Reality keeps us moving on
Better Things looked like it had been killed off, until the show’s writer-director-leading lady took matters into her own hands, writes James Belfield.
And there it was, in white on black, third billing on the closing credits just as Rod Stewart’s glorious gravel voice scraped through the central verse of Mandolin Wind: ‘‘Created by Pamela Adlon and Louis CK’’.
Ever since the stand-up and writer wrote his infamous ‘‘These stories are true’’ statement in the New York Times and saw his comedy career erupt in a #MeToo firestorm, Louis CK has struggled to regain anything like the standing that saw him, once upon a time, deliver acceptance speeches for six Primetime Emmys and two Grammys, and be one of the main drawcards for the Fox pay channel FX.
So when FX ditched him and his production company in November 2017, just as the second series of Better Things was wrapping up, it must have seemed to his co-creator (and the show’s director/star) Pamela Adlon, that that was pretty much it. Time to move on.
Well, Adlon has moved on. But not to better things. Rather, Better Things. Series three.
The self-referential black comedy about a divorced actress raising three daughters on her own was always going to be a tricky vehicle to manoeuvre through the multi-car pileup of a #MeToo scandal, but after a 15-month hiatus, it returns on March 1 as bold, tender and shameless as ever.
Because of Adlon’s long links with CK (they’ve written together since 2006 and he cast her in Louis) and his name indelibly marked in the credits, there are bound to be those who simply feel the show is tainted by association – much like watching re-runs of Jim’ll Fix It or American Beauty.
But that’s immediately shrugged off with a brassy series opening scene in which Adlon’s Sam Fox struggles to fit into any of her old favourite clothes, wrestling herself into submission via buttonpopping shirts, seam-stretched jackets, and stuck-zip jeans. Subtext: it’s been more than a year, my body’s changed, I’ve changed, the show’s changed, we’ve all changed. Heck, move on.
When eldest daughter Max heads off to college for the first time, the writers are even brave enough to throw in a couple of near-the-line gags about abuse and promiscuity as if to show it knows the world’s changed in the past two years, but they’re not going to be cowed into self-censorship.
As well as the usual cringeworthy real-life obstacles, the show throws a curveball by continuing the ghost-of-Sam’s-dad storyline from the tail end of series two and turning it into a surreal subplot where they hold actual conversations – like some drunken spirit guide.
Adlon’s been very open about how the CK scandal had threatened the show, telling Vanity Fair series three was ‘‘dangling by a thread’’ and Variety that ‘‘it’s hard to function when you’re in shock and grief. I’d lost my passion.’’
But by concentrating on her own honest reactions to the crap that life flings at you when you’re a woman in your 50s, she’s brought Better Things back from the brink and shown it’s a true survivor.
The closing credits also provide an insight into another show this week – and reveal quite what a stunning and groundbreaking drama OG actually is. It’s only as you watch the names flow past that you realise all those cast members listed as ‘‘background performers’’ are real-life inmates of Pendleton Correctional Facility – otherwise known as Indiana State Prison.
As well as also having a stunning rendition of Hey Joe from the prison choir as part of the soundtrack (its line ‘‘where you goin’ with that gun in your hand’’ has rarely carried so much gravity), the film relies entirely on locations within its walls, includes the sounds and language of its dayto-day life, and even casts convicted attempted murderer Theothus Carter as a main character.
Carter plays Beecher, a young crim caught up in a gang war after just arriving in prison, who’s mentored by long-term lag Louis, played by the award-winning Jeffrey Wright.
OG (the term means ‘‘original gangster’’ and refers to Louis’ onetime role as main man in the prison) unravels slowly, forcing the viewer to contemplate a world where time isn’t the tick-tock of missed opportunities, rather the slow punishment of indelible actions.
The storyline is powerful and intense, but it’s the way the real world seeps through the script and into the plot that makes this such an incredible film. Rarely outside of documentaries has prison life been shown so honestly, so nakedly and with such empathy.
The real world also seeped into the production of OG. Just a few weeks after filming, Carter’s 16-year-old son Theothus Jnr died after being shot outside a gas station in Indianapolis.
In those closing credits his father, who won’t be freed until June 2051, dedicates his performance to the teenager he called ‘‘Man-Man’’.
Better Things Season 3 launches on Lightbox on Friday, March 1. OG screens on SoHo2 on Friday, March 1, at 8.30pm.
Pamela Adlon has moved on. But not to better things. Rather, Better Things. Series three.