It seems like far longer than just a single calendar has passed since the last time Better Things main character Sam Fox (Pamela Adlon, King of the Hill) and her girls have graced our screens. Last season, Sam tackled sending her oldest daughter Max (Mikey Madison, Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood) off to college (and accepting her back after it didn’t quite work out), dealing with her challenging middle child Frankie’s (Hannah Alligood, Miracles From Heaven) growing pains, and contending with her spirited mother Phyl (Celia Imrie, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) as she battles dementia, all while contending with the difficulties of being a character actress in Hollywood. The series’ fourth season opens up with a pair of episodes written and directed by Adlon that pick up right where things left off.
This opening hour of Better Things Season 4 immediately reacquaints viewers with everything that makes the series so special, even in an age of niche programming and peak TV. Adlon effortlessly captures all the dimensions of her characters as they bounce off each other with a thorny kind of love that is as embracing as it is challenging. Tired of her mother’s erratic behavior after months of managing it on her own, Sam kicks her out of the car during a rain storm after they picked the youngest girls up from the airport after a summer at their dad’s in New York. Adlon captures that uneasy tonal balance of not being quite sure how serious or performative this act of faux liberation of her familial duty to her aging mother is, to the point that we aren’t sure if Sam is even sure how real an act of rebellion this was. There’s so much love between every member of this family, but Adlon and company never shy away from the sharp edges these characters have and how difficult it can sometimes be to like this family they clearly love.
If life in Sam’s domestic sphere is a messy bundle of exacerbatedly accepting love, her work life leaves considerably less to be desired. In the premiere’s second episode “She’s Fifty”, Sam gets the call that her animated series (based loosely on her real life voice over part on King of the Hill) which she worked on for a decade was getting a reboot. With a dependent mother and three teen girls (and an ex-husband who rarely appears and yet still frequently has his hand in her pocket) to support, Sam jumps at the chance to return to a job that pays well and she enjoyed doing. And yet she quickly learns that even after putting in a decade of work, Hollywood needs her to prove herself by auditioning for her role. She’s promised this is just a formality, but the discomfort in guest star Jeffrey Nordling’s (Big Little Lies) voice as he conducts the audition for a former star of his series tells you all you need to know. When Sam gets the word shortly thereafter that the producers “went in a different direction” it’s a blow to Sam, but it’s also hardly a shock.
All of these moments of pain and discomfort would lead a reader to believe this series is deeply depressing and mean spirited. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Adlon and company run head first into the messy, complicated realities of life, but they do so with such a profound sense of empathy and self awareness that the series ends up exploding with heart and humor in the most unexpected of places. These episodes are filled with such small moments, not the least of which is when youngest daughter Duke (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), now entering her teen years, consoles Sam’s friend after a rough break up, giving such incredibly soulful, specific, and mature advice that the two adults in the room are left speechless, in awe of the young woman she’s become.
For those of you who may be new to the series, this two episode premiere is an excellent entry point into the series. It establishes the characters efficiently while rendering them as complicated, nuanced people oozing with reality. It establishes Sam’s world bouncing between family duties that drive her crazy, friends she’s fiercely committed to, and a career that rarely pays her the respect she deserves. But most of all, it wears its heart on its sleeves while finding humor in the most unexpected places. The world is a better place whenever Better Things is in it.
Better Things Season 4 airs Thursday nights on FX. You can stream the current and previous seasons on Hulu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3rD2SAG5A
