Via: Tuned In
When Enlightened debuted on HBO in 2011, I was excited about it, having been a fan of Mike White’s weird and weirdly poignant writing from movies like Chuck and Buck and TV shows like Pasadena. I felt a little lost watching the first few episodes, but by episode five, I was firmly on the show’s bandwagon. It was not a large bandwagon. The series, starring Laura Dern as Amy Jellicoe, an executive who has a spiritual reawakening after a nervous breakdown, was getting a couple hundred thousand viewers for its first-run episodes, low numbers even for HBO. And I can see why: it’s a hard show to adjust to, even for someone like me who’s disposed toward it. It’s a half hour, but neither a traditional comedy or drama. But it’s also not a “comedy-drama” in ways that we’re used to: not a “dramedy” with a heart of sentiment like Parenthood, or a show that alternates between straight comedy and dark drama like Rescue Me. Instead, it has a tone of its own, combining uncomfortable cringe humor with an earnest, meditative treatment of Amy’s quest to fix herself and those around her. Thanks maybe to critical praise, or the awards recognition (Dern wom a Golden Globe for it last year), or simply a sincere belief that the show was good enough to stay on the air, HBO gave Enlightened a second season anyway. I talked to White and Dern for the print edition of TIME about the second season and the reaction to Amy in the first season: It’s that pushing, prodding, raw-nerve aspect of Amy–Why won’t she just go away?–that made Season 1 of Enlightened (returning to HBO on Jan. 13) TV’s most fascinating character portrait of 2011. But it also made her a tough sell. The show won Dern a Golden Globe but scored low ratings even for HBO, maybe in part because Amy is not what today’s ambitious cable shows have taught viewers to expect in their antiheroes. Breaking Bad’s Walter White intimidates. Mad Men’s Don Draper
Read full story at: Tuned In
Posted: January 10th, 2013
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