Ariel Levy writes about women who are "a bit too much"--women like Elizabeth Strout, like Edie Windsor, like Levy herself. Women who challenge the status quo--sometimes awkwardly. It seems to me she would enjoy Amy, in "Enlightened." Season One ends with Amy giving an earnest presentation to bigwigs: Abaddon is a bad scene, it's a group that fucks over underpaid employees, it gives cancer to its clients, it involves itself in shadowy government deals. You cheer for Amy; she's taking an interest; she's engaged in life and unafraid of risks. Of course, the moment she exits the room, she overhears her former colleagues viciously mocking her. ("What a weirdo!") And, because she is great, or partly great, she storms back into the room and says, "This isn't fucking high school. We are all in trouble. Do nothing, and you're part of the problem." (AV Club has pointed out the thrilling nature of those moments when Amy blithely calls other people on their bullshit. "You can't find your cell phone? It's right next to you." "You could lend me your fucking car, Mom." "How was the lunch, Krista? Oh, really? Because I saw you, and you weren't where you said you would be." On the flip-side, Amy herself is full of bullshit, as in the moment when she uses Tyler's lunch date to wound Krista. Or when she makes Tyler drive her to another city, then says, breezily, "You're just going to wait in the car, OK? You're not coming in." Or when she deliberately, repeatedly underlines for Dougie all the ways in which Dougie's employers devalue him--as a means of accomplishing her own complex goal. Or when she invokes Dougie's bad behavior mainly as a way of securing a reason for her to continue showing up at work and collecting a paycheck. Amy is a gray murky mess. You can't entirely root for her and you can't hate her. This makes her fascinating.)
-One of the marvels of this show is Diane Ladd's first encounter with Dermot Mulroney. "It's not a date, Mom," says Amy, but then why is Amy dressed the way she's dressed? Helen--Ladd--runs to the door, dewy-eyed (despite Amy's protestations, and now we see where some of Amy's own pushiness comes from)--and presses Mulroney--Jeff--for information on his ethnic heritage. "Jewish?" she says, and her brow furrows. (Priceless.) "And Irish! Oh, Irish! Amy is partly Irish. Well, the Irish drink a great deal. Amy's ex-husband has a drinking problem. Amy herself has spent some time in a kind of rehabilitation facility....Well, you two have fun." This stunning speech--like verbal diarrhea, without a clear, consistent purpose--is such a shrewd, Jane Austen-ish use of language. It's like Mike White is Seurat, using all these little dots, these words--and they don't add up in the way the characters think they add up. Helen thinks she is having a breezy chat. Really, she is helping to paint a portrait of panic, disconnection, anxiety, neediness. (It's hard to see Ladd's face, now, without recalling the flashback to her suicidal husband in his gas-filled car--hard not to recall, constantly, that Helen is carrying that stone in her pocket wherever she goes.)
-"I'm on Twitter. Follow me. I'm following you, so you should really follow me." This bullying exchange--a parody of a friendly workplace interaction--underlines so much of what is wrong with the world today. (It makes me think of "Ingrid Goes West," with its Instagram posts--the seraphic Elizabeth Olsen, typing, "Another avocado toast. Another slice of heaven." Meanwhile, we know nothing of her tendency toward pathological lies, her floundering, untalented husband, her habit of using people as props in her own endless photo shoot. Olsen's character would have a fair amount to say to Amy J.) Amy hasn't mastered the lingo, so she types, "My first twit!" (Also priceless.) She signs herself up for the tweets of Amnesty International and PETA, right away, and we might wonder if she really, sincerely cares about these causes--or if she mainly enjoys the little morale boost, the self-flattering thought, I have expended half a second of effort to faux-support PETA. It's like Justin Bieber writing, "Great day at the Anne Frank House. I hope Anne would have been a Be-lieber." (Meanwhile, nearby, Mike White's face becomes a stunning portrait of a Divided Self--there's terror, and obstinance, and disbelief, and excitement, writ large across his eyes, in almost every shot. Almost all the time. He is a national treasure. I think of that old chestnut--"Past behavior is the best way to predict future behavior." We know White--Tyler--had a mysterious meltdown at some point, and got demoted to Cogentiva. We know that his email password is JULIA_BITCH, a way of getting in a dig at his ex-boss, whom he once liked. Is Amy going to be the next Julia in Tyler's life? There's so much tension in their pseudo-friendship. It's a queasy pleasure to watch them together.)
-A writer needs to build an OTHER WORLD. In "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe," we enter the wooden furniture and find ourselves surrounded by, overwhelmed by, Narnia. In S. King's JFK novel, a portal takes us back in time to an era when credit cards were not a "thing," and when your driver ID didn't even have your picture on it. Cogentiva is its own world--its own Narnia. Spend an hour with Dougie, with WAA, with the yoga mats, with the windowless basement chamber--and you're transported out of your life. Such a gift Mike White has given us. He is a major inspiration.
-One of the marvels of this show is Diane Ladd's first encounter with Dermot Mulroney. "It's not a date, Mom," says Amy, but then why is Amy dressed the way she's dressed? Helen--Ladd--runs to the door, dewy-eyed (despite Amy's protestations, and now we see where some of Amy's own pushiness comes from)--and presses Mulroney--Jeff--for information on his ethnic heritage. "Jewish?" she says, and her brow furrows. (Priceless.) "And Irish! Oh, Irish! Amy is partly Irish. Well, the Irish drink a great deal. Amy's ex-husband has a drinking problem. Amy herself has spent some time in a kind of rehabilitation facility....Well, you two have fun." This stunning speech--like verbal diarrhea, without a clear, consistent purpose--is such a shrewd, Jane Austen-ish use of language. It's like Mike White is Seurat, using all these little dots, these words--and they don't add up in the way the characters think they add up. Helen thinks she is having a breezy chat. Really, she is helping to paint a portrait of panic, disconnection, anxiety, neediness. (It's hard to see Ladd's face, now, without recalling the flashback to her suicidal husband in his gas-filled car--hard not to recall, constantly, that Helen is carrying that stone in her pocket wherever she goes.)
-"I'm on Twitter. Follow me. I'm following you, so you should really follow me." This bullying exchange--a parody of a friendly workplace interaction--underlines so much of what is wrong with the world today. (It makes me think of "Ingrid Goes West," with its Instagram posts--the seraphic Elizabeth Olsen, typing, "Another avocado toast. Another slice of heaven." Meanwhile, we know nothing of her tendency toward pathological lies, her floundering, untalented husband, her habit of using people as props in her own endless photo shoot. Olsen's character would have a fair amount to say to Amy J.) Amy hasn't mastered the lingo, so she types, "My first twit!" (Also priceless.) She signs herself up for the tweets of Amnesty International and PETA, right away, and we might wonder if she really, sincerely cares about these causes--or if she mainly enjoys the little morale boost, the self-flattering thought, I have expended half a second of effort to faux-support PETA. It's like Justin Bieber writing, "Great day at the Anne Frank House. I hope Anne would have been a Be-lieber." (Meanwhile, nearby, Mike White's face becomes a stunning portrait of a Divided Self--there's terror, and obstinance, and disbelief, and excitement, writ large across his eyes, in almost every shot. Almost all the time. He is a national treasure. I think of that old chestnut--"Past behavior is the best way to predict future behavior." We know White--Tyler--had a mysterious meltdown at some point, and got demoted to Cogentiva. We know that his email password is JULIA_BITCH, a way of getting in a dig at his ex-boss, whom he once liked. Is Amy going to be the next Julia in Tyler's life? There's so much tension in their pseudo-friendship. It's a queasy pleasure to watch them together.)
-A writer needs to build an OTHER WORLD. In "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe," we enter the wooden furniture and find ourselves surrounded by, overwhelmed by, Narnia. In S. King's JFK novel, a portal takes us back in time to an era when credit cards were not a "thing," and when your driver ID didn't even have your picture on it. Cogentiva is its own world--its own Narnia. Spend an hour with Dougie, with WAA, with the yoga mats, with the windowless basement chamber--and you're transported out of your life. Such a gift Mike White has given us. He is a major inspiration.
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