Annual TV Commentary 2013

Every year I put together a brief summation of the television I enjoyed or alternatively didn't during the previous twelve months. My 2013 commentary is a little different, all confined to a single post and occasionally lacking the detail I've given previous round-ups. My television viewing has changed, though, along with my own aspirations as a writer. Anyway, television. No real spoilers this year.

Enlightened: Agent of Change (2.8)

Throughout the last-minute media blitz designed to save this show from impending cancellation, there's been a sense of doom projected by Mike White, being overwhelmingly pessimistic when it comes to the show's future and expressing sadness over his belief that Enlightened could be the best thing he's ever done. It's a feeling that's been reflected through a lot of season two, that sense of quiet danger lurking beyond every corner, like you're just waiting for a hole to appear and swallow up everybody in the cast. Whether it was the LA Times expose, or Amy's frayed relationships with essentially everyone around her, Enlightened's second season has been frequently unnerving, unexpected considering how quiet and soothing a lot of the show generally is. All of this makes Agent of Change a beautiful surprise, a finale that feels like the end, but which sparkles with enough hope and integrity to make the possible future, whether we end up seeing it or not, a comfortable place to be.

Enlightened: No Doubt (2.7)

"Can't this have a happy ending for everyone?" I guess it was sort of inevitable that everything Amy believed to be true would wind up in the crapper. Whether it's the Abaddonn expose or her new relationship, it's hard for Amy to see the writing on the wall, even when it's blindingly clear that things are about to fall apart. Watching her for two seasons, it's always been noteworthy that the want to do right is usually a heavier, more satisfying feeling than the one that involves actually doing something. Not just because it's hard work, but because it means facing potential ugliness -- discovering that it wasn't like you imagined, or that you weren't looking for the right things in the first place. As Enlightened's second season reaches its conclusion, here we begin to see all the cracks appearing in Amy's foundation.

Enlightened: All I Ever Wanted (2.6)

Every so often an episode of television makes you rattle and shake in your seat, its depth of feeling so beyond anything you're used to that you feel like you're having an out-of-body experience. Can television really do this to you? Can actors saying lines and characters experiencing heartache really hit you straight at the soul? And then you realize that it totally did, and that this is art. There's a scene here in which Amy has a rapid panic attack in front of her mother, hidden away in a bedroom while her date sits clueless outside. As Amy hyperventilates, Helen stands alert entirely at a loss about how she can help. Amy worsens, and all Helen can think to do is just grip at both of her daughter's shoulders and hold her tight. Falling onto the bed, Helen forces Amy to release into her, and Amy just wells up and breaks down in tears. It's the most vivid and painfully accurate depiction of a complete emotional unraveling that I've ever seen on television.

Enlightened: The Ghost Is Seen (2.5)

There's a fantastic scene in Six Feet Under's third season wherein Kathy Bates' jaded middle-aged caretaker encourages Frances Conroy to indulge in some light shoplifting, not so much because it's fun, but more because they may as well. They're women in their fifties that look their age, ignored by so much of society and rendered entirely invisible as a result. They won't get caught, nobody will even notice, so what the hell? It was a moment that Enlightened brought to mind this week, since it focused so tight on a character who has unexpectedly stumbled into the exact same circumstance: Tyler is so invisible as a person that he's practically a ghost.

Enlightened: Follow Me (2.4)

A moment that really resonated this week was Amy's trip to a party being held by an acclaimed blogger, somebody who started her own corporate revolution from behind her computer screen. Even without the expected anxiety of showing up at a party where you don't know many of the other guests, Amy finds herself struggling to handle how technologically savvy everybody seems to be, how they're talking about things and doing things that have entirely passed by her social radar. She has that hope and determination to eventually understand it all, but it's still a huge gulf.

Enlightened: Higher Power (2.3)

Let me introduce you to something I like to call "the Judy Greer analogy". It's named after that annoying trope in romantic comedies wherein the blonde, perky, hilariously scatterbrained lead is given able back-up by their doting best friend, a character usually played by a Judy Greer, or a Joan Cusack, or a Rita Wilson. One of them will do. But, in these circumstances, the word 'character' ought to be used loosely, since these 'characters' bear little in the way of a discernible existence removed from the romantic tribulations of the movie's lead. Their every move or line of dialogue is somehow related to their on-screen BFF, and they have no real personality away from every once in a while having a funny 'quirk' that'll get a couple of laughs during the movie.

Enlightened: Revenge Play (2.2)

Despite Amy's outward eagerness to please, one of the most difficult marks against her character has been her frequent arrogance when it comes to her Cogentiva colleagues. It's in the way she casually decides that their lives are empty and soulless, or the way she writes them off as beneath her. Even Tyler, arguably her only real friend in the world, is constantly the victim of her passive aggression -- he's depressed, and is risking nothing by actively trying to bring down his management. In her eyes, anyway. Revenge Play spins on the fact that Amy has been ignoring the human face of Abaddonn in pursuit of some kind of justice, exposing the inner guilt that arrives when people begin to get caught in the crossfire. Like with any large social movement, the first to be affected are the underlings, the ones who can be removed with no problem. And that realization makes Amy question everything.

Enlightened: The Key (2.1)

Enlightened's opening year remains one of my personal favorite seasons of television. It may have just been my own personal identification with it at the time it aired, but the connection it formed between myself and the characters on screen was unlike anything that came before it. With that in mind, however, I wouldn't have been devastated if HBO decided not to renew. Not for any malicious reason, but purely because season one was just so perfectly executed that surely the only direction to head from here is down. Season two arrives with a tougher concept to navigate around, the idea of corporate espionage and whistle blowing, and parts of The Key are enough to make you a little concerned.

Enlightened: Burn It Down (1.10)

"Goodness exists, all around. It's just sleeping." That's all well in theory, and probably correct if you really think about it, but Enlightened's season finale should throw an addendum onto the end of that line. Since goodness isn't so much 'sleeping', but more in a 'decade-long coma', at least within the walls of Abaddonn. Burn It Down follows a similar trajectory to much of this magical first year, with Amy bouncing through life with keen enthusiasm, only for a last-minute plot twist to expose how bad everything really is. What it lacks in narrative surprise it makes up for in thematic resonance: the importance of fighting for something, since real change can never occur just from being nice to people.

Enlightened: Consider Helen (1.9)

The only elderly people we ever hear about are the 'sexy' elderly. You probably know the type, the ones that look relatively young for their age, dress in expensive, fashionable outfits that accentuate the bodies they're still working out in aerobics class or whatever. They're the type of elderly with an enormous disposable income, so much that they have the vacation home and the regular visits to vineyards and safari parks just because. Consider Helen, one of the greatest episodes in television history, is not about those elderly people. Instead it's about a woman in her mid-seventies who lives a very basic, un-showy and mostly solitary existence, the kind that has its own areas of happiness, but still feels mostly empty.

Enlightened: Comrades Unite! (1.8)

Amy spends a lot of Comrades Unite! playing the victim, unable to put her own behavior into perspective and painting herself as somebody hard done-by and downtrodden -- the very type of person she regularly tries to save. It's an interesting perspective in which to hang the episode, one that once again returns to the central dilemma of Amy's denial and her arrogance. But it's also something that continues to make her such a dynamic protagonist. It's easy to side with those around her, particularly when it comes down to Amy's own lack of effort at work and her generally dismissive nature, but Laura Dern salvages her character's earnest, human qualities, too, bridging the gap between somebody who is self-absorbed and somebody merely flawed.

Enlightened: Lonely Ghosts (1.7)

One of the more interesting responses to Enlightened has been the vocal apathy towards Amy herself, and how she's so hideous a character that it's hard to enjoy the show at all as a result. It's something that is explicitly examined throughout Lonely Ghosts, an episode that explores how Amy uses those around her to get what she wants. It's actually a really interesting question from an audience standpoint, since we're living in an age of complex anti-hero protagonists, particularly on cable. And maybe that block between Amy as a character and certain folks at home isn't derived so much from what she is, but instead what she isn't.

Enlightened: Sandy (1.6)

We live in a time in which the definition of friendship has been stretched to such an extent that it's sometimes hard to discern whether your friends are really, honestly, actually your friends. Or if you actually know them at all, and vice versa. Enlightened is a series that says a lot about one woman and her quest for some kind of inner peace, but has also been intriguingly exploring loneliness for most of the season so far. Of course, Amy isn't literally alone, seeing as she has companions at work and lives with her mother, but every one of these relationships is fractured in some way. The people at work she wants to be friends with don't like her at all, she arrogantly positions herself above co-workers like Tyler and doesn't appear to want an actual friendship with them, while both her mother and ex-husband find her suffocating. So she's very much alone, in a lot of ways. Then enter Sandy.

Enlightened: Not Good Enough Mothers (1.5)

People are assholes. That's sort of a given. Especially today, it's not exactly hard to stumble upon somebody rude and obnoxious, or selfish and arrogant. And when you see those kinds of people, it's easy to get pretty angry yourself. What's their problem? Why do they feel the need to inflict their own issues onto somebody else? In that brilliantly observed scene at the top of this week's show, Amy sits on a bus stop as it begins to rain, kindly expressing to the kid sat next her that he must have forgotten his umbrella, too. The kid replies with an immediate "Fuck off!" Then she gets on-board the bus, and she has to ask a lady to move her bag so she can sit down, like it's some huge inconvenience. Her voiceover remarks how people are mean, and how that makes them ugly, and how that in itself makes her burn with hate. And everybody at home gives a collective sigh because this is so ridiculously true to life.

Enlightened: The Weekend (1.4)

A lot of my praise for Enlightened has so far centered on the writing and the acting, but I haven't even started talking about how gorgeous the show looks. I don't think I've ever seen a TV series that makes you want to reach out and touch more than this one. Laura Dern's peaceful voiceover and the tinkly ambient score help, but Mike White's photography so beautifully captures color and texture. This episode in particular, with its river rafting trip and the slow pans across water and rocks and beautiful rose gardens, just leaps off the screen -- surrounding you with nature and a feeling that the world around us is filled with so much beauty. All you have to do is look for it.

Enlightened: Someone Else's Life (1.3)

There's that old saying that there's no such thing as a selfless good deed, and it's something that Enlightened keeps bouncing back to. Amy is a character whose entire mission in life is to give and give, so infuriated by modern society that she feels it is her duty to help those without her good fortune. But as we're getting to know her, it's becoming more and more clear that there's a wall preventing Amy from becoming entirely selfless, as her old belief system can't help but creep out every once in a while. Just look at her timid embrace of a homeless woman this week, hugging her only because it's the sort of thing you should do in those circumstances. The woman leaves some kind of stain on Amy's arm and, soon after, she briefly washes her arm during a trip to the bathroom. It's such a subtle gesture, probably entirely unconscious, but something that says so much about Amy as a person.

Enlightened: Now or Never (1.2)

One of Mike White's greatest strengths is his ability to expose the hidden vulnerabilities that make us who we are, and how we only really express them in secret. It's something that kept reappearing throughout this second episode, which opened with Amy fantasizing about a conversation with her management, one full of environmentally-friendly buzz words ('sustainable', 'renewable', 'compostable') and 'up with people' enthusiasm, culminating in her message having a real effect, not only on Abaddonn itself but her bosses as people, too. Only the really important word there is 'fantasizing', because it's one of those things that just wouldn't happen. It's the next big journey for Amy, slowly realizing that her dreams and ambitions aren't going to be fulfilled overnight.

Enlightened: Pilot (1.1)

Have you ever wanted to just scream at the top of your lungs and say "fuck it!"? It's the most exhilarating thing imaginable, especially when you're stuck in a dead-end job or getting constantly screwed over by the individuals wielding greater power than you. But it's also something that usually only exists within a specific moment. Nobody can realistically become entirely outspoken and brutally honest long-term, because most of us have enough integrity and self-awareness that doing so would be pretty ugly. Laura Dern's Amy Jellicoe is one of those people, a woman who flew so close to public insanity that all she could do to get her life back on track was remove the negativity that had once totally consumed her and left her this perpetually edgy shell of a person. So she became enlightened, making a moment of madness the instigator for an entirely different existence.

ATVC 2012: Enlightened

Spoilers abound, so beware.

Enlightened
10 episodes, HBO (October - December 2011)

Enlightened is one of those rare shows that literally moves me on a deeper level. I sometimes uncomfortably identify with so much of what the show depicts that it almost becomes a parody of my own existence. At its heart is the concept of positivity, and having to dispense of your own personal anger in the face of so much moral degradation. I myself struggle a lot with thinking positively, sometimes allowing my own inner anger at the world to spill over into reality. As much as I know that it's wrong and no matter how much I hate myself for it, it's just incredibly hard to not allow certain feelings to overcome you, especially when you're constantly barraged by people who are rude, nasty and unsympathetic. We live in a world that's becoming rapidly meaner and more aggressive, the years of internet anonymity crumbling away but the dawn of an era of arrogant, exposed cruelty right around the corner.