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Better Things

 A character I love this year is Frankie, Sam's brilliant middle child in "Better Things." Frankie can give endless displays of compassion to her grandmother, but can't find any time for her mother. (It's nutty that Frankie wants Sam to show more patience to Phil, when Frankie herself can't show any patience to Sam.)


Frankie's great wish is for independence. This is seen again and again: Frankie won't have a bat mitzvah, but will design a "batcenera," blending cultures; Frankie won't accept that a pink sparkly cell phone is a "girl's" cell phone ("it's Rip Taylor's cell phone"); Frankie stage-manages a first sexual encounter in an awkward setting ("because I didn't want to be passive, I didn't just want some guy to show up and take this from me")..... We can imagine Frankie spending hours with Google, obtaining life skills that are foreign to everyone else in her family. ("How do I cope with identity theft?" "What should I know about internet safety?" "How do I accelerate the high-school experience, in an effort to preserve my own sanity?")

A theme this year seems to be wind ("It's wind-ing," "I don't fuck with wind at night") ....and I wonder if the wind will retain its link with Frankie. I think of the phrase "winds of change," and I connect change with Frankie, especially: Her understanding of her own gender seems to be in flux, she seems only half-attached to her job at the grocery store, and she seems passionately interested in her father, in unanswered questions that surround her parents' failed marriage. ("Call the dad," says Frankie, when Sam gets involved with a distressed child. "Don't call the mom, call the dad." This is a strange way for Frankie to hurt her mother, and to say that all is not well on the homefront. Frankie may even be unaware that she is hurting her mother.)

I have found the three recent episodes of this show to be somewhat slow--and, still, there are things to think about.

P.S. Related to wind -- gravity seems to be a concern this year. A random California resident fires bullets into the sky. “I don’t like that,” says Phil. “Fire them up, and they still eventually need to fall down.” Frankie says, “I thought the same thing.” What can this mean? I get the literal meaning -- but -- on the level of symbolism, what can this mean?
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