Pamela Adlon's most personal season of Better Things is a triumph over Louis CK's ugliness

The Daily Beast

"Better Things has a bemusement about that everyday life and those everyday things, when so much comedy seems cynical about it," Kevin Fallon says of Adlon's FX comedy. "It’s comforting to watch a TV series that’s not necessarily escapist, but also not too brutally real. It makes you feel a little less crazy about what it takes to just get through the day to watch Sam, a single mom of three kids and a working actress, try to get through hers. You’re transported into reality, not out of it. Daily battles are waged with compassion and an open heart, but Better Things doesn’t retreat from the unpleasantness that manages to infiltrate, despite our best efforts. It’s that point, the inability to escape from ugly outside forces, that threatened to cloud the new season, and maybe even derail it from becoming the triumph that it is." Season 3 never gets too tragic -- or too hopeful or too uplifting, says Fallon. "This may be where Adlon and CK diverge in their fundamental points of view," he says. "Both are auteurs whose outputs are so refreshing because they reveal everyday life through perspectives we’re typically meant to keep hidden from the world. But if Louis CK’s seems more nihilistic or at least apathetic, Adlon’s finishing touch is that tiniest shade of optimism and sun: things might just be OK. More, she’s choosing that. Thank God she did. It’s a reminder to us to do the same."

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• Better Things beats all shows in representing the human experience and the labor of love
• Season 3 is the best the show has ever been
• Pamela Adlon finds there's magic in change
• Season 3's first three episodes meander, but something truly experimental happens if you continue watching
• Better Things feels a bit freer to be its most audacious self this season
• Adlon's Sam Fox is the hero we need in Season 3
• It's a shame Better Things is a weekly series -- it's better consumed in a headlong rush
• Adlon discusses Season 3 with her TV daughters