What's it about?
Laura Dern is Amy, a self-destructive health and beauty executive who has a very public workplace meltdown. After three months of contemplation and meditation at a treatment center in Hawaii, Amy returns rested and ready to pick up the pieces of her old life and reshape the world she left behind. The series follows Amy as she navigates an unconventional path between who she is, who she wants to be...and what everyone is willing to tolerate from her.
So, how was it?
This show seems like HBO's attempt to replicate SHOWTIME's formula of the half-hour "comedy-that's-actually-kinda-serious" starring a troubled woman (NURSE JACKIE, THE UNITED STATES OF TARA, WEEDS). And fortunately, I think they were mostly successful. By the end of the pilot, I felt as though I had just watched a short independent film, complete with conflicted characters, beautiful cinematography, flowery voiceovers, an indie-friendly soundtrack, and Laura Dern (INLAND EMPIRE).
Ms. Dern, who also helped create and write the show, is painfully honest as the mentally-unstable Amy. The pilot opens with a truly unflattering shot of her sobbing in a toilet cubicle, tear-streaked mascara running down her cheeks and her face a gaping, twisted mask of pain (see poster). The fact that Ms. Dern was willing to let this unsightly image of herself be plastered all over subway stations in NYC shows the commitment she has to this role -- she didn't create it to flatter herself, but to explore the very real problems of a very real person.
That's what struck me most about the pilot -- how real it was. There was no neat, straightforward agenda -- it would have been so easy to write a show just about the healing powers of meditation or, conversely, a show simply satirizing the self-help culture. ENLIGHTENED does a little of both. It is unclear from the first half-hour whether Amy has actually changed, or whether this is simply another side of her mental instability, waiting to be broken apart. We get glimpses of her former rage coming through, mostly as she struggles to apologize to the boss she had an affair with, so I am leaning towards the latter explanation. What that says about self-help is unclear at this point, but I imagine that will be one of the focuses of the show as it progresses -- to what extent can we actually change our basic nature, and what is required from us to maintain that change?
In its first half-hour, ENLIGHTENED is a believable, contradictory little mess of a show, just like its protagonist. It's not organized, it's not clear, it's both funny and depressing. It's earnest enough for us to take it seriously, but not serious enough to become full-on sanctimonious. (Though it's not always subtle -- the evil corporate company Amy works for is called Abaddonn, Hebrew for "Hell.") The show's struggle will be in maintaining that balance and not becoming too much of a satire or too self-important. Because life isn't that simple.
Rating:
*** Solid. I'm interested and will definitely keep watching.
Partly because I've never watched a comedy on HBO before, but mostly because of Laura Dern's brave performance, I'm interested to see where this show is going. I hope it manages to maintain its ambiguous mixture of tones and doesn't veer too much in either direction (like how WEEDS sadly morphed from smart satire of the suburbs into bloated, over-the-top drug kingpin drama).
What about you, Fellow Addicts? Did you find the pilot true-to-life or unbelievable? Do you think Amy has actually changed or is she still mentally unstable? Will you be tuning back in to find out? Vote in the poll below and then hit the comments!
(For a quick glance at the other pilots coming out, check out my Fall TV Preview.)
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