Colleen Hayes/FX
Although he wrote or co-wrote every episode of the most recent season, I refuse to throw out the Better Things baby with the Louis C.K. bathwater. To do so is to minimize the titanic effort by star/writer/co-creator Pamela Adlon, who also directed every episode in a second season. Whether it was always intentional or eerily predictive or it was subtext that was thrust to the surface by current events, these 10 Better Things episodes were, over and over and over again, about increasingly puerile and disappointing men in the lives of the central Fox family — and how, at the end of the day, if men are going to let you down, you have to be able to turn to the women in your life, be they daughters or mothers or friends. It’s a point that’s highlighted in the stunning “Eulogy,” in which Adlon’s Sam laments that her daughters don’t appreciate her and learns a tearful lesson. It’s a point that’s highlighted in the revelatory “Graduation,” in which Max’s (Mikey Madison) high school graduation present leads to the year’s best three-minute scene. Adlon’s directorial assuredness grew throughout the season, as she mastered vignettes ranging from poetic (the vacation reverie of “Rising”) to romantic (the first half of the vineyard jaunt in “Robin”) to savagely funny (like either the breakup in “Rising” or the prank war in “Arnold Hall”).