Enlightenment is hard but worth the effort
This is the time of year when everyone and his dog make lists of the best and the worst of the year now ending. In several of the lists of the best television shows of the year, I'm happy to see that one of my personal favorites is being mentioned. Enlightened, the HBO series by Laura Dern and Mike White , which also stars Dern as the main character Amy Jellicoe, has not gotten the buzz that many of the year's series have had. All the talk this fall has been about Showtime's Homeland with critics falling all over themselves to praise it. Frankly, it left me a bit cold, but I loved Enlightened , although I sometimes wondered if anybody besides me were watching. Amy Jellicoe is a disturbed California woman who has an emotional breakdown on the job and goes away to a rehab center in Hawaii to try find herself. There, she finds more than herself; she finds "enlightenment" and she returns home to try to put her life back together and to make it and the world better. ...