Enlightened: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Review
Now What?
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, January 6, 2013
As an actress, Laura Dern has often been drawn to offbeat characters, including the sexually
rebellious Lula in David Lynch's
Wild at Heart, the substance-abusing expectant mother in
Alexander Payne's
Citizen Ruth, the homicidally jealous dental hygienist opposite Steve Martin
in
Novocaine and, most recently, the socialite supporting a Scientology-like faith in P.T.
Anderson's
The Master. Even when Dern takes on a
seemingly "normal" role like Dr. Ellie
Sattler in
Jurassic Park, she invests
the character with an eccentric topspin that makes her
memorable. For those who haven't yet experienced
Enlightened, just imagine how strange a
character Dern must have dreamt up when she set out to create one for
herself. As if that weren't
enough, she partnered on the project with Mike White, one of the world's savviest purveyors of
dysfunction. (See generally
Chuck and Buck,
The Good Girl,
Freaks and Geeks and
Year of the
Dog.)
The result was
Enlightened, of which the first season ran on HBO from October 10 through
December 12, 2011. Despite low ratings, the show survived the December slaughter that ended
Hung,
Bored to Death and
How to Make It in America. Most observers agree that the series was
saved by two Golden Globe nominations, one for Dern (who subsequently won) as best actress in
a TV comedy, and one for the series itself.
Enlightened returns to HBO on January 13, 2013,
paired with the second season of the successful
Girls, which the cable channel no doubt hopes
will provide Dern's and White's series with a compatible lead-in. In preparation, HBO is
releasing the first season on Blu-ray so that viewers can catch up with one of the most original,
challenging and provocative half-hour shows the network has ever released.
Caution, though.
Enlightened has a healthy sense of humor, but it's even less of a comedy than
Girls.
Enlightened centers on Amy Jellicoe (Dern), a professional woman in her 40s, childless (there's
a story there), divorced (even more of a story
there) and with nothing left in her life but her
career as head buyer for the health and beauty (or "H&B") division of a SoCal-based
conglomerate called Abaddonn Industries. As the emotional pressures build, Amy begins an
affair with her married boss, Damon (Charles Esten), which goes sour. Then she finds herself on
the receiving end of a transfer to the cleaning products division, which may or not be a result of
poor job performance. As the series pilot opens, Amy has a full-scale meltdown during the
business day in front of her co-workers.
After several months' rest and relaxation at a touchy-feel-y Hawaiian treatment center called
Open Air, Amy returns home a new woman—or so she'd like to think. Meditation and self-reflection have filled her with a desire to take responsibility
for her life, and she's ready to pick
up where she left off and become "an agent of change". But just because Amy has seen the light
doesn't mean that everyone she left behind is ready to follow her lead.
For one thing, there's all the baggage of her previous life. Amy lost her apartment, has no money
and owes a substantial sum to Open Air for her stay. For the foreseeable future, she has to move
back in with her mother, Helen (Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life mother), who is none too thrilled
with the arrangement (an unbe
lievable amount of story there, enough for a whole separate
episode). Amy has yet to resolve her relationship with ex-husband Levi (Luke Wilson), with
whom she's still in love but whose problems outnumber Amy's, starting with the near-constant
substance abuse that wrecked the marriage.
But first on the list is Abaddonn Industries. Amy marches into her old office with a plan to
reform the company into a model corporate citizen—no more toxins in their products, no more
doing business with polluters—and finds, to her bafflement, that the world has moved on without
her. Her former assistant, Krista (Sarah Burns), now has both her job and her office. Her former
colleagues treat her like an unwelcome guest. And the efficient head of Human Resources, Judy
Harvey (Amy Hill), briskly informs her that no positions are available.
A member of the legal department is dutifully seated at Ms. Harvey's side as she delivers this bad
news, but this works in Amy's favor when she mentions having consulted a lawyer and mangles
a few phrases about "wrongful termination" and her breakdown resulting from a "pre-existing
condition". It's not the only occasion in
Enlightened when Amy will invoke employment law to
achieve a favorable result, and Dern notes in one of her commentaries that viewers have asked
whether Amy had planned ahead. But one of Amy's signal traits is that she's not a good planner.
She works on impulse and instinct. Still, even seemingly impulsive people can be guided by a
deeper sense of purpose. As flaky and erratic as she may seems to her co-workers, Amy Jellicoe
operates in some strange netherworld between conscious scheming and random foolishness.
She's a bright woman who knows what she wants, and at critical moments all of her faculties
snap into focus to get her there. It's why she often accomplishes more than anyone expects. On
this day, it's why she gets rehired at Abaddonn.
They don't give her much of a job, though. Amy is deported to the company basement, where all
the misfits slave over a software program called Cogentiva. The boss is an overgrown adolescent
with zero people skills named Dougie (Timm Sharp); the neighboring desk is occupied by a shy
nerd named Tyler (co-creator White) with a habit of developing crushes on his co-workers; and
people quarrel over trivia like swearing and sneezing. Amy is absolutely certain she doesn't
belong with these freaks. She has yet to grasp that, as far as is the company is concerned, she's
one of them.
Enlightened asks the hard question of what comes
after the decision to change your life. Tell
someone you've seen the light, and they'll quickly start looking for the nearest exit. Mike White
wrote every episode, and his ability to imagine new variations on this scenario seems to be
limitless. Whether it's with her withholding mother, her mocking former colleagues upstairs, her
resentful new colleagues below or her perplexed ex-husband, Amy is constantly discovering that
being more centered in yourself (assuming she really is) doesn't guarantee a better connection
with others. Amy's attempt to drag Levi back to a happier time in their marriage on a kayaking
trip in episode 4 leads to some of the season's most gorgeous scenery and ugliest confrontations.
Even her best friend from the program, Sandy (Robin Wright, perfectly cast), turns out to be
much less of a known quantity than Amy realized, when Sandy passes through town for a visit in
episode 6.
Dern's Amy is in almost every scene, except for episode 9, which is aptly entitled "Consider
Helen" and digs deeply into the unhappy history of Amy's buttoned-up mom. (The episode
features a long scene in a supermarket between Helen and a friend she hasn't seen for years that
is a master class on how to make drama out of a seemingly ordinary conversation.) Dern's ability
to hold the camera with the same kind of "what will she do next?" fascination that Amy often
exerts on her co-workers is essential to making White's scripts come alive. Here, as in many of
her prior performances, Dern doesn't seem to care whether she makes her character
likable. She
only seems to care that you believe in Amy's sincerity, even when it seems incredibly foolish
(which is often), and even when it falls short of Amy's own standards, as when, e.g., she
interviews for a job at a homeless shelter and, only when it's offered, realizes she can't afford to
take it.
At the office, Amy keeps hurling herself futilely against the barriers between her and her former
position, but then at season's end she makes the startling discovery that she's really been in the
right place for an agent of change all along. The season conclusion, which could have served as
an effective series finale in a pinch, is entitled "Burn It Down", and it involves Amy's realization
that the key to changing Abaddonn Industries is right there at her desk in the basement.
Enlightenment comes at unlikely moments.
