It's difficult to think of sitcoms coming to an end gracefully, and at the height of their relevance.
Dramas? You could certainly argue that shows like Friday Night Lights or Breaking Bad or The Sopranos improved as they went along, and then turned out the lights at the right time. Going out on top creatively (and commercially) can be done. Sitcoms? Not so much. Plenty have been cut short at their most hilarious due to wrongheaded cancellations (R.I.P. Happy Endings), but successful shows that ended of their creators' own will? Rarely are they going out at their peak (see: Seinfeld, The Simpsons, 30 Rock, Parks & Rec, the list goes on).
Better Things, currently in the midst of its final season on FX and streaming on Hulu, bucks that trend big time. And its five-season run marks it as one of the most consistent modern sitcoms in recent memory. Its success is even more impressive given that the whole thing could have fallen apart early on.
For the uninitiated, Better Things was co-created by Pamela Adlon and Louis C.K. and is loosely based on Adlon's life as an actress and single mom. You might recall C.K. had a sexual harassment scandal five years ago that abruptly changed the trajectory of his professional life (at least briefly), and that scandal hit just two months after Better Things' second season ran in the fall of 2017, and one month after it had been renewed for a third season.
C.K. was heavily involved in the first two seasons to be sure, directing the pilot and writing or co-writing many episodes. But don't get it twisted — Better Things is Pamela Adlon's story, both on screen and behind the scenes.
Adlon directed every episode of the second season even before C.K.'s work with the show ended, and she's directed every episode since, too. She revamped the writers' room heading into Better Things' third season, and what was already an incredibly rich mix of comedy and drama drawn from the family dynamics of Adlon's Sam, her daughters Max (Mikey Madison), Frankie (Hannah Alligood) and Duke (Olivia Edward), and her nextdoor-neighbor mother Phil (Celia Imrie) just got better.
You know how watching sitcom kids grow up on screen is typically awkward? On Better Things, we've watched Sam's kids grow from school kids to young adults, wrestling with relationships, pregnancies, crises in self-identity and daddy issues. Watching mother and daughters traverse that growth together makes Better Things feel so much more real than its sitcom peers, even with a Hollywood setting that allows for great cameos and storylines from Sam's acting career.
In just the first four episodes of this final season, the show has tackled the economics of aging, the onset of dementia in a parent, an unwanted pregnancy, and the complicated emotions for both parents and children when a person's pronouns aren't set in stone — and it's done it with plenty of well-earned laughs (and a peek at a pretty good-looking borscht recipe to boot).
Consider this column a two-sided plea. To the TV viewers (hey, that's you!) yet to get on board with Better Things, get with the program before it's too late! (Granted, thanks to streaming, it's never really too late). To the TV Powers That Be, this is a plea to give Pamela Adlon a fat sack of cash when Better Things concludes April 25. This is a creative voice we need to hear more from in the future. ♦
