The critically acclaimed FX comedy Better Things debuts its fifth and final season today. Star and creator Pamela Adlon based the show — in which she plays Sam, a single mom with three daughters — on the trials and tribulations of her own life.

“I feel like in a way, FX paid for my therapy and you guys all watched it like The Truman Show,” she jokes to ABC Audio. 

“You know, Sam is like me in a cape. It’s like the worst of me and the best of me,” Adlon says, explaining her personal pride in the show’s success. “And if something happens to me in life, I could be in my car driving home, reflecting on it, saying, ‘Ah would have been so bad if this happened.’ Put in the show. ‘It would have been so good if I just said this one thing,’ put it in the show.”

She adds, “I have this saying — bad for my life, good for my show.”

Adlon admits that she had mixed feelings when she learned this season would be the last for Better Things.

“When it was presented to me…at first it was a stomach ache, like, ‘Oh, I can’t believe this is going to be the last,'” she admits. “And by the end of the conversation, I got really excited because I thought, oh, it reinvigorated me.” 

Better Things airs 10 p.m. Monday nights on FX.

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