Trivia

The long gap between season 2 and 3 came about due to the firing of co-creator Louis C.K., who co-wrote every episode. So Pamela Adlon needed the extra time to put together a writers' room and learn how to run it, a big change regarding the making of the first two seasons.

Pamela Adlon was nominated for the 2018 Emmy Award in the Lead Actress in a Comedy Series category for her role as Sam Fox in Better Things (2016), but lost to Rachel Brosnahan from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017).

In November 2017, after Louis C.K. confirmed the sexual misconduct allegations against him were true, FX canceled their overall deal with C.K. and his production company, Pig Newton. C.K. will have no involvement in future seasons of the series. That month, Pamela Adlon fired 3 Arts manager Dave Becky as her manager. Therefore, Pig Newton and 3 Arts will no longer co-produce the series going forward after they were both removed from the conclusion of the Season 2 finale.

Throughout the run of the series, Sam, her daughters, and many other characters repeat a gesture that involves pretending to spit on the backs of two fingers. This comes from an ancient Jewish superstition that holds that one is supposed to spit three times after a mention of death or other misfortune to ward off the evil eye. In modern times, with an understanding that spitting is unhygienic, actual spitting has largely been replaced by a sound symbolizing spitting, usually "pu pu pu" or "toi toi toi."

All three daughters, Max, Frankie and Duke, as well as their mother, Sam, have gender-neutral names. The grandmother Phyllis is also called Phil, and Sam's brother is named Marion. Even Duke's pet mouse is named Mandy Patinkin; "Mandy" can be a male or female first name, but though the actor Mandy Patinkin is male, the pet mouse is female. In Adlon's real life, she also has three daughters, two of whom have traditionally male names or nicknames: Gideon Adlon and Valentine "Rocky" Adlon.