Memoir (Enlightened)

These photos are two of my most prized possessions. And they’re free. You can get them on your computer. My husband says I’m obsessed with Laura Dern. He calls her “Lorna Doone,” because it’s just easier to remember. In the “green” image, Ms. Dern, as Amy Jellicoe, is seated, sobbing, on the toilet in her office. The lighting seems surreal; it’s as if Amy were in a sickly sea of green. Makeup runs down her face like warpaint. The shirt seems a bit loud. As I recall, after this sobbing-on-the-toilet sequence, Amy will run down the hallway, after her married boss/boyfriend, and throw herself in front of the elevator doors. She will try to pry the doors back open, screaming out her pain and her need. The married boyfriend is surrounded by colleagues. This moment spells the temporary end of Amy’s (moderately) high-flying career.

Mike White, who wrote all of “Enlightened,” seems exceedingly wise. He had been working on some big network show. He was exasperated. The corporate bigwigs were ruining all his ideas. They were de-fanging his wit. They were making his writing bland and “safe.” The aura at work was paranoid, anxious; there was a sense of hypocrisy and sloppy communication, as there often is, at work. White, like Amy Jellicoe, had a bona fide breakdown. He was hospitalized. Then, like Richard Yates, he emerged triumphant. He made art from his experience. The story of Amy Jellicoe--though it’s really fictional TV--feels like the best kind of personal essay. We feel Mike White in the present, reflecting with warmth and cutting intelligence, on his past self. There’s a real authorial fondness for Amy--even as Mike quietly tears Amy apart. Walking the thin line between total compassion and total satire--It’s such a challenging task, and it’s something Mike White does better than just about anyone, I think. And he does it again and again, in “The Good Girl,” “Brad’s Status,” and “Beatriz at Dinner.”

I try to remind myself of a few things at work. (1) Everyone around me is a child. The people in power--whom one might want to regard as the most mature--are often the closest to infancy. This sometimes helps me to hold my tongue. (2) Work settings do not deserve your emotions. I have a therapist who says, “Anger is a gift. Save it for the people you love. They deserve your anger, because anger can be an avenue for change, and the people you really love are people whose future you’re invested in.” He also told me a wonderful anecdote about a particularly fraught time in his corporate former life: “I said, calmly, I’m going to excuse myself for a few minutes, use the restroom, take a walk, and then we can revisit all this.” Hard to do! (3) Be the person you’d want to run into at the copier at 2 am. That’s advice from Tina Fey’s memoir. In other words: Be wonderfully low-key. Fey also has another gem about work: “Roadblocks are roadblocks. Do not attempt to talk to them. Go over, below, or around them. Over, below, around. Repeat. Over, below, around. Don’t ask for blood from a stone. Don’t require help from a human waste product.”

My closest friend at work, who has quite a bit more political savvy than I: “The best people in life suffer quietly.”

“Enlightened” ended after two seasons--and, famously, there was a big outcry from its fans. It has one of the most celebrated endings in TV history. Mike White has gone on to do at least two great things: “Beatriz at Dinner” and “Brad’s Status.” He has also done two awful things, presumably to pay bills: “Pitch Perfect 3” and “The Emoji Movie.” Laura Dern has had a wonderful career renaissance, partly via Reese Witherspoon: “Wild,” “Big Little Lies,” "Star Wars.” These folks--Dern and White--are two artists with a sense of humor who spend a fair amount of time wondering about what it means to be a decent person in the world. They are my lodestars. I’m grateful they both continue--and continue, and continue--to tell stories.