The White Lotus is certainly the biggest achievement so far in the great career of Mike White, but the actor, writer, and director created a bevy of underrated titles prior to that hit series which comes close to or even surpasses its brilliance. He wrote excellent scripts for the films Chuck & Buck, Orange County, The Good Girl, School of Rock, Year of the Dog, Beatriz at Dinner, Brad’s Status, and Migration. He created the short-lived TV series Pasadena and Cracking Up, but it wasn’t until his first show with HBO, Enlightened, that he fully tapped into his own brilliant potential for mature television. It was a two-season masterpiece, and featured a rare mother-daughter performance from two legends — Laura Dern and her mother, Diane Ladd.
Like The White Lotus, which just ended its third season with record ratings for the show, Enlightened explores the spiritual malaise of capitalism and the insulated privilege of middle-class white people through dark comedy and increasing tension. Enlightened follows Amy Jellicoe (Dern) as she returns home to Riverdale, California following a public breakdown and subsequent stay at a beach-side New Age rehab center which specializes in holistic treatments. She’s demoted, divorced, living with her mom (Ladd), and basically starting over at the age of 40, but she has a new lease on life. She’s enlightened.
f
When Amy returns to Abaddonn Industries, where she used to work in a high-powered executive role, she is relegated to the basement to work with other people who have had HR problems. They’re button-pushers on a project that feels just as tedious and pointless as Macrodata Refinement in Severance, but similarly has a bigger, darker purpose. Amy is a freight train of positivity and curiosity, though, and the basement can’t contain her when she begins to suspect that Abaddonn is responsible for some nefarious corporate practices.
Related
Laura Dern’s Best Drama Movies, Ranked
In light of Laura Dern’s upcoming appearance in The Son, here’s a look back at her best drama movies, ranked.
Dern is incredible in Enlightened. She’s both inspiring and obnoxious in her relentless optimism, playing a woman who has traded work, booze, and sex for self-help books, meditation, and yoga. As such, she brings her bipolar diagnosis into her New Age lifestyle, which makes for an interesting paradox. There’s a deep sadness about her life as well. Her new mindset leads her to find the best in people, but in the real world outside her luxury rehab center, people do not deserve the benefit of the doubt, especially in corporate society. She is exploited, laughed at, and ignored, but her headspace refuses to accept that she’s just an ignorant cog in a malicious wheel. The YouTube channel antiheroines released a wonderful little essay on Dern’s performance in the show, which you can watch below:
As the series progresses, a fire lights inside Amy (visualized in magnificent fashion in the Season 1 finale), and she decides to take Abaddonn down. She learns about the terrible project that she and the other basement denizens are unknowingly developing (software that makes it easier for the company to fire people, replace them with cheaper people, cut benefits, et cetera). She learns about the environmental disasters that Abaddonn is covering up, and the lives they are ruining. She recruits her co-worker, the sweet and lonely Tyler (played by Mike White in his best performance to date) and a journalist (played by Dermot Mulroney in one of his best TV roles) to blow the whistle and actually do something positive and significant in the world, a rare feat indeed.
An Ensemble Cast as Good as ‘The White Lotus’
While Enlightened definitely focuses on the central character of Amy, unlike The White Lotus‘ nonspecific ensemble, the earlier show still features a beautifully developed and multidimensional supporting cast. Mike White’s Tyler is an unforgettable character, and Enlightened generously spends time on him and other members of the brilliant supporting cast. Diane Ladd is melancholic, deeply wounded, and loving, playing one of the most realistic mothers in TV history. Like Tyler, there’s an episode which focuses mainly on her, and it’s quietly powerful.
Related
‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Review: Thailand Tests Guests’ Spirits in Tense New Season
A predictable structure stays interesting thanks to the surprising returns, great performances, and thrilling tension of Season 3.
Luke Wilson gives possibly the best performance of his career (at least outside Wes Anderson films) as Amy’s drug-using, former MLB star husband. One of the greatest episodes in TV history finds him enrolling in the rehab center that Amy attended and having a very different experience.
Timm Sharp is hilarious as a tech bro loser in charge of the basement department, a man-child named Dougie who is utterly oblivious of how much he’s disliked. Again, it’s a very funny performance, but there’s an authenticity and genuine sadness to it as well. Everything is played for real in Enlightened. Sarah Burns, Jason Mantzoukas, Molly Shannon, Michaela Watkins, Riki Lindhome, Amy Hill, Robin Wright, and James Rebhorn also give their best to the show.
Live, Laugh, Love
Enlightened both gently satirizes the New Age movement, white feminism, and liberalism, but is also in love with its characters. Amy is not a joke; she’s a real human being, and her desire to make a positive difference in the world may be naive, but it’s authentic, and it’s inspiring.
Related
The Best HBO TV Shows of All Time, Ranked
HBO is the best of the best when it comes to television, and here are the best series from the premium cable channel.
When discussing Enlightened with NPR, Mike White made his intentions clear. “It’s a cliché, it’s a New Age cliché, but, ‘Be the change you want to see.’ It’s like, ‘How do I create the things I want to see, and how can you make something that is compassionate and potentially can be healing to someone?'” explained White. “Or, you know, they talk about in Buddhism, there’s Tonglen practice, which is someone breathing in the suffering of either yourself or others, and breathing out a kind of hopefulness.” He continued:
“And you can see art or fiction or whatever being a version of that, where you try to create something that’s hopeful, that also recognizes pain and doesn’t run from the pain. It actually acknowledges it, because I feel like so much of entertainment right now is about distraction and a bombarding of … light and noise. … And whether I’ve succeeded in that or not, I feel like there is an impulse there. … I don’t want to walk away from what I’m trying to achieve, which is to try to make something that is a little bit more contemplative or a little slowed down or a little bit more about how do we live, as opposed to something that’s about distracting you from those questions.”
You can watch both seasons of Enlightened on Max through the link below:
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
