Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Enlightened: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie 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 unbelievable 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.

Enlightened: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Despite the presence of cinematographer Xavier Pérez Grobet (a veteran of Deadwood and In Treatment) on one of the commentaries, there was no definitive information on the shooting format of Enlightened. IMDb reports that the production is originated on film, which is certainly possible, but in today's world of digital post-production, projects originated on film for television broadcast can be difficult to distinguish from hi-def by the time they reach your screen. In any case, the image on HBO's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-rays of Enlightened is superb, with excellent sharpness and detail and no video noise, aliasing, banding or other interference. Both blacks and white are well-defined, and the colors are lush and well-saturated. Amy inhabits a sunny, bright and cheerful world whose gleaming surface often contrasts with the dark interior into which she's struggling to shine a light. (Southern California can be depressing that way.)

Enlightened: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The show's 5.1 track, presented in lossless DTS-HD MA, is effective at conveying the identity of different environments through sound cues. An especially strong presence is established for the Cogentiva department to which Amy is banished: an enclosed space dominated by the hum of servers and air conditioning, a kind of perpetual white noise that damps out the rest of the world. The mountain outing in chapter 4 provides some interesting opportunities for sonic efforts, as a group of weekend adventurers learn to navigate a raging river in kayaks, but such opportunities for adventurous sound are rare. Enlightenment is primarily a drama, and dialogue remains key. The track conveys it clearly, along with a beautiful underscore by Mark Mothersbaugh (and Carter Burwell in the pilot) that captures both the comic absurdity of Amy's efforts and their stubborn heroism.

Enlightened: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

In addition to the following, the discs have been formatted in the standard HBO manner, where each episode is accompanied by a "preview" and all but the first have a "previously on" segment that is supposed to provide a recap of the series up to that point. However—and this is a serious error—all of the "previously on" segments are incorrectly placed. Each and every one summarizes developments up to and including the episode with which they are matched. Do not play the "previously on" segments, if you want to avoid spoilers.

• Commentaries: In general, the commentaries focus on specifics of the episode at hand. I would have liked more discussion of larger thematic issues, but only Diane Ladd seemed at all willing to consider them.
• Episode 1, Pilot: Laura Dern and Mike White
• Episode 4, The Weekend: Laura Dern, Mike White and cinematographer Xavier Pérez Grobet
• Epsode 9, Consider Helen: Laura Dern and Diane Ladd
• Episode 10, Burn It Down: Mike White and director/executive producer Miguel Arteta



• Inside the Episodes (1080p; 1.78:1; 26:49): Each episode is accompanied by a brief interview with White discussing its place in the overall arc of the season. These featurettes can be accessed from the "Features" menu of each disc, which includes a "play all" function, or individually from the episode menus. Each disc contains all ten featurettes.

Enlightened: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Enlightened's biggest problem in drawing an audience, I suspect, is that HBO couldn't figure out how to tell potential viewers what it is about. It's not an easy show to sum up with a catchphrase. HBO appears to be taking two separate tacks to market the second season. One focuses on the "revenge of the nerds", as the workers banished to the basement fight back against the evils perpetrated by Abaddonn Industries (which would be consistent with where we left Amy at the end of season one). The other focuses on new relationships for Amy and Tyler, with characters played by Dermot Mulroney and Molly Shannon. How this all fits with Amy Jellicoe's long-term project to become an "agent of change" is anybody's guess, but with Mike White writing and producing and Laura Dern producing and playing Amy, one thing is for sure: The results will be excruciating. In a good way. Highly recommended.