Bet­ter Things and the new TV fam­i­ly dynamic

With the cam­era soft­ly rest­ing on Sam’s (Pamela Adlon) face for a good 30 sec­onds, we see her go through all the emo­tions a moth­er typ­i­cal­ly goes through on any giv­en day: exhaus­tion, anger, sad­ness, dis­ap­point­ment, love, and, above all, the type of anx­i­ety that nes­tles itself in your chest like a sec­ond lay­er of skin the minute you give birth to a tiny, help­less human being.

Sam’s tiny human beings may have grown into lit­tle peo­ple with their own minds and tem­pera­ments by now, but that doesn’t mean they need her any less. On the con­trary – the more they fight for their own inde­pen­dence, the need­i­er they become, espe­cial­ly her eldest, 16-year-old Max (Mikey Madi­son), who has decid­ed to live out her mother’s worst night­mare by dat­ing a ​“Span­ish, world-trav­el­ling, many-dis­eased” guy in his thir­ties. There seems to be no escap­ing oth­er people’s need­i­ness, except for in those qui­et moments spent on the toi­let. Her sanctuary.

Open­ing to this inti­mate­ly relat­able moth­er­hood moment, Sam sets us up for a superb sec­ond sea­son of authen­tic sto­ry­telling and per­for­mances on Bet­ter Things’ sec­ond sea­son. The show, which pre­miered in late 2016, fits into an excit­ing new genre of female-dri­ven sto­ry­telling that explores fam­i­ly dynam­ics, and specif­i­cal­ly moth­er­hood (Cat­a­stro­phe, Trans­par­ent), in a raw and truth­ful man­ner, with­out hav­ing to rely on forced com­e­dy or grandiose plot­lines to dri­ve its sen­ti­ments, and our con­nec­tion with its char­ac­ters forward.

Bet­ter Things thrives on its unpre­ten­tious, a‑typ­i­cal-day-in-the-life-of for­mat, and it is exact­ly this hon­est approach that makes it one of TV’s finest depic­tions of sin­gle moth­er­hood and the com­plex­i­ty of moth­er-daugh­ter rela­tion­ships. Adlon, who directs every episode of sea­son two, puts so much of her heart and soul into the show that it effec­tive­ly becomes an exten­sion of her­self and her three daugh­ters. Every­thing from the art­work in Sam’s house to the clothes her TV daugh­ters wear comes from Adlon’s own home, lend­ing the show an unde­ni­ably per­son­al feel.

After Sam final­ly exits her tiled sanc­tu­ary in sea­son two open­er ​‘Sep­tem­ber’, she rejoins the par­ty she’s host­ing, clear­ly unex­cit­ed by the prospects of hav­ing to engage in more small talk. Her daugh­ters are all going through their vary­ing stages of (pre-)puberty, her moth­er still hasn’t mas­tered the art of dis­cre­tion, and her friends either vol­un­teer well-mean­ing but unwant­ed advice, or act about as mature as her youngest kid, Duke (Olivia Edward). The need to escape her own house and the peo­ple in it is real, but it is a wish she can­not, and will not, grant herself.

Instead, she repeat­ed­ly com­pos­es her­self with deep sighs and match­ing facial expres­sions, adamant to keep Max close, and her boyfriend Arturo (Arturo del Puer­to) even clos­er, with­out attempt­ing to con­trol her like many oth­er moth­ers would. Her par­ent­ing strat­e­gy may not be the right one, but it’s the best she can do, and at the end of the day, that’s what moth­er­hood is all about – giv­ing it your best.

‘Sep­tem­ber’, along with its apt sound­track that includes George Cromarty’s ​‘Lit­tle Chil­dren’ and The Blenders’ ​‘Daugh­ter, Daugh­ter’, reveals just how dif­fi­cult it is for a moth­er to find the right bal­ance with a daugh­ter that is, to quote Brit­ney Spears (and yes, it hurts), ​“not a girl, not yet a woman”. It’s a painful, con­fus­ing peri­od for both par­ties, but com­fort can be found in Cromarty’s soft­ly sung words, ​“there are so many things you try to skip, but who will be there in case you slip, at the end of the day?”. Because the per­son most like­ly to stop you from slip­ping, will be your moth­er. And if you’re lucky, it’s one like Sam.