Enlightened ‘Not Good Enough Mothers’: Rainy Days

A show like Enlightened requires a bit of patience. The basic formula for the first five episodes (save for last week’s great episode about Amy and Levi’s past, which you can read the recap for here) is simple: Amy opens the episode talking about the changes she’s trying to make in her life, she ignores her own advice for the next twenty minutes, and at the end, she displays some small moral victory in the fight to redeem herself. These plots have been hit or miss, and unfortunately, most of ‘Not Good Enough Mothers’ falls flat on its face.

Monday’s episode focuses on Amy’s relationship with her mother Primarily, her mother’s harboring of the past, and Amy’s constant search in life for acceptance and self-importance, things she never truly achieved with her mother. She gets all passionate about a mother with young children being deported to Mexico (a story she sees on the news), and then tries to start an activist group at work to get involved. She fails miserably – and in the episode’s only genuinely funny scene, she tries to spurn interest in her lesbian HR director, because obviously, lesbians are always passionate about Mexican mothers. After embarressing herself with a selfish speech at Krista’s baby shower, she has to face herself when she’s called out for what she’s doing. In the end, she buys a gift for the deported mother’s children (and not for Krista’s baby), and delivers them. The rain that’s been falling for the entire episode stops, and the episode ends.

One thing Enlightened usually does well is balance Amy’s moments of insight with her long, annoying, self-centered rants she frequently goes on. Last night, it felt like too much of the show’s humor was entwined with Amy’s many uncomfortable scenes (crying in front of her mother, the pitches for the women’s group at work, with the lesbian, the baby shower, the Mexican women, etc.), and while they did a great job feeling awkward, they simply fell flat on being funny and/or insightful. When this happens, Amy’s jittery monologues turn her into an annoying whiner, and instead of investing in the emotional journey she’s taking, you just want someone to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, screaming “JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!!!”

I thought the episode could’ve done well to have a scene with Levi (Luke Wilson) to follow up on last week’s strong scenes between them, but it was but a distant memory, not even mentioned in the obligatory ‘Previously on…’ (which I hate with a passion on any television show). Instead, we had more scenes where Amy doesn’t hear any of the underhanded comments and looks thrown her way, as she rambles on with whatever self-perpetuating idea of the week she has going on. If the show continues to stick to this formula, it won’t be long until Enlightened simply becomes a half-hour of predictable noise.

The show only works when we believe Amy is truly trying to change: when she’s got her head up her ass for the whole episode, it’s not as engaging or funny. Take ‘The Weekend’ for example: the short flashback and voice over detailing Amy and Levi’s past was easily the strongest sequence of the show to this point, and set up the episode to have a worthy emotional payoff, something last night’s lame rain metaphor completely whiffed on (which I must say, is quite a tired metaphor when it’s presented in such an obvious nature). I don’t know why, but I’m just not compelled at this point by Amy and her mother Helen’s relationship. Helen wants the house to herself, and nothing to do with the whole repairing-her-relationship-with-her-daughter excercise. I can’t take much more of their soft bickering in every episode, so hopefully next week, she’ll get her car fixed and move the hell out.

One of the weaker episodes of the first half of the season, and quite a dull follow up to ‘The Weekend’. Here’s to next week’s episode getting back on track – or else this show might be in the danger of not returning for a second season. Ratings actually haven’t declined a ton through the fourth episode, although when you’re only premiering to 250,000 people, there isn’t a whole lot of room to decline. I still hold out some hope for Enlightened to really find its grove in the final half of the season, but if it doesn’t return in 2012, I can’t say I will be surprised.

What did you think? Will you be sticking with Enlightened through the first season? I’m curious what Mike White fans have thought of the show thus far.