The series of comedies that have
grown up around stand-up comics have never quite appealed to me the same way so
many of the other comedies have. Stretching back to the days of Curb Your Enthusiasm to shows such as Louie, I have never been able to find
them as truly funny as the rest of the world seems to have. So much of the
laughs that come in these series are mined from general unpleasantness, and
while I have been able to see the humor in mannerisms, I have generally
preferred shows where there's more consistency when it comes to storylines than
that which center mainly on one character - series such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Life
in Pieces have always been more appealing to me.
One could make the argument that a
series such as Better Things, FX's
most recent comedy series in this vein, would therefore be flat and
unappealing. The links to Louie are
direct - the lead actress, writer and director is Pamela Adlon, a comedienne,
voice-over artist, and writer, who penned and starred in many episodes of Louie, and indeed, Louie C.K. has
produced and co-written many episodes of the series. Adlon's character, Samantha Fox, plays an
actress and voice-over artist, who has been struggling in her career, has been
divorced with three daughters, and is struggling with way too many problems as
a single mom, though many verge on insane. Last season ended with her eldest
daughter, Duke, deciding to disobey her mother by dating a man twice her age.
The season premiere began with a party at her house, where she tried to
accommodate her, then ending with that
man's younger brother trying to pick
her up, and the episode basically ended with Duke begging her mother to break
up the relationship for her. It was a very agonizing episode, and I can't deny
it was very funny as well.
The series has a fair mix of comedy
and awkwardness throughout. Last night, Samantha ended a relationship where she
had been having sex with the beau before they
went on their date, the man asked her if he actually liked her, and the
relationship ended with a hysterical monologue in which she derided everything
about him - sexual technique, his girlish behavior, and finished off with
"This breakup is brought to you by Uber!" Then she took her youngest
daughter, Max, off to be babysat for the weekend, and when Max asked her when
Grandma will die, Samantha basically told her the woman would end up burying
them all. (They do not have a good
relationship) And the episode basically ended with her going off by herself to
a motel, then apparently rented a car, picked up her two children, drove them
back to the beach, played with them and seemed happy - and then we saw it was
all just a fantasy.
Better
Things is more intriguing then a lot of these comedies. Yes, there's a lot
of awkwardness and fumbling over foibles that made so many of the Seinfeld like comics so irritating to
me. But Adlon is more appealing, even
when she is at her absolute rudest, partly because she doesn't seem the
traditional protagonist, even among female centered comedies. She's not a great
mother, a good friend, and a pretty terrible date, but Adlon somehow makes her
work. Part of this may be based on my own sympathy for Adlon as an actress, who
had a similar career mostly laboring in series as Californication, and finally at this stage, had to create her own series. She has
demonstrated considerable gifts as a hyphenate and maybe Better Things, which earned her a couple of Emmy nods and a
Peabody, will be a ticket to, well, better things.
My score: 3.75 stars.
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