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Pamela Adlon: "Better Things"

In its third season, "Better Things" features a journey. Pamela Adlon is free of Louis CK, and Sam is sort of free of her oldest daughter, Max.


The Max-starts-college transition was typically brutal. Max had demands for the graduation party: one keg, Absentee Dad would get a special role, Mom would not show her face. 


Sam--Mom--signed the paperwork, but then she hid with her own mother (Phil) across the street, just to watch the party. Phil (the outstanding Celia Imrie) stared at Max and whispered, "That kid will be pregnant within the next few weeks." And this was how Max's "California phase" drew to a close.


The show's brilliance is in tiny moments--noticing things many writers fail to notice. When Sam's antagonist, her ex-husband, betrays the kids in a particularly awful way, he quickly reframes himself as a victim: "Sam, you're judging me. I can hear you judging me. But you know what? People do what they need to do. And maybe you don't need to judge me for doing what I need to do."


Elsewhere, a party awkwardly embraces both halves of a divorced couple. The wounds are still raw, and Phil, an observer, doesn't feel the need to be delicate. "I don't understand," Phil says. "You share the house, but you're never in the house at the same time? In my day, we just stayed married and had affairs..."


Others feel skeptical about the shared-house arrangement, as well. One critic says, "The point of divorce is that you no longer have to look at the one remaining limp pickle in the jar....You no longer have to feel furious about that. It's not there, because your spouse is out of the picture, and there is no longer a need for fights about that one pickle.....in that one jar...."


I especially love Pamela Adlon's attention to microaggression. On a terrible film set, a young assistant who loathes Sam periodically pops up to say, "Sam, you're needed in makeup." Then, without a pause, the assistant barks into a microphone: "Sam is walking....Sam is walking...." The special rudeness of that line--implying that Sam herself is deaf, and that Sam is instantaneously obeying the command (she never is)....I feel this captures quite a bit about the workplace, any workplace.


Finally, I shuddered during a throwaway moment involving an iPhone. Max calls from Chicago; her male roommate, Talasco, who is possibly bisexual and not just gay, hovers, basically naked, in the background. "Mom," says Max, "I need to move into an apartment. These floors are vinyl. I'm allergic to vinyl."


Briskly, Sam says, "You won't be moving to an apartment. Wear slippers."


Then, the kicker from Max: "So I *think* I'm going to finish this first semester....."


And Sam, on her toes: "I'm sorry.....The connection is breaking up.......I need to go dish out the risotto....." The call ends.


I believe I'll remember this scene in fifteen or sixteen years.


This is great TV.

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