Amy’s basement office is cold and the duties of her position are unclear but definitely have something to do with numbers and crunching them. She is surrounded by what look like 1980s super computers that fill entire rooms with wires and buttons, and cartoonishly so. Her coworkers, who include writer and co-creator Mike White, are bland and defenseless. Meanwhile Amy strolls in each day clad in hippie-chic and delivers vibrant greetings. Her new work environment mirrors her internal struggle, the starting over from the bottom. The new Amy is looking to shed the shell of her former self.

But not all at once. These things take time. You’re allowed to dance in limbo for a bit. In an interview on Fresh Air, Terry Gross discusses how Mike White has the great advantage of working in the television medium. Where a movie gives you two hours and a song just a few minutes, a television show can give you one or two, and hopefully three or more seasons of time to take a character on a truly metamorphic adventure. Breaking Bad’s Walter White comes to mind almost immediately. It’s amazing how the simple addition of a pork pie hat can have such a frightening impact. And with Amy, her changes are slight but deep: the encouragement she gives to her coworkers, the extra breath she takes before she speaks.

“You can be patient and you can be kind. And you can be wise, and almost whole.”

Enlightened is the rare type of television show that lingers for all the right reasons. While Breaking Bad has me questioning morality and Girls has me questioning the validity of my generation, Enlightened has me analyzing my humanity, or more accurately, my humanness. What it means to be empathetic, to live in a world where even the smallest amount of change takes a huge amount of effort.

In the best episode of the second season, Amy joins Twitter, insisting to everyone she meets that they follow her, meanwhile she is connecting to the likes of PETA, Amnesty International and Mia Farrow. It is the world of new media, a place where a nobody with a laptop in Starbucks can become a somebody with a laptop at a TED Conference. It is yet another outlet for Amy to make a difference in her life, to be an agent of change.

“You can wake up to your higher self. And when you do, the world is suddenly full of possibility. Of wonder and deep connection.”

When I wake up in the morning, I make tea and check my email, my Facebook and Instagram. I need to be outside running instead. We all need to be running. The characters of Enlightened are all moving at a steady pace. They are on the verge of really bursting out into that sprint and uncovering what’s there to uncover but just need more time to do it. And most of all there’s Amy Jellicoe, whose setbacks are inevitable but whose conviction is inspiring.

If there’s hope for Amy, then there just might be hope for the rest of us.

Laura DernLaura Dern

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