Skip to main content

Better Things: 2022

 "Better Things" returns for Season Five in a few weeks; Marc and I are partway through Season Four. If you're a fan, please continue....


This is a show about a "matriarchal dystopia" (according to one of the characters). 

Phil, a British expat, lives near her daughter, Sam, and Sam's own three daughters, in Los Angeles. The clan of five talk and bicker--and the talk is often about sex, or pooping. (Sam resents helping her daughter to arrange a hook-up in a motel; Sam purchases a new maximum-strength toilet; Sam's youngest daughter believes that her period is the result of having been hit by a car.)

Certain stories recur. Sam is unhappy with her Hollywood career, which requires her to "re-audition" for once-guaranteed roles, negotiate a tug-of-war between agents, and defer to an airhead from a younger generation. 

Sam's mother, Phil, resists aging; she bathes nude in a neighbor's pool, uninvited, and she drives a car even when she knows she should not. (It's a family car-crash that finally persuades Phil to throw in the towel.) 

Sam's brilliant middle daughter tests boundaries, trying to arrange a "white-person quinceanera" and actually disappearing from her home for several days. And Sam's youngest daughter begins to dislike her own body; this daughter wishes she could be Kim Kardashian, getting cosmetic surgery for "an ugly vein," choosing ballet over soccer.

Questions linger. For example, the middle daughter might be LGBTQ; no one really knows, as is often the case for long stretches, in actual life. 

And one of my favorite sequences has a kid losing part of her finger in a car-door-slam; this causes one witness to laugh uncontrollably; a piece of the finger gets ingested by the family dog; Sam must then try to dig the finger out of the dog's poop. The sense of chaos builds and builds, until you feel you're watching a horror movie. How can this end? 

Abruptly, the focus shifts; Sam's oldest daughter, a restaurant hostess, is enraged because her black dress isn't laundered. "I need that dress; my other dresses would show that I'm having my period." 

Sam unwisely snaps back: "MY period never caused me these problems in my twenties." 

And the daughter has a smart reply: "I am a restaurant hostess, on my feet. You were a pampered actress." The fight gets louder, and the missing half-finger is forgotten, and that's the point. Living with children sometimes means that a thousand things get tossed at you at once, so that you soon forget that there is a literal puddle of blood waiting for you in your front yard.

I think Pamela Adlon's sense of freedom and messiness is inspiring. I have a theory that her show's title--"Better Things"--is a blunt comment about TV. "You're watching crap. I'm going to give you a few better things."

Four years in -- Adlon is still delivering.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Host a Baby

-You have assumed responsibility for a mewling, puking ball of life, a yellow-lab pup. He will spit his half-digested kibble all over your shoes, all over your hard-cover edition of Jennifer Haigh's novel  Faith . He will eat your tables, your chairs, your "I {Heart] Montessori" magnet, placed too low on the fridge. When you try to watch Bette Davis in  Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte , on your TV, your dog will bark through the murder-prologue, for no apparent reason. He will whimper through Lena Dunham's  Girls , such that you have to rewind several times to catch every nuance of Andrew Rannells's ad-libbing--and, still, you'll have a nagging suspicion you've missed something. Your dog will poop on the kitchen floor, in the hallway, between the tiny bars of his crate. He'll announce his wakefulness at 5 AM, 2 AM, or while you and another human are mid-coitus. All this, and you get outside, and it's: "Don't let him pee on my tulips!" When...
3 comments
Read more

The Death of Bergoglio

  It's frustrating for me to hear Bergoglio described as "the less awful pope"--because awful is still awful. I think I get fixated on ideas of purity, which can be juvenile, but putting that aside, here are some things that Bergoglio could have done and did not. (I'm quoting from a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of the Church.) He could levy the harshest penalty, excommunication, against a dozen or more of the most egregious abuse enabling church officials. (He's done this to no enablers, or predators for that matter.) He could insist that every diocese and religious order turn over every record they have about suspected and known abusers to law enforcement. Francis could order every prelate on the planet to post on his diocesan website the names of every proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting cleric. (Imagine how much safer children would be if police, prosecutors, parents and the public knew the identities of these potentially dangerous me...
1 comment
Read more

Raymond Carver: "What's in Alaska?"

Outside, Mary held Jack's arm and walked with her head down. They moved slowly on the sidewalk. He listened to the scuffing sounds her shoes made. He heard the sharp and separate sound of a dog barking and above that a murmuring of very distant traffic.  She raised her head. "When we get home, Jack, I want to be fucked, talked to, diverted. Divert me, Jack. I need to be diverted tonight." She tightened her hold on his arm. He could feel the dampness in that shoe. He unlocked the door and flipped the light. "Come to bed," she said. "I'm coming," he said. He went to the kitchen and drank two glasses of water. He turned off the living-room light and felt his way along the wall into the bedroom. "Jack!" she yelled. "Jack!" "Jesus Christ, it's me!" he said. "I'm trying to get the light on." He found the lamp, and she sat up in bed. Her eyes were bright. He pulled the stem on the alarm and b...
1 comment
Read more