a wait of another two years for the third season. I don’t think I’m up for it.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 