This is an HBO dark comedy that was intensely loved by anyone who knew about it before it was inexplicably canceled. Laura Dern plays a corporate executive who has a full-blown meltdown. I’m talking mascara streaming down her cheeks and screaming “I’m going to destroy you” to a coworker. When she comes back from a retreat in Hawaii she is forced to take, Den’s character is no longer filled with corporate rage but with inexplicable and almost obnoxious positivity. She tries to spread her new outlook around by giving people books like “Flow Through Your Rage” and telling them about sea turtles. Things get more real when she decides to take on her old company’s abuses. I think the reason this show has such hard-core fans is that they fell in love with Laura Dern’s character. Watching this show is like letting in a flawed, dependent, but extremely determined and well-meaning person into your life. Enlightened is funny, engaging, and all-around near-perfect TV.
"The character of Amy Jellicoe, an executive ground down to bones and nerve after a mental breakdown, could have been a sort of spiritual successor to Tony Soprano. It is a critical text in Dern studies."
— Doreen St. Felix
"Ultimately, Enlightened sets up its own quixotic quest - the long uphill slog of building a series around making the audience uncomfortable."
— Brian Lowry
After a very public breakdown and a subsequent philosophical awakening in rehabilitation, Amy tries to get her life back together.
Golden Globes
1 win, 1 nomination
