Giving thanks for Pamela Adlon’s weird, beautiful FX dramedy about the unbearable everything-ness of being.
Going out with a friend who has a bit too much to drink at dinner.
Experiencing the stress of “packingshpilkes” the night before a big trip.
Kevin Pollack and Pamela Adlon in ‘Better Things’.Suzanne Tenner/FX
Sharing a charged moment with the TaskRabbit guy.
Sam’s eldest daughter, Max (Mikey Madison), has been out of the house for years.
Her youngest, 13-year-old Duke (Olivia Edward), barely looks up from her phone.
Her headstrong mom, Phil (Celia Imrie), has no patience for nostalgia.
“What difference does all of this make now?”
“A life, then gone.”
“It gives me confidence somehow like I’m important, and you are.”
In a way, that’s the legacy ofBetter Things.
It’s a drunken Max grabbing her face and exclaiming: “Mom!
I love you so much!
I would die if you died!”
(“I’m sitting right next to you,” Sam shoots back.
“Do you want me to just pretend I’m unconscious?")
Not that being a daughter is any easier.
Every phase of womanhood presents its own terrible-slash-wonderful challenges, andBetter Thingshonors them all.
Duke is deep in the hate hole that is female adolescence desperately uncomfortable with everything about herself.
“Like, I hate my face, like, I hate my body.
“I’m not good at anything.”
It’s painfully relatable to anyone who’s ever been (or known) a teenage girl.
This is a season of big changes and small victories, of overseas travel and ever-present work agita.
Also playing himself this season:Danny Trejo, who bumps into Sam at a school volunteer event.
(Though in Adlon’s universe, Trejo has 18 (!)
children, 15 more than he’s fathered in real life.
Sam is a nurturer, a caretaker, happiest when she’s surrounded by people she loves.
The solitude is blissful.
Then she passes a man (Tim McKernan) sitting on the landing, sobbing quietly to himself.
Soon a rude woman pushes past, snapping at them for taking up too much room.
It breaks the tension, and Sam and Sad Guy burst out laughing.
“Life’s funny,” says Sam.
“Even when it’s sad.”
Thanks for sitting with us, Sam Fox.Season 5 and series grade: A
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