First Impressions: Enlightened

Is Enlightened a drama, a comedy, or some mesh of both? After a scatterbrained pilot, I’m not too sure. It’s not really funny like a comedy would be, and it’s certainly not as dramatic as a show of this nature could be. But underneath these thin layers of genre conventions are a couple of interesting – if not familiar – themes at work here.

At its heart, this show is about change. Amy Jellicoe (Laura Dern, who I always remember from Jurassic Park) is a woman trying to change herself. She’s not very well liked by the people around her (including her mother), and after losing her shit at work in the opening scene, takes some R&R, along with some serious soul-searching and counseling, to change herself and the life she lives. The scenes establishing her life and how she is trying to change are randomly interspered with scenes of contemplation and small discoveries of her past, and it’s not to the benefit of the show. Yes, it show’s Dern’s remarkable acting chops, but it doesn’t take the time to establish who old Amy is in the pilot (all we get is the opening scene), for us to really be engaged into the new Amy, who is light hearted, loving and positive (who we spend the other 28 minutes with).

It also doesn’t really establish the notion she is ready to change. She is excited to return to her old job, and isn’t even back into town before she’s falling on old habits. Sure, she passes on doing a line with Levi (good old Luke Wilson, with facial hair), but she’s willing to return to Abaddon (her Biblically-named corporation) pretty quickly. It’s not very convincing, and by the end, when she turns her newfound hippie personality into a thinly-veiled lawsuit threat, I was no longer sure if I was watching a show about change, or a show about a woman who refuses to change, even if she thinks she is. If that’s the case, good luck making Amy a better character than Carmela Soprano.

There are also some odd religious undertones. The title, the corporation she works for, and some other visual imagery (mostly good vs. evil, dark vs. light kind of things) at work in the pilot, but it’s not clear at this point how deep those are really going to play into the show. It could take the show in a different – and somewhat fresh – direction, but it could also lead to some problems quickly if it  starts to drown itself in the quicksand of lighthearted Christian comedy.

At the end of the pilot, I still wasn’t sure if Enlightened was going to be any good. I can’t recommend you to skip it or watch it – the characters are still very vague, and the pilot certainly didn’t establish any kind of consistent tone throughout: a scene near the end that tries to mix serious conversations and physical humor (involving people falling and cars crashing) was indicative of the show’s ineffective attempts to define itself in a number of scenes throughout. Once the show figures out what it wants to be, and picks a clear direction for Amy’s character, there could be something to the existential undertones of the show. It’s safe to say Enlightened will be around for a full season, so check back in a couple weeks for a full review of Enlightened, and whether Mike White and co. have a show worth watching.