Manhattan Easter Eggs in HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, Season Two

Our opening montage of rural fields, prairie grasses, and small-town life includes a mix of locations I couldn’t identify (could be Kansas, could be Illinois or elsewhere), but also well-known landmarks from Manhattan, including footage of an old gas station currently being renovated as a full-scale restaurant that will be part of Little Batch Company. We also see the Manhattan Welcomes You sign as you cross the viaduct into town, as well as road signs from within City Park. However, the park Sam and Joel are walking in to get their 10,000 steps as they play Pound It or Pass is not our actual Manhattan City Park (ours has more mature trees). The Wiener Hole Shirt that Sam is wearing is from Auntie Mae’s Parlor and is available for purchase.

Joel (played by Jeff Hiller) has listed his house as a vacation rental and stays with Sam when it’s booked. When he is forced to buy cleaning products to get out the smell of dog poo after renters trashed his house (then proceeded to leave him only a 2-star rating), they go to a fictional hardware store, fondly named Varney’s Hardware. Varney’s is the first of many references to businesses the show has named in honor of now-gone Manhattan businesses from Bridget’s youth. Varney’s was a campus bookstore in Aggieville for more than 110 years. 

We find out that since season one, Sam and Tricia’s mother, Mary Jo, has had a stroke, and now lives in Independence Village, a fictional retirement home. We also learn that their father, Ed, has left Manhattan for a long-term visit with his brother in Corpus Christi, Texas. Their daughters are left to clean out the family farm so it can be rented. This plot twist had to be worked into the script after co-star Mike Hagerty unexpectedly passed away in May 2022, a month before season two began filming. The show's writers decided to send him on an unexpected trip rather than work his death into the plot, but if the show continues, Ed will not return. Show creator Hannah Bos has said that much of this season will be a tribute to Ed and his role in his daughters’ lives. (At the time of this writing in May 2023, we know that Bridget recently lost her mother, Freddie, so the parallel themes of heartbreak, aging parents, and grief are present both on- and off-screen.) 

At the end of the episode, we see Sam once again lounging in a Varsity Donuts T-shirt (T-shirts available online), hanging out with Joel and drinking “teeny ’tinis” in her panties after an awkward dinner with Tricia (played by Mary Catherine Garrison). While sharing a laugh in her kitchen, Fred (played by Murray Hill) makes his first appearance of the season, arriving fresh off a sabbatical in Wisconsin, where he’s been conducting some sort of agricultural research (naturally!). Dressed head to toe in a purple K-State wind suit, he’s been sent home by his buddy Ed to “check on his girls.”

This episode starts with Sam’s friends playing poker in Fred’s K-State-themed man cave, filled with football memorabilia and mementos from ag competitions. Sam’s drinking a Townie beer from Manhattan Brewing Company (the Townie is my personal go-to at MBC), and wearing a Vista Drive In shirt, while their friend Tiffany (played by Mercedes White) is drinking beer from the Boulevard Brewing Company. (See my season one story for the Everett family connection to Boulevard.) 

The poker game is interrupted by the arrival of Susan, a never-before-mentioned fiancé with whom Fred reconnected in Wisconsin. Shocked at Fred’s news, the friends later learn that Susan and Fred have known each other since grad school, but life finally worked out for them to be together. (By the way, Susan’s brew at the poker night is The Juicy, another Manhattan Brewing Company favorite.) Susan is played by Jennifer Mudge.

Sam, Fred and Joel meet at The Chef the next day for breakfast. As always, Fred’s dressed like he’s ready for tailgating at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. Fred asks Joel to officiate the wedding and for Sam to sing. Both are a bit apprehensive about their roles given their mutual issues (Joel’s confusion over religion and Sam’s mixed feelings about her singing), but Fred’s so enthusiastic that they accept his request. Later, Sam and Joel shop in an adult entertainment store called Taboo (not a real MHK business, to my knowledge, but probably a good term for how locals would refer to such an operation). 

Tricia is shown working at Ballard’s Grocery, which is supposed to be a supermarket in nearby Junction City. (The Ballard name honors a well-known Aggieville sporting goods store operated later in life by K-State basketball player Sonny Ballard. That store is no longer in business, but many have fond memories of it!) We get the feeling that Tricia took a job out of town so she won’t run into people she knows, given her embarrassment at losing her business and her marriage. At her new job, Tricia must endure an awkward exchange with a past customer of her now-defunct Tender Moments business. The former customer confuses Tricia with Charity, the woman who broke up Tricia’s marriage and their business partnership when she had an affair with Tricia’s husband, Rick, in season one. Tricia is furious that Charity is “killing it” in real estate while Tricia is now working in a grocery store. 

We are given a series of downtown shots of real businesses, including Yee Haw Country Outfitters (which has moved since this footage was filmed), Glenn’s Music, and Reed and Elliot Jewelers, where Sam is supposedly now working. Her boss mentions that his daughter, who attends K-State, is taking vocal music lessons from Darlene Edwards, a woman from whom Sam took lessons when she was a teenager. Worried about how she’s going to sing Ave Maria — Susan’s request — for the wedding, she decides to attend an upcoming recital of Darlene’s students. Darlene is played by Barbara E. Robertson. 

(Side note: I found out Stephanie Grynkiewicz that the character Darlene Edwards is a combination of two of Bridget’s influential voice teachers: K-State music professor Jennifer Edwards (now retired) and a teacher she had at Arizona State University with the first name of Darlene. Another fun fact Stephanie shared: Bridget was Stephanie’s maid of honor, and Bridget sang Ave Maria at Stephanie’s wedding!)

As we transition to the recital scene, we are shown the front of 901 Poyntz Avenue, which has been the home of Manhattan High School East Campus. (When Bridget attended school there, this building was Manhattan Middle School. This building is undergoing construction to become our local school district’s administration center.) In this short scene shot in MHK, Bridget’s real-life brother, Brad, has a cameo: he’s seen running into the building, as if late for the concert. (Brad Everett is a former city commissioner and was mayor of Manhattan in 2004-2005). 

The action cuts to Joel and Sam walking into an auditorium from a similar day and age to ours. At the concert, we’re re-introduced to Brad, who is Darlene’s only adult student. Sam and Joel can’t help but laugh due to Brad’s die-hard enthusiasm for his performance. 

Post-concert, Joel interacts with Brad at the snack table, where Brad encourages him to try a family favorite he’s brought to share: St. Louis Sushi, described as a pickle, smothered with cream cheese and wrapped in ham. “It all makes sense in your mouth,” Brad tells Joel. While I’m not sure I’ve ever sampled this particular delicacy, this type of Midwest party food feels very familiar to those of us who grew up with pinwheels, little smokies, and carrots in our Cool Whip-topped Jello. Joel encourages Sam to try Brad’s dish, and they both devour this “kinda good, but kinda gross” snack — which later results in a nearly too-real-for-TV physical response for both characters, leading the friends to share a “new level of intimacy” over the phone. 

Although it has only a few touches of local color, this episode includes a couple of familiar-feeling front porch scenes at Darlene’s house as Joel and Brad (who Sam nicknames SLS for “St. Louis Sushi”) sit side by side on a glider swing while getting to know each another. By the way, even though Brad carries a tote bag for Bethany Lutheran Church, there is no such church by that name in Manhattan. 

In a later scene when Joel goes to visit Fred at his Kansas State University office, we see some quick shots of the campus, including Memorial Stadium and Shellenberger Hall, where Fred’s office is supposed to be located. The interiors weren’t filmed on campus, but as an agriculture professor, Fred may have worked work in Shellenberger, the current home of K-State’s Grain Science and Industry program. (Fun fact: Shellenberger Hall is planned to be razed in the near future when K-State completes its new Agronomy Research and Innovation Center, which just broke ground in May 2023. Fred will be over the moon when that facility is finally completed, as it is a long overdue improvement for the College of Agriculture.)

When Independence Village informs Tricia and Sam that it cannot meet their mother’s needs, they’re told Mary Jo needs to be transferred to St. Michael’s Hospital in Wichita (not a real facility). Mary Jo is skillfully played by Jane Brody.

As we did in season one, we later see Tricia wearing an Alma Creamery T-Shirt. (Tricia, of course, would know where to buy the best cheese to go with all the wine she consumes.) 

I loved that Joel encourages Sam to take a nature walk to process what happens to Sam at her vocal lesson, but the landscape doesn’t look right for the Kansas Flint Hills in the fall. It’s just a bit too flat and green. But squatting in the weeds to pee? That was a moment I could totally relate to. I just hope Sam remembered to do a tick check later. 

Sam and Tricia spend most of Episode #4 on the road, taking Mary Jo to Wichita to get her meds fixed. We see lots of footage of what’s supposed to be “Kansas” outside the window. Although some of the footage features actual road signs on Kansas Highway 77, I doubt that much of the background scenery is Kansas (again, most of the show is filmed in Illinois). In the first episode, we send Shannon off to start school at the University of Kansas, but it looks pretty darn green out their windows for late-summer Kansas. Another landscape note: Despite Mary Jo’s declaration, “God, this is a boring state,” the drive between Manhattan and Wichita on Highway 77 is actually pretty — but also mostly undeveloped, with only a few locations for a pit stop. However, this route is the quickest between Manhattan and Wichita, and the one I usually take. 

On the way home, Tricia and Sam stop at Olpe Home Cooking, a restaurant they remembered from swim team days. I’m guessing this is based on Chicken House in Olpe, just south of Emporia. (Readers, please let me know if you know anything else about this reference!) This restaurant is not on Highway 77 between Manhattan and Wichita, but maybe the sisters took an alternative path home to indulge in some badly needed comfort food after their traumatic day with Mom. 

We experience a sweet “getting to know you” chat between Joel and Brad set in a park. The scene wasn’t filmed in Manhattan’s City Park, but we see a quick shot of a basketball court that was filmed in our actual City Park. You’ll recognize it by the large limestone rock near the street, which is how I could verify this footage as located in MHK. 

As they come back into town, Sam and Tricia stop by the farm to feed the chickens and get the mail. Bridget’s friend Stephanie pointed out that the house number on the mailbox — 1730 — was the house number of the Everett family home in Manhattan. Now, that is a detail even most of her family would never catch, but it shows the attention Bridget has put into every episode. 

The episode ends with Joel and Sam (after more teeny ’tinis) riding their bikes to Varsity Donuts through neighborhoods that are similar in age to the downtown corridor of Manhattan, but viewers can’t read the street signs. The episode ends before they arrive, but I hope the Varsity team has saved a couple of Bridget specials for them.

Sam, Joel and the gang have a celebration for Fred as they get fitted for their formal wear for his upcoming wedding at Woody’s Tailor Shop. Woody’s was inspired by a pair of men’s and women’s clothing stores that started in Aggieville in the 1950s (turns out there is still a Woody’s Mens Shop in Frontenac, Missouri, owned by a K-State graduate). The typography used for Woody’s brought back memories of the store’s logo. 

Also in this episode, Tricia has a confrontation with the proprietor of Campbell’s Gift Shop. The original Campbell’s was operated by Betty and Forest Campbell at the corner of 5^th and Poyntz for 53 years. While the character who snubs Tricia in the show was not based on the real Betty, Campbell’s Gifts was actually THE place to register for fine china and other wedding gifts. It makes sense to use that name for a store Tricia would shop at for place settings and decor to use for Fred and Susan’s wedding. 

One of my favorite scenes of the year is Brad and Joel’s “falling in love” scene set at the Riley County Historical Museum. The episode features actual signage, exhibits and artifacts from our local museum. I checked in with the museum’s director Katharine Hensler, who said while the cabin Brad and Joel visit is very similar to the Pioneer Log Cabin in Manhattan’s City Park, it wasn’t our cabin (shown here). As far as she knows, no scenes with actors (other than Bridget) have been filmed here. (She wasn’t sure if they found another historical cabin or if what they used for filming was a reproduction.) The crew spent about six hours in 2022 filming the museum’s exhibits, taking their tours, and learning about local history. Bridget was on site for the entire time. 

Brad — an 8th-grade social studies teacher — woos Joel with a retelling of the story of how Manhattan was founded (which I fondly call the “New Boston” story), and about Isaac Goodnow, who was one of the founders of Manhattan and K-State. Hensler said that the historical information they used in the script is accurate and that the museum’s staff were involved in fact-checking that content. The couple share their first kiss after Brad recounts the Kansas-Nebraska act for Joel and shows him around a cabin that he says was typical of the cabins the first settlers of Riley County would have inhabited. 

Later in the episode, we see Brad and Joel volunteering at a pancake feed — which is a very Manhattan thing to do! We’re famous for pancake feeds held by the Kiwanis Club, Boy Scouts, and other nonprofits as a fundraiser. Usual offerings are pancakes, bacon or sausage, coffee and orange drink, and maybe for an extra $2, a helping of eggs. All for a ticket price of about $7 ($5 for seniors and children under 12). If you enjoy this type of thing, you could probably find one every month.

As I wrote in my analysis of what’s real in Season One (see Episode #2), the set for The Chef is very much inspired by the actual restaurant, down to use of the real logo, menus, exterior door, and the décor. In one change from reality, the street number on the door featured from the inside of the set is 900, while our beloved restaurant is located at 111 S. 4^th Street in MHK. 

In this episode’s scene set in The Chef, Bridget wears a hoodie from the Manhattan Marlins, a swim club she was actually a part of as a youth. This club is very much still alive but doesn’t have a home pool, as MHK is currently between indoor facilities. In the summer, they can train at the outdoor pool in City Park, but much of the year, they train at a private health club’s pool. MHK Aquatics is a local group trying to figure out how to fund the construction and maintenance of an aquatic center in Manhattan. Maybe they should approach Bridget for a future fundraiser?

This episode features the most actual footage we’ve seen yet! The shots of Poyntz Avenue in the opening montage are very much real. (Don’t we have lovely downtown flowers in the summertime? Downtown Manhattan, Inc. works hard to bring that detail to the core of Manhattan’s shopping and entertainment district.) 

Named after the joyful nickname for Manhattan that evolved sometime over the last few decades, the episode starts with Fred arriving at Sam’s house in the K-State Purple Power Growler (a decked-out party bus, described in my season one article) to try to convince a depressed Sam to attend his bachelor party. The bus proudly plays Wildcat Victory, the beloved K-State Fight Song, at every opportunity (or maybe it’s the horn?). 

In this scene, Sam is wearing a Lulu’s Grooming shirt. I did some Googling to try to find this business but came up empty-handed. I checked with Stephanie to see if she knew the T-Shirt’s origins, and she told me Bridget’s dog is named is Lulu, and she’s crazy about that dog, so Stephanie’s guess is that Bridget collected this shirt sometime, somewhere. 

A quick transition scene features a woman reading the paper on the porch, and if you freeze the action, you’ll get a glimpse of Stephanie on her actual front porch! (Steph also revealed some interior close-ups that are supposed to be Tricia’s house were filmed in her home.) 

In this episode, we see some actual scenes of Sam riding her bike in the Aggieville entertainment district, filmed in the summer of 2022. The shot of her riding her bike by Varsity Donuts was real, as was the scene of her riding through the newly renovated 12^th Street pedestrian plaza between Taco Lucha and Tanner’s Bar and Grill.

However, the town the party bus is shown driving through is definitely not Manhattan. If you listen carefully, Irma declares their first stop will be at Finn’s, a longtime establishment founded in 1991 at a different downtown location and called The Gin Mill. Finn’s is now under new ownership and has been reimagined as a neighborhood pub, attracting a wide selection of locals. 

In a later scene, Fred will reference Irma doing body shots at Rock-A-Belly Bar & Deli, another local favorite gathering place. We see Sam go by Rock-A-Belly when she’s her riding her bike home from Tricia’s house. It must have been important to Bridget to include Rock-A-Belly, because when this episode was filmed in 2022, the street Rock-A-Belly is located on — North Manhattan Avenue — was torn up as part of our current Aggieville redevelopment project. You can see construction fencing as Sam rides by.

If you’ve never been to the Call Hall Dairy Bar for ice cream, you are missing out! I’m not sure the ice cream is quite as fresh as Fred brags — “straight from the udder to cone” — but it’s fitting that Fred would want to meet Sam on his beloved campus to discuss the bachelor party. (And the plain Styrofoam bowls are an exact match to how the ice cream is served!) Despite lots of attention to detail by the set design crew to work in purple signage and limestone, this wasn’t filmed on the K-State campus. 

Near the end of the episode, the exterior scenes aren’t in Kansas anymore — the neighborhood streets Bridget rides her bike on are not in Manhattan, although they’re similar to our downtown neighborhoods. 

When Bridget sits down to sing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas in the emotional scene at the end, Stephanie shared that one of the photos on the piano is this black and white photo of Bridget and Stephanie on Bridget’s first birthday.

This episode does a great job reuniting characters, showing Sam’s growth, and celebrating that love is amazing in every form. Not many Easter eggs are on offer here other than a hot pink Finn’s Neighborhood Pub T-shirt and the newlyweds making their entrance to Wildcat Victory.

We begin this episode at Darlene’s funeral, in a church that’s not in Manhattan. But in an early episode montage, some of the landscape footage definitely looks like authentic Flint Hills at sunset. 

At the wedding, Bridget looks awesome in her Tricia-altered purple short suit, and the shot of Fred dressed in his glorious purple suit and admiring Ed’s lush, green soybean field looks like it could be lifted from a K-State College of Agriculture student recruitment piece. 

Fred’s words about his connection with Ed, forged by their mutual love of the land, were some of the most moving of the entire series and wonderfully represent the LGBTQ+ community: “It wasn’t about him accepting me or being nice; he just saw me. That’s a rare thing, no matter where I am. If he were here today, my friend Ed would be my best man. Raise your glasses: This is to Ed.”

As they did in season one, the show perfectly chose classic rock by Kansas for the closing credits, this time choosing the appropriate Carry On My Wayward Son, which is a fitting choice for Sam’s journey this season.

Carry on, my wayward son      
There'll be peace when you are done      
Lay your weary head to rest      
Don't you cry no more*

*Songwriters: Kerry Livgren. Carry on Wayward Son lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC