Monday, March 18, 2013

Another Water-Sports Question

Enlightened - Seasons 1 & 2 (2011, 2013)
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
watched on HBO GO

Enlightened is a strange show.  Critics talk about Matt Weiner when they talk about Mad Men; every script goes through the boss.  But cult of personality aside, Mad Men is polished - lots of smart women in that writer's room - in ways that Enlightened is not.

Enlightened is messy, and erratic.  It follows different formats from episode to episode, season to season.  Sometimes it's a sitcom, sometimes a series about recovery, sometimes funny, often not.  Some of that looseness is intentional, but not all of it.  The second season, for example, is more focused in its narrative arc, but only, one assumes, because HBO said so.

Mike White wrote every episode.   I'm naive about television production, but I assume that uncredited writers looked at his scripts.  Maybe not.  But the show is personal in a way that really does feel rare.  I like that feeling, even when I don't like the show.

I don't always like the show.  I like it least when Amy's at the office, where it seems like I've seen everything before: co-workers, humiliations, jokes.  Enlightened isn't a comedy, especially in season one.  It's something much weirder, with intentional contradictions and drifting unhappiness.  Everyone is burdened by the act of living.  Amy offends as often as she doesn't.

I love Laura Dern; if the scripts aren't collaborative, the show is.  We see Amy as the person she thinks she is even when she's a wreck, or when she's wrong.  I love that Mike White lets his characters be eloquent inside their own heads - all of them - even when they aren't when they talk to other people.

"The Weekend" is my favorite episode, gentle and forgiving.  I'd forgotten about Luke Wilson, or assumed the worst.  I won't say that Enlightened checks in on Anthony Adams after twenty years, exactly, but Levi Callow contains multitudes, among them the uncanny impression that life and art have intersected in an apartment in Pasadena.  Levi and Amy make a great couple, and a sad one.  They're the best thing about the show, but I'm sentimental.