Aired 2011 to 2013 (2 seasons) on HBO
Created by Mike White and Laura Dern
Currently streaming on HBO
For a brief introduction to this countdown, click here.
"Am I my higher self or am I in the mud?
Am I an agent of change or a creator of chaos?
Am I the fool, the goat, the witch?
...or am I enlightened?"
-Amy Jellicoe
Modern TV and film is replete with narratives that seek to humanize or at least better understand the ultra-rich and other elites that comprise the American ruling class. Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short were nominated for Oscars. Many of the superheroes in summer blockbusters are billionaires with dark pasts. Big Little Lies exists almost entirely as a vehicle for great actresses to play miserable assholes. And two of the most popular shows on pay cable (HBO's Succession and Showtime's Billions) are centered on terrible people with power doing terrible things with their power. Whether these works are critical of these people or cozy up to them (or most typically, a little bit of both), there's clearly no shortage of representation of millionaires and billionaires in this decade of visual media.
What's less common is to see the natural counterpart of this - that is, stories centered around those explicitly fighting against the same ruling class. Enlightened is possibly the best example of such a show, and is also the best such show. Its commitment to depicting this struggle with a rich, methodical story is what earns it a place on this list. The show is centered around Amy Jellicoe (played by co-creator Laura Dern), a long-time employee of the fictional conglomerate Abaddonn. The action begins with her return from a self-imposed sabbatical, continues with her demotion to a literal basement-level division called Cogentiva, and follows her as she becomes more and more disillusioned with the company that was once a central part of her identity. By the end, Amy becomes a whistle-blower and exposes the company's wrongdoing, which includes crimes such as the bribing of elected officials. In all, Enlightened's modest run of two short seasons is more purposeful, insightful, and revealing about how the world works than anything I listed in the previous graph. As such it's one of the most important shows of the decade.
It's Personal
Lest you think this thematic emphasis means that Enlightened is simply a treatise on how to combat the corruption of capitalism, let me assure you that it's not. This is still a fictional TV show that has to have some sort of narrative glue, and for Enlightened that adhesive is the personal journey of Amy. A lot of time is spent building crucial details of her character and her relationships to Helen (her mother), Levi (her ex-husband), Krista (her former underling who now has Amy's old job), and Tyler (her new co-worker). There isn't even a whiff of actual substantive rebellion from Amy until she encounters a picket line in the eighth episode (the aptly named "Comrades Unite!"), and she doesn't become firm in her resolve to take down Abaddonn until the final minutes of the first season. This slow build gives us plenty of time to establish just who Amy is as well as spend entire episodes fleshing out the supporting cast.*
*Many of these episodes are great ("Consider Helen" is a personal favorite of mine) and almost all of them exist outside of the main narrative. Even then, these episodes can be viewed as meditations on how these characters have been let down and otherwise marginalized by society at large - more on this in a moment.
This approach does not detract from the central message, and actually helps strengthen the thematic resonance of the narrative. Depicting how Amy was driven to this point shows how this sort of action is often a direct result of pain felt at a personal level. Many of us (Amy included) have a logical understanding of how the system is broken, but we're rarely moved to act unless it becomes personal. Indeed, that it takes Amy a long time to get to where she is at the end of the series is itself revealing. By default, Amy operates under the assumption that she can change things from within. This idea is generally presented as facile to the viewer, but Amy herself is not truly disabused of the notion until Krista betrays her and the rest of her former co-workers laugh her out of a meeting. And even in the shows' penultimate episode, Amy briefly considers taking an offer from the CEO to be an internal watchdog ("I got seduced thinking I was gonna change him," she says. "It's what I do. Thinking I can convert the unbeliever"). Amy Jellicoe is a very specific kind of character, equal parts optimistic and determined, and Enlightened goes to great lengths to show how such a personality can both fail and succeed to take power back.
...For Everybody
"If they knew, if they only know, would they do something too, or would they just ignore it? I guess we're about to find out"
-Amy
As much as Enlightened is concerned with the motivation behind Amy's actions, it more subtly asks why everyone else doesn't just do the same thing as her. Understanding this stasis that surrounds Amy is just as important to the story as her own personal journey. And while a lesser show might set up a cast of obvious villains to contrast with our protagonist, Enlightened doesn't do that. Rather, it's made clear that almost no one fundamentally disagrees with Amy's central premise that Abaddonn is a malicious actor. The ways in which everyone else manages to justify their inaction becomes the thematic marrow of the show and speaks to the forces, both systemic and personal, both active and passive, that maintain the current order.
An analysis of this has to begin with the person closest to Amy, her mother Helen (Laura Dern's actual mother, Diane Ladd). Throughout the early part of the series Helen is somewhat concerned with what Amy is doing with her newfound sense of purpose. However, it's painted in such a way that's easy to mistake for the stereotypical doting nature of a mother caring for her child. But in the aforementioned "Consider Helen," we learn more about the family's past. Helen's husband and Amy's father died of suicide after a failed business venture, and it's clearly influenced the rest of Helen's life (her main activity is tending to her garden, a sort of Candide of the Inland Empire). In this light, Helen's aversion to risk is still a reactionary instinct, but one borne of great personal pain. The story of Helen is a demonstration of how the trauma inflicted by our capitalist system can be the biggest impediment to change.
Other justifications are less immediately personal but just as clear. In the second season, Amy works with a reporter from the LA Times named Jeff (Dermot Mulroney) to uncover Abaddonn's misdeeds. The dirt she brings him at first is real ("these guys are pigs...they're getting rich by screwing everyone else" says Amy), but he's reluctant to run with it (he tells her she would get in trouble and "nothing would change"). To be clear, Jeff isn't wrong that normalized corporate malfeasance doesn't usually move the needle of public opinion. But it does speak to the limitations of a profit-driven media and our collective lack of imagination when it comes to defining what is and is not a scandal.
There's also Abaddonn's CEO, who Amy meets with a couple times near the end of the series. The late James Rebhorn plays him with a touch of predatory zeal, but the character is not reduced to that single dimension. What's most telling is that he never actually denies wrongdoing, even under the duress of being exposed. Rather he considers his role of great power to consist of impossibly tough choices that necessitate negative outcomes. When offering Amy the corporate watchdog job he says "Sometimes I'm wrong and people get hurt, but I have to decide with confidence and accept what comes." Of course he says this knowing he'll never be the one accepting those consequences and denying the full scope of his agency. It's a delicious, if logical irony that the person who benefits most from the way things are takes the current state of the world as a given.
The most important supporting character to mention is Tyler because 1) he's the one most involved in helping Amy, and 2) he actually has a change of heart in response to her. Tyler is reluctant to help hack Abaddonn's emails because of what can only be described as complacency. "I may not be at the top but I'm happy," he tells Amy, also adding "I don't want to lose what little I have." Even after it becomes clear that his time at Abaddonn is limited, he is still motivated by keeping his record clean for future employment's sake. Amy's final plea to Tyler cuts to the core of the matter. After she says "I don't want to go back to being nothing...do you?", he replies "I don't know anything else." Tyler can't conceive of grasping power even when the opportunity is in front of him. Ultimately Amy's plea of "let's be hopeful" convinces him. Sometimes all it takes to change is that personal connection and the trust of a friend.
Alienation
In spite of all this, the fight to bring Abaddonn to justice is fundamentally a one-woman effort. And while that can be seen as an inspiring testament to the power of the individual, it's striking just how alienating her journey feels, especially to someone like me who is decidedly not the bubbly and hyper-optimistic Amy Jellicoe. Part of this is because this journey doesn't come without a personal cost to her. Even though Abaddonn was no longer part of Amy's identity, she still loses some connection with her past, most notably her friendships (tenuous as they may be) with past co-workers. And the obvious loss of a paycheck and lack of a clear path forward are consequences that Amy is painfully aware of throughout the series.
The most interesting implication of this, something the show goes to great lengths to demonstrate, is that the journey itself can be isolating. Amy pulls back from her mother and Eli to spend time on her cause. She risks looking foolish and naive in front people in her "new life" (when Amy first visits Jeff's apartment, he pokes light fun at her for not knowing who Noam Chomsky is). And her lack of direction and experience leads to an immense amount of self-doubt....see the monologue at the beginning of this post. Amy's work may have tangible results, but the larger journey of becoming an "agent of change" is mostly internal and inherently lonely. It's not for the faint of heart.
Turning Disillusionment into Actualization
In the end, Enlightened is ultimately optimistic. Amy's story ends in triumph, and is essentially a paean to the power of determined self-transformation. The way it gets to that point is fascinating and somehow manages to outshine every other part of the show as its crowning creative achievement.
As I mentioned earlier, the series begins with Amy settling back in to her normal life after completing her stint in rehab. Because she is Amy Jellicoe, she completely buys in to the messaging of the program and returns as a font of bubbly wisdom and affirmations. While the show does poke fun at how vapid some of this sounds, it's still clear that a) the program has helped Amy process her grief and become functional, and b) its central theme of positivity and desiring a better world isn't misplaced. And indeed, this self-help mindset is important in that it initiates the desire in Amy to improve the world. It's a fantastic internal motivator. But something else is needed to turn that spark into external results. This is what the first season goes to great lengths to demonstrate, as new-age platitudes leave her stuck in the basement at a job she hates, no closer to affecting change than she was before.
Once we reach the second season, Amy begins this transformation. She is initially filled with hope after hacking the emails, but Jeff gives her the aforementioned reality check. The feel-good facade scales back, and Amy starts to critically examine her relation to the world. "I'm just tired of feeling small," she says. "For two minutes there I felt worth something, like I was doing something real, and I was alive."* The self-help mindset left her feeling empowered, but true empowerment takes more than that. Specifically it takes the desire to seek actual power, a word that is mostly absent from her vocabulary.
*Yes this sounds exactly like Walter White, and yes I will talk more about this parallel later in the countdown.
By the end of the series, we see this change in Amy. When the CEO offers her the watchdog job, he asks her "Do you really want to do something good or are you just tired of feeling powerless?" Her response frames her desires in a way we haven't heard before: "I want the power but to do something good." The Amy of old just assumed she had the power, but she now understands that it's something she has to work towards. And in her final confrontation with Abaddonn she makes this clear: "I'm just a woman who's over it. I'm tired of watching the world fall apart cause of guys like you. I tried to take a little power back." Take a little power back. It's a goal that's more modest and realistic than her earlier ambitions, but no less meaningful.
The closing minutes of the series see Amy calm, with a measure of serenity (the elevator closing behind the raving CEO is a direct parallel to the beginning of the series, when Amy was the maniac). She began with a desire to change and But it's through her actions and self-reflection that she is able to turn that impetus into self-actualization. In one of her many monologues, Amy promises that after everything is done, "Life and Earth will reign again." Indeed it will, Amy.
* * *
I'd be remiss if I didn't add a postscript. I wanted to deal with the show on its own terms above, while still discussing it in the larger context of the real world (which I'll do here). Enlightened aired earlier in the decade, but it feels like a lifetime ago. The show is still a great and welcome part of the pantheon of TV, but it feels very much like a throwback. Much like Parks and Recreation, the show speaks to a fundamental optimism that isn't wrong, but perhaps slightly misplaced. Enlightened is a little wiser than Parks and is purposefully smaller in scope (Amy doesn't become president or whatever), but its critique of everything that is wrong with Abaddonn doesn't cut as sharp as it could. I will say that it's entirely possible that a more incisive version of the show would be a worse one, and the Enlightened that we got was the optimized version of itself. Maybe there will never be a show that fully speaks to the all of the rot in our world. Maybe art, especially art that is subject to the corporate influences that make up much of the rot, isn't capable of that.
If any art form is up to this challenge, it's probably music. And one musician who succeeded at this as much as anyone was David Berman, most famous for his band Silver Jews. He struggled his whole life with depression and addiction, and his music often reflects this conflict (his final album was titled "All My Happiness is Gone."). His output was, in equal measure, about the pain of living in this world and the optimism that things can be better. And his story-like lyrical style spoke to this duality in ways both intimate and universal.
After more than a decade of making beloved indie rock, he too decided to make a change. He quit to pursue a life focused on counteracting everything his father had done (the quick summary is that his dad was a powerful and effective lobbyist for basically every bad thing). In the missive where Berman effectively quit music to take up the cause, he declared "I am the son of a demon come to make good the damage." If you told me instead that those words were lifted from an Amy Jellicoe monologue, I wouldn't blink.
As you might have guessed, this story does not have the happy ending of Enlightened. David Berman died of suicide last month. Whatever the specific reason for his death, it's hard not to be dispirited at the loss of one of humanity's finest souls. It's certainly something I've wrestled with at length. And returning to the matter at hand, such a tragedy can make a work like Enlightened feel trite and inconsequential. But ultimately I think that the only way forward is to embrace at least some semblance of unfettered optimism, or some hope that the world can be improved. It can be prudent in a way, and maybe even factually correct, to embrace a worldview of nihilistic pessimism. But the only way things can actually get better is if one embraces some positive vision of a future. So you've got to have hope, even if you feel dumb. As Amy says as she leaves Abaddonn for the last time, "Well if caring about something...is dopey, I'm a fucking moron." I think I can live with that.
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