Major FX Show Ending
Pamela Adlon's award-winning series Better Things will come to an end with its upcoming fifth season on FX, it was confirmed Wednesday. Adlon confirmed the show would end with Season 5 in a statement obtained by Deadline. The news comes as Better Things Season 5 is currently filming, with a premiere set for 2022.
"I will forever be grateful to FX for allowing me to tell stories the way I see the world and want the world to be seen," Adlon said. "Making this show has been film school for me. I bow down to my crew and my cast. And I can't wait for people to discover and re-discover Better Things. This is gonna be a wrap on Sam Fox (for now). See you at the after party."
With Adlon serving as creator, executive producer, writer, director, showrunner, and series star, Better Things follows the story of Sam Fox, a single mother and actress with no filter raising her three daughters — Max, Frankie, and Duke — in Los Angeles. Sam also looks out for her mother, Phil, an English ex-patriate with questionable faculties who lives across the street. In addition to Adlon, the series also stars Mikey Madison, Hannah Alligood, Olivia Edward, and Celia Imrie. The series was picked up for a fifth season in May 2020.
Originally premiering on FX in 2016, Better Things has been a critical hit for the network, and its first four seasons currently have an average critical approval rating of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, with its fourth season earning a 100% tomatometer score. Its audience score, meanwhile, sits at 84%. The series has also been a major awards contender, taking home a Peabody Award in 2016 for Entertainment Programming, with Collider reporting the board called Better Things "a searingly funny and beautiful show is an at-times raw examination of the vicissitudes of working motherhood, crackling with feminist verve and energy, that consistently cuts new ground." The show also earned two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2017 and 2018.
While FX is preparing to say goodbye to Better Things, the network will not be saying goodbye to Adlon, who in July 2020 signed an overall deal with FX Productions. Under the agreement, Adlon is set to continue to develop both scripted and unscripted programming exclusively for the network, as well as potentially other divisions of Walt Disney Television. Better Things Season 5, the final season, is slated to debut on FX sometime in 2022.