Take Three: Better Things

Better Things: Season 1, Episode 3 “Brown” (B+)

Well, I guess it’s worth investing in this show since it has been unsurprisingly renewed for a second season by FX. This episode was the most plot-driven, and it had some truly memorable scenes based around conversations. It’s probably not a great thing about my cultural knowledge that I didn’t recognize Lenny Kravitz as Sam’s new director friend Mel who may or may not have been married. He did a magnificent job winning over everyone in the family, even prompting Mel’s seventy-year-old mother to tell an awful story about purchasing a certain color pantyhose after Sam made the mistake of not warning her that she was bringing home a black man. Sam lacing into Jeff after he insulted Sunny was another fantastic moment, and I’m definitely happy to see Alysia Reiner, best known as Fig on “Orange is the New Black,” as Sam’s number one cheerleader with a vested interest in her having sex with Mel. The fact that both are them are mildly famous enough to know each other is cool, and I like that they decided not to sleep together because they wanted something real to happen. We just got a hint of Sam’s girls being a horror to the babysitter who never wanted to come back, and Frankie liking Mel was a huge score considering how prickly she tends to be. I enjoyed the random David Duchovny cameo we got, a nice throwback to Pamela Adlon’s time on “Californication,” a very different role from the one she’s playing now but equally compelling.