Better Things is really about relationships between mothers and daughters, poignant and frustrating and human and hilarious. At telling that story, it's the best.

She’s a terrific and effortlessly funny actress who establishes vivid characters with vivid lives. But Sam Fox obviously required a bigger reach, and Adlon accomplishes that here.

Adlon’s performance is so good, you get--and want--her in nearly every scene, just to see how she’s going to react: to this kid’s temper tantrum, to that rude producer’s snarky comment. It’s a star vehicle that feels like it’s introducing you to an entire family--and an entire universe you want to inhabit.

Everything here feels lived in and actual.

Where “Louie” is frequently taken by flights of fancy and an inexhaustible curiosity about why the world is what it is, “Better Things” is, so far, more focused on the Fox family’s daily grind. The world is full of puzzles, but Sam and her daughters largely leave others to the solving.

The series is ambitious, unafraid to take on hot topics, but it doesn't let discussions of those issues unravel organically. Some themes are evoked suddenly and then quickly abandoned.

Better Things is a faithful female-themed re-creation of Louis C.K.'s other shows: witless and angry, mistaking contempt for satire, self-important in its clueless disregard for plot, characterization or other niceties of the performing arts.

Love, love, love, Better Things, but I knew I would. Loved Pamela in Lucky Louie & Louie, I am thrilled that she has her own show, I have been waiting for someone, somewhere to wise up and see what so many of us see in her! I see only better things to come. Well deserved!

If you like Louie C.K. (Whats with these guys and sexual weirdness?)then you will enjoy Better Things. However if not, you will find this distinctly average and unoriginal , predictably jammed packed with cliched tropes. Especially the sardonic jaded heroine single mom with truly obnoxious children. There are a couple of smiles but very few. The shallow pointless materialistic narcissism of Californian life is on full display and it’s not funny, even ironically. I gave up after episode 4, which ended in a smash the patriarchy march. Yip, really funny stuff.

Even though the first episode was only ~20 minutes long, I got bored pretty fast. The actors are trying too hard to make us laugh, and most of the time it doesn't work. I felt sorry for the overly hyperactive lead actress, but I blame the people who told her she's a good comedian. Anyway, not my kind of show.

I really wanted to like this show. She's great. I loved her as Bobby Hill, Louie, "The Facts of Life" even "The Sure Thing". But it just doesn't live up to the hype. There's a lot of "look at me" directing choices that detract from the story. As a fellow single mom I get where she's coming from. However I never get the sense that she views parenting as anything but a source of aggravation. Where is the tenderness? Why is Dad not involved? The kids are not little so he had to be involved for years. It was frustrating. Here's a crazy suggestion, establish some boundaries. Of course it's crazy when three girls do whatever they want, whenever they want. It's hard to relate to her burden when a lot of it is self induced. I gave up halfway through episode 4.

I thought I was going to see the B side of a Hollywood actress but it developed into the story of the struggle of a mother and her three problematic girls. Only for mothers with problematic girls.