Better Things type TV Show network FX genre Comedy

Drama

In FX’s Better Things, Pamela Adlon does it all and does it extremely well, even the part where she plays a woman who doesn’t often feel successful at anything. Best known for Louie, Californiacation, and her Emmy-winning turn voicing Bobby on King of the Hill, Adlon co-created Better Things with Louis C.K. and works as co-showrunner, writer, director, and star. In front of the camera, she’s Sam Fox, a fiction drawn from her life, a fortysomething L.A. woman, divorced and single, raising three daughters alone, each a little mirror of herself: anxious, rebellious Max (Mikey Madison) is the oldest; tender, needy Duke (Olivia Edward) is the youngest; and feisty, offbeat Frankie (Hannah Alligood) resides in the middle. They are her life, and she is all they have. They might be enough for each other, but they all deserve better. This is the source of the show’s bittersweet hilarity and heartbreak.

A former child star with an ambivalent relationship to her past, Sam makes her living as a journeyman actor, narrating commercials, performing voices for cartoons, and bouncing between Canada and Hollywood to film guest spots in legal dramas, sci-fi shows and sexy melodramas. Her low, raspy voice, dynamic range and appealing looks make her distinctive, hysterical and sexy in the eyes of Hollywood producers, an embodiment of “real people” — but Sam knows she’ll lose roles to blonde superstars like Julie Bowen all the time. This allows Better Things to be something else, too: a winky showbiz satire; a valentine to workaday entertainment pros who won’t ever have their name on a marquee. Sam thinks she has no time for a relationship, and maybe she doesn’t trust them too much, either.

Sam’s love life consists of quickies and dinner dates with emotionally unavailable men. The caller ID she assigns the guy she sleeps with most: “NOBODY.” He’s probably married. Her days of hustling kids and jobs are full and exhausting (tired all the time, she likes to say she suffers from “Momstein-Bahr”), and even more so when she’s caring for her flighty, widowed British expat mom, Phil (Celia Imrie), which is often: she lives across the street. (The Fox women seem to have a thing for masculine sounding names.) But there are lightning strikes of thrilling joy. Spying on Max as she loses herself in dance. A attack hug from Frankie. The rare parenting call that goes absolutely and wonderfully right. I hope Adlon herself is experiencing such reward in the grind of living her life and producing this show, I need her to keep making it: Better Things is a rich, raw and authentic portrait of the life of a single mom in particular, and parenthood in general.

Better Things belongs to a growing genre of low-fi shaggy dramedy about ragged, maturity-challenged adults on a neverending shamble toward realization, full of real talk laughs and streaks of absurdity. The best hinge on a strong POV with ace filmmaking chops and some wisdom about people and relationships. Catastrophe, Love, and, of course, Louis CK’s Louie, where Adlon served as consulting producer and played Pamela, a character not too far removed from and Sam. Better Things immediately muscles into their company.

As a single parent raising three kids (with a ton of support), I could connect with a lot of Better Things. There is a scene when Sam is on her phone trying to connect with another adult human being amid some defeating drama with her kids. There’s a long beat where she’s waiting on a response — waiting for that iPhone word bubble to go from ellipses to words — and it feels like an eternity. We’ve all been there, probably, but it means something unique to the overwhelmed, relationally-starved single parent. That I can relate to Better Things doesn’t make the show an artful thing (though I believe it is), but I must confess that it’s a huge reason why I feel huge emotions for it. I should also say that there’s a profound difference between being a single father and a single mother. I haven’t always recognized the difference, and the work of Adlon and CK have helped me see it.

The first Louie episode in which Adlon appears includes a joke that illuminates the distinction, and in many ways, sums up the POV of Better Things. Louie and Pamela, both single parents, are at a PTA meeting. When Louie mentions it’s his first time, he gets a smattering of approving atta-boys. When Pamela says it’s her first time, she gets only cold stares and silence. “What?! I work!” she says. Louie’s effort is extra credit work that gets gold stars. Pamela’s effort is an expected gender norm, and the only grades for her PASS and FAIL.

The premiere of Better Things, directed by CK, opens with a sharp joke full of protest on behalf of single parents everywhere, and moms in particular. It finds Sam sitting on a bench in a mall as Duke wails crocodile tears about… something. The cause of her trauma is not immediately clear. Sam is actively ignoring this despair and texting on her phone, earning a reproachful stare from an older woman sitting at the opposite end of the bench. You might be inclined to share her disapproval. Get off your phone! Attend your kid’s pain! Shut her up, already, you’re disturbing people! The world isn’t all about you, you know! But our attitudes shift as Pamela explains the battle of wills that’s taking place between her and her daughter. She coolly but not rudely puts the woman in her place, because on some level, she doesn’t completely disagree with her irritation. She sighs, finally engages Duke, and then takes her for some hot dog on a stick.

The scene is a one-shot allegory about empathy, assumptions, and single parent experience, too — of being overwhelmed; of being run by your kids; of being resigned to certain degree of messy process; of the feeling of being watched, quietly judged and actively shamed. But CK’s choice of angle, framing and deep focus makes a layered image that captures so much more. Look to the bottom and you see that Duke is wearing boots and jeans, just like her Mom, except Duke’s boots and jeans are way too large for her. It makes you realize that her entire ensemble is way too large on her. They could be hand-me-downs from her older sisters or mother, or they could be leftovers from her father: the attire is gender neutral/ambiguous. She’s a mirror twin to her mom, suggesting ideas of parental influence but also parent-child equivalency. But she could represents her sisters, too. They’re all growing up too fast, they’re all struggling with issues of identity and gender, they’re all impacted by their mom’s limitations, they’re all affected by that which is largely unspoken, the total absence of dad or really any male figure in their lives. But Duke stands for single parent Sam, too. She symbolizes the parts of her that feel constantly needy and weirdly immature, as if you’ve regressed or devolved as a result of sudden onset singleness with only kids for companions; the part of her that is just crying on the inside all the time in woe-is-me protest about everything.

But wait! There’s more! Look to the upper level of the frame and background, which captures a completely separate drama playing out behind the bench, right behind the heads of Sam and the other woman. There are children play-fighting and tackling each other. One’s a boy, the other is… well, I can’t tell (no offense, kid), but he or she wins two of their three throw-downs. Their non-stop round-and-round is a metaphor for Sam and her girls, and the gender-blurry kid speaks to any one of them, including Sam herself, who has to find a way to be both mother and father to three very strong personalities, and take care of herself, too.

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Better Things covers the big themes that shows about parenthood have always covered, and hits the hot topics of the now that you’d expect an of-the-moment show of this stripe to hit. Parts of it are actually rather conventional, at least in plot. There’s even a parent-comes-home-early-from-out-of-town-and-discovers-the-kids-threw-a-rager plot. But the skill, experience and perspective of Adlon and CK freshen and deepen everything they set their sights on. The second episode, “Period,” explores how womanhood and motherhood are the inescapable texts and subtexts of Sam’s life, of every personal and professional interaction. She actually yearns for menopause. She doesn’t want to have any more kids, she wants to have the same sexual freedoms as a dude, maybe because sex is the primary means of scoring a shot of adult intimacy and connection. “Have I shut down there yet? Am I a man yet?” This half-kidding crack becomes more complicated as she navigates some ongoing, tricky business with Frankie, a politically precocious kid wrestling with identity and control (she might be OCD; the show plays it but doesn’t it explain it) via some glib considerations: she’s mulling female circumcision. Good luck parenting that, Sam. The winding plot evolves into a reflection on how women with each other about their experience – how it’s easy to talk about juggling career and family, but not nearly as easy to speak frankly, comfortably and supportively about the physical, existential experience of being a woman. It concludes at a female empowerment seminar at Frankie’s school, where Sam goes off script to provoke a get-real, get-vulnerable discussion about menstruation. Sam’s feminist idealism and humanist realpolitik in a nutshell: “Take care of each other and make the rest up as we go along.” The sequence stands for the way Better Things wants to be seen, a very entertaining real-talk cultural conversation. For some, like me, it offers the reward of being recognized and being known, and that’s huge. As such, it echoes the call of screen diversity and affirms the importance of it.

Some episodes like “Period” are meaningful meanders. Others have clear arcs of story. In the third outing, “Brown,” Pamela tries to cultivate a friendship, and perhaps something more, with a TV director, a kindred spirit in some respects, as well as African-American, which puts them on a collision course with Phil, whose attitudes and language regarding race have not yet been reconstructed. In the fourth episode, “Woman is the Something of the Something,” Sam investigates plastic surgery, for any number of reasons, while unbeknownst to her, a drama plays out that could change her life forever: a pair of TV super-producers are considering her as the lead for their new sitcom. The episode spoofs Hollywood casting practices and affirms, perhaps cynically, the adage that youth and stardom more often than not trumps maturity and “everywoman” authenticity. But it also finds a clever, meaningful way to dramatize the cost of the single parent career-kid juggle, where a professional opportunity and parenting opportunity are in constant competition.

Better Things is certifiably brilliant at the portraying the sloggy suckitude of single parenthood, but it’s never gets bogged down by it, and it’s unfailingly funny. While episodes are well-crafted wholes, I experienced most of them as a collection of deeply considered thematic riffs. In one, Sam has to bring the snacks to Frankie’s soccer game, and there’s a long, long tracking shot of Sam hauling a cooler and pop-up tent all by herself, walking an epic line of sideline chalk without complaint, save for flashes of grimace. She gets to the other parents — and then the scene abruptly cuts off, denying us or her anything close to a reward for her pack mule labor and team service, not even a “thank you.” It’s a beautiful little vignette of walk-the-like parenting.

In another episode, Sam takes a contentious call from a teacher while recording a voice for a cartoon, bringing work to a standstill. When you’re a single parent, there are rarely divisions between professional life and domestic life. You’re always multitasking and managing multiple fronts of people and work, even if just in your head. You’re always sweating the pressure to make sure one doesn’t affect the other, for your sake and everyone else’s, and you’re often failing, causing complications for all. CK finds ways to convey this idea largely with camera and editing — panning toward the cutesy animated character on the monitor while Sam bickers with the teacher, creating an ironic, funny image; cutting to the recording sitting in their silent room, waiting on her. She rewards their patience by cracking jokes after the call — going off on the teacher with her cartoon voice — and they and we laugh, but that she feels she has to perform for them in that way at all is poignant, too. You’re always apologizing when you’re a single parent — for asking for help, for keeping people waiting, for making mistakes in the midst of always being so flooded, for being a mess.

Sam’s family is a dysfunctional unit whose individual dysfunctions impact each other. Every parent fears that their basically passing their flaws to their kids, but when you’re a single parent, you sweat this even more, and feel this even more, because it’s only and all you. One of the things I see in Adlon’s performance — and appreciate — is how Sam clearly feels like crap for effing up her kids with her foibles and finitude, but also recognizes that it’s inevitable and she has to make peace with it. The example she sets over five episodes is that of a parent endeavoring to stay connected with her kids and work stuff out together. It’s not about making sure your kid never cries over the smallest of things; it’s about going the corndog-on-a-stick after she stops.

Better Things portrays aspects of scrappy single parent family dynamics that I’ve never really seen before — how kids internalize their parents anxiety, how they’re always afraid amid the experience of hardscrabble chaos. The spectacle of watching Mom or Dad rise to the challenge is only comforting and inspiring when done perfectly, without breaking a sweat. Otherwise, it’s terrifying, because even when parents succeed, their messy effort suggests the possibility of catastrophic failure. And then what? There’s a moment when Sam goes around the house in the middle of the night trying to find and fix a smoke detector on the fritz. She screws up and triggers an alarm, which summons the cops and fire department, which wakes up the kids and scares them, which gets expressed in anger and resentment toward mom. In the early episodes, Max is constantly exasperated by her frazzled, frustrated mother, which, in turn, makes her something of an insufferable teenager. But Adlon and CK are always careful to make you understand Max’s perspective — how her lack of grace for her mom’s many imperfections (including her lack of grace for other people’s imperfections) betrays her fear that, yes, she, too, can’t be anything less than perfect; how her petulance and rule-breaking is a protest against a home-life hurting for structure and constancy. I fell hard for the Fox kids. For those less enamored with them out of the gate, hang in there until episode 5, “Future Fever,” which drills down on Max and opens her up as she confronts her own limitations, failures and fears, and concludes with a parenting moment that left me wrecked and inspired.

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Better Things premieres Thursday on FX.