Manuel here capping off Laura Dern Week on her 50th birthday.
Enlightened’s Amy Jellicoe is one of the most indelible television characters of the 21st century. And while that sounds like hyperbole, it may very well be an understatement. Pitched as a show “about a woman on the verge of a nervous breakthrough” (gotta love that wordplay) Mike White’s two-season wonder of a show was a quiet meditation on low-key Cali self-empowerment in the age of bitter cynicism. The HBO production was also a great performance showcase for co-creator Laura Dern who rightly won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Amy, a woman whom we first meet while having a full-on breakdown at work. And it’s a thing of beauty...
Tears are streaming down and strewing mascara all over her face. She’s locked herself in a bathroom stall cry her eyes out, but even as we get our first full look at Amy Jellicoe, employee of Abbadon industries, you can tell there’s something more to those tears. They’re not filled with mere regret or sadness or frustration over what we learn is her imminent firing given that she slept with her boss (who’s now expecting a child with his wife, oops!). There’s an incandescent self-righteous anger. As you see her finally let loose on her colleagues and her former lover, who cautiously tries to steer clear of her as if afraid he’ll be tainted by her hysterics, you see that anger consume her. As her well-meaning assistant tells her, “Amy, you look insane.” She really does look deranged, especially once you see her railing less against the indignity of having everyone know about the affair and more about the way it’s infringing on the small world she’d created for herself in the Health & Beauty department at Abbadon. By the time White gives us the now iconic image of Amy keeping an elevator door open wide enough to yell “I will kill you motherfucker!” you just know you’re in for a treat.
When the episode (and the show itself) switches into its more calming mood, with Amy having found peace while on a program of sorts in Hawaii, we’re encouraged to follow along her path towards becoming a better person and help make the world a better place. “I'm speaking with my true voice now,” she tells us, “without bitterness or fear and I'm here to tell you, you can walk out of hell and into the light. You can wake up to your higher self and when you do, the world is suddenly full of the possibility of wonder and deep connection.”
White’s show is pitch-perfect when it comes to pitting Amy’s decision to live up to her higher self against the horrid world around her which almost begs her to stoop to its level. And Dern matches him in her ability to juggle these two opposing forces. Look at that moment in the pilot where she’s being summarily fired upon her return and, while keeping her earnest smile in place, she basically retaliates with threats of legal action (as she’d learnt before being sent off, her mental breakdown basically protected her from being dismissed as it would amount to discrimination). And while she doesn’t get her way—a social program that would help offset some of the damage Abbadon does to the environment—she does get to stay employed. She’s banished to the basement where she becomes a lowly data processor.
With her Cali accent and oppressively sunny disposition, Dern’s Amy Jellicoe refuses to be discouraged and every episode where we see more of Amy’s journey (and learn more about what led her to that breakdown in the office) is a masterclass in acting. Whether suppressing an angry tirade or dreaming up yet another way to stay positive, Dern is just wonderful as Amy, an anti-heroine that makes earnestness as powerful a tool as you’re bound to find in this day and age.
Bonus: the show is as interested in checking her own privilege as it is in dismantling the very system that gifts it to her.
Bonus (2): the show is a godsend for us GIF-loving gays.
