Better Things

Brilliant. ... The writing on this show is so smart in that the characters don’t all sound like mouthpieces from the same writing team as happens on most mediocre sitcoms. ... There’s a theory that TV and film needs to always be about people with lives more interesting than our own. What Pamela Adlon understands is that there’s equal value in presenting people as truthfully as possible, and thereby allowing us to see our own interesting lives reflected.

One of these days Emmy voters will notice that when it comes to half-hour TV direction, the thing Adlon is doing here, week in and week out, is astonishingly attentive, empathetic and, when it wants to be, hilarious. The show is loose, but never scattershot and Adlon's directing confidence is equally evident in how the camera navigates around the Fox home and in how well the entire series plays to the strengths of its actors.

Season four of Pamela Adlon’s FX series Better Things, created, directed by, and starring Adlon as an actress and a single mom raising three eccentric, steel-willed girls, boasts four episodes that are stone-cold classics, endlessly rewatchable and rewarding. The rest of the season is pretty good too — so nervy yet exact that it makes almost every other American TV show, even excellent ones, seem formulaic and timid in comparison.

The feeling of intimacy and empathy in the parenting scenes remains superb, particularly during a Sam/Max argument in one episode that involves every woman’s least favorite word. But it’s not a coincidence that both Sam and Better Things often seem lighter and happier when she gets some grown-up time, turning her gaze outward to learn about other people’s triumphs and heartbreaks.