We asked some of this year’s notable authors, actors and showrunners about the TV they enjoyed most in 2016. Come back to Watching, The New York Times’s TV and movie recommendation site, to read them all.

In 2016, “The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story” on FX and the wrenching ESPN documentary “O. J.: Made in America” stood as the two great tent poles of TV, demonstrating the medium’s power to tackle both the intricacies and the scope of a deeply American tragedy. But the moment that continues to burn most brightly in my brain is a smaller, quieter one, from a smaller, quieter but, in some ways, more (sneakily) radical TV show: Pamela Adlon’s luminous FX dramedy, “Better Things.” (Watch “Better Things” on FX Now with a cable login.)

The show centers on Sam (Adlon), an actress and mother to three daughters, and the moment in question, from the fifth episode, “Future Fever,” concerns Sam’s daughter Max, played by Mikey Madison, whose poignantly, assertively warbling voice seems to somehow encompass everything about teenage girl-ness. It’s the wine-soaked hours after a dinner party and Sam and her friends are sprawled comfortably in her living room, swapping intimacies. Abruptly, Max interrupts, blurting, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life. I’m really confused. And I’m never getting into college.” Jumping to default parental reassurance mode, Sam begins, “Oh, honey, you are. All you need to do is — ” But her friends shush her and give Max the stage.

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“I had to start trying to be that kind of smart a long time ago,” Max continues. “And I have wasted so much time just being social” (the way Madison says the word “social” makes it sound like an abomination). Now, a world-weary 16, she feels like she’s wasted the last three years of her life “getting high” and indulging in “drama” with her friends. “I’m going to be, like, 18 in two years. And it’s like I already blew it. That’s how it feels.” Max’s plaint could sound like a well-worn adolescent whine, but with Madison’s wobbly, rueful delivery, it takes on a feeling of bigness and keen desperation.

Stunned by Max’s confession, Sam is struck mute. We feel her impotence. Briskly, her friends jump in, confiding that they once felt — and still feel — the same way. “The big fat secret,” Macy (Lucy Davis) says, is that life doesn’t make any sense, we “don’t ever figure it out” and we always, always feel behind. Max listens, and the relief on her face is palpable. She feels comforted, and welcomed into the circle of adulthood.

At that moment, moved by the exchange, Sam bursts into tears. It’s an utterly unexpected turn, and there is so much in those tears: a swirl of parental worry (and fears of parental failure or neglect), gratitude to her friends for stepping in, a jolting awareness of Max’s near-adulthood and all it brings, and relief that her daughter has drawn her into her confidence and that there may still be time, even as it’s all moving so fast.

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For all its saturation in our lives, television still has the capacity to surprise — with violence and sex, boundary-pushing and brinkmanship. Here, the surprise is witnessing a moment so personal, so intimate and human and complicated and real that we never expected to see it on TV: the snares of love, of adolescent terror and confusion laid bare. Here it is, and it’s not a small, quiet moment at all: It’s immense, unforgettable.

Megan Abbott is the author of the 2016 novel “You Will Know Me.”