Pamela Adlon's 'Better Things' Season 2 Review

The sixth episode of FX’s “Better Things“’ second season opens with Sam (Pamela Adlon) teaching her acting class what is possibly the single most important lesson any actor can learn: that the vast majority of the words that they will speak as actors will be awful. That most writing is terrible. That the best actors can elevate bad material — taking crap and make it… better crap, I suppose.

Later in the same episode, Sam’s kids (Frankie, Max, and Duke, played, respectively, by Hannah Alligood, Mikey Madison, and Olivia Edward) stage an elaborate mock-funeral for their mom to demonstrate just how much they appreciate her. It’s an incredibly saccharine scene for a show that is, on the surface, fairly acerbic and removed (its star certainly plays it that way), and may be the only badly written scene in all of the seven Season 2 episodes that were made available to critics in advance.

It strikes me as too much of a coincidence that this should happen minutes after Sam gives a monologue about good acting elevating bad writing. Instead, the episode reads almost as a thesis paper from the creators of “Better Things.” Hypothesis: the measure of an actor is whether or not he can make bad writing seem naturalistic. Conclusion: we have the best actors on TV, motherfuckers.

Better-Things-Season-2While the scene is the season’s most badly written, it’s also the most affecting and genuinely life-affirming thing the show has ever done. It’s lovely, in no small part due to the performances of the three daughters, and that of Sam’s friend, Rich (the inexcusably underrated Diedrich Bader — seriously, people, he’s been killing it all over TV lately: “Veep” and “American Housewife,” to name but two examples), all of which come from a very earnest, uncharacteristically innocent place. But the biggest assist given to the flawed sequence is the directorial flair demonstrated by director Pamela Adlon. Adlon has the camera circling the room, flying over her fake casket, moving in time to the scene’s emotional beats. Together, the show’s truly excellent cast and wildly talented creator/director/star manage to elevate what would otherwise be an atonal bit of cheese.

Now imagine the rest of the season playing out much like that, with the added benefit of it actually being very well-written and tonally consistent.

I should be clear: this is not a gloomy show or even one with a harsh or cynical worldview. It has always been a sweet show beneath the outer layers of postured cynicism, and, all throughout the season, it manages to hit some genuinely impactful beats. The difference between the aforementioned funeral scene and the rest of the season is that, as a whole, “Better Things” tends to find its moments of affirmation, and empowerment, and humor in scenarios that fully accept life’s general shittiness rather than dismiss or ignore it. (The fact that “Better Things’” representation of life’s shittiness is attributed to a very rich, successful showbiz lady and her three very spoiled daughters is the toughest pill to swallow when it comes to this show.)

Better-Things-Season-2It’s not the most quotable show in the world (Sam telling her daughter, “Bitch, I’m going to the moon,” might not come across as particularly funny here, but trust me, it’s an lol-type situation if there ever was one) but it is funny all the way through. Each of Sam’s three daughters have distinctly difficult personalities, and each gets their episode to shine. Frankie stands out, as she did last season, by virtue of the unnecessarily compelling performance given by Alligood. Her smart-kid independent know-it-all is better than other television smart-kid independent know-it-alls — she seems like a truly contemporary LA my-mom-is-a-fairly-well-known-voice-actor kid. Guest appearances by people like Kevin Pollak (playing Sam’s brother in a casting choice that had me doing a spit-take) and the aforementioned (and still underexposed, in spite of my hyping him earlier in this review,) Diedrich Bader strengthen the show’s ever-growing insular universe.

“Better Things” isn’t just a female version of “Louie,” though it shares a whole lot of DNA with that show (Louis C.K. co-created the series and co-writes a lot of its episodes). It’s a thoughtful, if acerbic, show about motherhood and generational differences and family. But mostly motherhood (the use of John Lennon’s “Mother” as the show’s opening-credits song is not unintentional). It’s meaningful and personal and it goes down very easy. And it’s good, even when it really isn’t. [B+]