This post contains spoilers for Better Things Season 4, Episode 4.
In Thursday night’s episode of Better Things, the word “cunt” is said 18 times in a single scene, in what must be some sort of primetime record. The word is tossed back and forth during a heated stand-off between Sam (Pamela Adlon) and her eldest daughter, Max (Mikey Madison). As is often the case, their fight is sparked by something banal: Max is furious that her mother didn’t do her laundry. The fight escalates—Sam can’t believe Max is so spoiled, Max can’t believe her mother is so careless—until Max lets out a barb that Sam can’t forgive: “You don’t know what it’s like to be a woman anymore.”
It’s a play on a number of themes Adlon has explored in the series, from aging to desirability to a specific preoccupation with gender and slouching toward a kind of androgyny. Sam, then, reaches her breaking point.
“You cunt,” she declares. “You’re a cunt.” Max is shocked at first, but then she says the word back. Soon, they’re locked in a jousting match, dressing up the insult (“You’re a big fucking cunt”) until tensions rise to a boiling point. Then, they burst into laughter.
“That scene is like the Hurt Locker of the C-word,” Adlon said in a recent phone interview ahead of this season’s debut. “They’re diffusing this bomb.”
“It’s literally the most forbidden word to use about a woman,” she continued. “For a mother to call her daughter that word is so jarring…it’s a weapon.”
The scene was dreamed up in the writers’ room, Adlon said, as the Better Things team discussed Sam’s growing frustration with Max, who’s currently living at home and working as a hostess at a restaurant. “It’d be fun to go back and look at the transcriptions and see how that came up,” Adlon said. “You have somebody living in your house who’s done with school, and they don’t pay the rent. You reach a breaking point with those people who stay too long [at] the party sometimes.”
Adlon, who is a co-creator, writer, director, producer and star of the Emmy-nominated FX series, spoke passionately about this scene and its purpose in the show. Better Things has long been a study in breaking points and how they can explode relationships—but the show always takes care to double back and trawl for pieces that can be rejoined to make something new, better, healing. This scene exemplifies that pursuit, filtering it through the prism of motherhood in all its highs and lows.
The repetition recalls the show’s classic “No, Jeff, No” scene from Season 2, when Sam’s friend’s husband tries to kiss her and Sam slaps her hand over his mouth and shouts “No, Jeff!” over and over. In that scene, repetition works like a drill, embedding the message into Jeff’s skull so deeply and angrily that he never attempts anything that stupid (at least, toward Sam) ever again. In the C-word scene, repetition works like a numbing agent, dissolving the word of meaning until their tiff becomes silly. “It’s just this release,” Adlon said.
The scene ends in a warm place, with Sam and Max embracing each other before Max realizes that Sam will have to go through this whole thing two more times with her other daughters. It’s a rare empathetic epiphany from Max, born out of a moment that could have destroyed her relationship with her mother forever had they not found a way to work through their fury.
“That’s what people need. They need to be able to take things to a place that they know is not going to end up in death, or ‘I’m never going to speak to you again,’” Adlon said. “Hug each other and say, ‘Wow, I’m sorry,’ and just laugh. And then move on!”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— Why Eminem performed “Lose Yourself” at the 2020 Oscars
— The Crown announces its new Queen Elizabeth II—and confirms its last season
— Legendary Oscar winner Lee Grant on the blacklist, sex, sexism, and the treatment of Renée Zellweger
— Hanging with Bill Murray on the set of Ghostbusters: Afterlife
— Inside the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar party
— There’s a blank space at the center of Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana
— From the Archive: How director Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite marched toward Oscar night—and changed everything along the way
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story.