Still One of TV's Better Things

I have always had difficulty with a lot of the Seinfeld-esque comedies that are described as being about nothing. Most centered as autobiographical, these series tend to center around small things that are minor and unappealing. But I’m starting to find that there is an exception clause for these series, and seems to center around FX.  One of the better comedies in 2017 was Pamela Adlon’s Better Things, a roman a clef comedy with Adlon playing Sam Fox, a voice actor and character actress, and her family. Adlon spent much of the last decade around Louie C.K., a brilliant comedian who will now forever be under a fog for reasons we need not reiterate. The first two seasons of Better Things had C.K. still listed as executive producer. Season 3 is the first without him, and though that’s a good thing, it hasn’t made a difference in the quality.

Sam spent the last couple of episodes getting her eldest daughter off to college in Chicago. There were equal parts humor and sorrow in the early stages as Adlon bought everything her daughter would need in bulk, and made sure she got her room. Things immediately got worse when the plane she was on caught on fire in mid-air, and was forced to divert in St. Louis. When she got back home, her mother Phyllis (Celia Imrie, one of the series most undervalued players) was playing bridge, and seemingly unaware that her car was crashed up front. Phil then had a lovely back and forth with her fellow seniors who seemed just an uncaring about how they treated things as long as they had their freedom. She then came home to find lots of teenagers in her house, and her middle child Frankie, upstairs unable to do her homework, begging her mom for help, also uncaring of what had happened to her mother. Sam settles down, and starting splitting scenes from Raisin in the Sun with her.

Last night’s episode was a lot more typical. Sam is shooting a horror movie in what seems to be the hottest part of California, in a trailer with a broken thermostat, one port-a-potty for the entire staff, and two of the most incompetent directors you’ve seen in any medium, and that’s saying something. In the middle of all this, Sam tries to negotiate a crisis with her daughter, who seems to be allergic to vinyl, or maybe she’s just using this as an excuse to get her own apartment (it’s hard to tell on a phone with this terrible reception) go through a series of ‘experiments’ as her youngest daughter’s elementary school, where she cannot interact with other parents – and the feeling is clearly mutual.

There’s often very little that actually happens in your average episode of Better Things. The episode summaries are often just a few words. But Adlon, who writes and directs every episode as well as stars in them, is slowly but surely revealing herself to be a great talent in breaking down some of the greater nuances in her life and the world around her. She is basically a decent person, in a world where no one, especially not her family treats with respect, but strangers will tell her that their big fans. There’s a certain message about celebrity here that’s subtle in a way that we don’t normally see it.

One is reluctant to compare Better Things to FX’s other great masterwork Atlanta. The latter series is far more ambitious in terms of style and format, as well as the nature of the cast. But in terms of sheer quality as well as production, Adlon is clearly at least as gifted as Donald Glover. Granted, she’s been working on her craft a lot longer than he has, but episodes like ‘Eulogy’ can often rise to that level. There’s also the fact that the viewer has be patient because it takes a long time for Adlon to get a season together (the gaps was more than fourteen months between the end of Season 2 and the beginning of the current one). But just like the former series, its worth waiting for. Adlon is a quieter voice than Glover, but she is just as powerful.

My score: 4.25 stars.